Barbara Gerard-Mitchell is an artist who works primarily in oils, acrylics, and watercolors.  Her subjects include landscape, wildlife, equine, and the western life-style. She is a graduate from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she received an Associate of Fine Arts Degree.  She has continued her studies with many renowned master painters. 

Rose Irelan is inspired by the diverse landscapes of the coast, desert, and mountains. Her paintings capture the energy and changing light of the natural world, using expressive brushwork and a deep appreciation for color. Whether painting the rugged shoreline, the quiet beauty of a desert morning, or towering mountains, she strives to convey the feeling of a moment rather than just a scene.

Each day is a gift that Cobb-Kelleher treasures. She strives to capture those special but otherwise missed moments of ranch life — moments that poignantly highlight the struggle for that tenuous and beautiful balance between the world as it is and the world as we wish it to be.

reating my art is as much a part of me as breathing. My inspiration comes from the small, even insignificant, things that surround us in everyday life. I earned my B.F.A. and M.A. degrees in painting from Northern Illinois University. My work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is included in private and corporate collections in the United States, Sweden, France, Luxembourg, Germany, Australia and Great Britain. My paintings were selected for the American Embassy Residences in Rangoon, Burma and Niger, Africa, under the Art in Embassies program initiated by President John F. Kennedy. I am listed in Who’s Who in American Art and Who’s Who in America, receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award. I co-authored the book, “Now What? This Art Business.” My work is included in the books, “The Best of Silk Painting,” and “The Fine Art of Painting on Silk”. I am represented by Abel Contemporary Gallery, Stoughton, WI, 317 Art Collective, Rockford, IL, and JR Finally Art, Rockton, IL and am a member of artists’ organizations including WAOW, TWSA, NWS, SPIN and the Art Guild of Rockford.

Denise Horne-Kaplan started her professional career in 1983.  She has participated in exhibits and juried shows — over 74 national and International juried shows and eight solo shows to date.  She is in six international publications, including being a featured centerfold Artist with thirteen paintings in the 1999 Winter Issue of Watercolor magazine.  Horne-Kaplan is a signature member, one of only 130 in the country, of the Miniature Artists of America. 

Carolyn C. Bell, an award–winning Texas artist, fell in love with the southwest’s vast landscape upon moving to Texas at the age of eight.  Her love of the southwest landscape has been translated into many artworks that depict the myriad colors, rocks, and foliage that has caught her eye and heart.  Southwestern Spanish architecture and the Spanish missions of Texas and New Mexico are also cherished subjects, along with florals, wildlife and still life.

Oil painter, JILL BANKS, teaches multiple classes a week over three semesters each year; exhibits at  top fine art festivals; sends work off to juried exhibitions; paints in juried and invitational plein air competitions; takes on a small number of portrait commissions; and travels for personal painting trips and inspiration. Stylistically, she continues to evolve from realism with feeling to impressionism with even more emotion and simplification.

For the last fifteen years California artist, Kathy Harder has been fulfilling her dream as a land steward on her mountain ranch in the old oak forests of California. With the stabilization of her homestead she has found "a return to source" in her artwork, a reconnection with her materials and a "spirit journey" with the animals she documents. Her subject matter has come from her strong link to both the wonder and power of nature.

Her current medium is the monotype, know as the most painterly method among printmaking techniques. Kathy gently pulls depth and dimension into her subject by utilizing her own versatile method. The result is stunningly captured by the vibrant colors in her works detail. This "light field" of mixed media could be described as an attempt to demonstrate the "other worldly quality" that is sometimes present when "spirit" enters material form.

Born in Washington state but raised in Montana, Marcia can't remember a time when she wasn't sketching even as a child. Some of her fondest memories were trips to rural Montana or to her grandmother's cabin on the lake. "I often found myself drawn to the  majesty of the early morning and late evening light always surrounding the snowcapped mountains," Ballowe reflects.

 Marcia Ballowe’s creativity flourished with the encouragement of her husband, and family, as she attended multiple workshops with notable national artists: Irving Shapiro, Scott Christensen, John MacDonald, Marc Hanson, Matt Smith, to mention a few. But she felt the biggest impact on her work came through plein air painting where she learned to capture the fleeting light and mood of a place in her art.  Photographs never held the values and hues she could see outdoors.