Pierson’s Podcast

Philip Lawson was born in Bristol, Tennessee in 1967. He earned a  Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Ringling School of Art and Design  in Florida in 1991 and a Masters Degree in Marriage and Family Therapy  with an emphasis in Art Therapy from Notre dame de Namur University in  California in 2001. His eclectic approach to making art has included  scoring films, producing music videos, and working in a variety of other  media, from painting and sculpture to photography and ceramics. He has  been the subject of a feature length documentary and inspired The  Weapons of Light Piano Concerto.    

Jennifer Klemp's Geometric Series is inspired by the artist’s own  internal inner searching and manifestation. Her recent work taps into  the spiritual and introspective nature found within one’s self. Each  piece is created laboriously, fusing traditional methods with abstract  undertones. Attention to color theory is intentional, with bright  punches of color found throughout.    

Nick Diomedes’ interest in music started at an early age. Originally  fascinated with the tactility of playing an instrument, it’s no surprise  that Nick became a drummer. Upon deciding to pursue a professional  career in music, Nick developed his skills as a Jazz Studies Major at  the University of North Texas and began working as a professional  musician in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, spending countless nights in  Honky Tonks, dive bars, and recording studios. Looking to further his  professional career, Nick moved to Nashville, TN in 2013 with the goal  of working with major label Country artists, both on tour and in the  studio.     

After nine years in Nashville, and many miles traveled on the highway  and in the sky, Nick decided to prioritize spending more time at home  with his loved ones. While not completely retired, he enjoys his time in  town and continues to diversify his endeavors, which now include  photography, yoga, and rock climbing.    

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Ryan Greis, founder and lead instructor of Drawn Studio, has over 15  years of professional illustration experience. His artwork has appeared  in the pages of New York Press, St. Louis Magazine, Riverfront Times and  other local and regional publications around the United States, earning  him numerous awards year after year from the Association of Alternative  Newsmedia. In addition to a Bachelor's of Arts degree in Visual  Communication from Northern Kentucky University, Ryan holds an MBA from  Lindenwood University.    

His more recent work as "art detective" has helped some of the finest  museums and institutions locate and recover $745,000 in missing  artwork.    

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Paulette Brinkmann Wright grew up on a farm in northwestern Ohio. Her  favorite thing about farm life was helping her father Paul tend to the  livestock. As a little girl, he taught her how to take care of the baby  chicks, or the “peeps” as she called them. Paulette later learned how to  feed cattle, nurse baby calves, and help her dad and her uncle John on  their milk route together. Paulette loved to follow her father around  the barn, into grain elevators, farm equipment stores – pretty much  everywhere – and her father loved having her company. Subsequently, at a  young age, Paulette developed an appreciation for hard work, nature and  animals.    

Paulette had a strong emotional bond to her father, however, it was her  mother Bettie who inspired her to become a photographer. Paulette  describes her mother as “the chronicler of the family.” She had a  “Brownie Camera” that she used to document important events such as  family reunions and their beloved horseshoe tournaments. One day, when  Paulette was 11 years old, she asked her mother if she could borrow her  camera out of curiosity. And her mother said yes. Paulette said, “I was  in heaven! I started taking pictures all the time, honing my  photographic skills with that Brownie. It took some time, but gradually I  learned to pay attention to light, subject matter and composition.”

During her lifetime, Paulette has worked in the insurance field, in the  I.T. department for a newspaper, and as an office manager for an  architectural firm. While she was working at Mozingo & Wallace  Architects, she met Hank, the man she is now happily married to.  Paulette recalls, “He walked into the office and it was basically love  at first sight. Mind you, I had never had a reaction to any man who came  into the office before, but there was just something about him. I took  his business card back to my boss and said, ‘Your 10 am appointment is  here and please keep him here as long as you can.’ I was so embarrassed!  We will have been married 20 years in September.”

Paulette and her husband have relocated many times because of his work.  Paulette says, “Our favorite place we have lived, other than North  Carolina, was Glen Allen, Virginia.” The couple also love to travel, so  many of her photographs are of the places they’ve explored. Paulette  says, “We spent 5 days in France once, traveling to Marseille, Avignon,  and Lyon, and ending our trip at Oustau de Baumaniere in a lovely,  picturesque French inn outside of Les Baux-de-Provence. We also took a  cruise to Alaska in 2019, which was fantastic! But Maui in Hawaii is our  ultimate happy place. Oh, such paradise!” In fact, Hank and Paulette  have visited 30 of the 50 states in the U.S.!

One year for their anniversary, Hank bought Paulette a Nikon and a more  advanced world of photography immediately opened up for her. She  currently has 3 Nikons and uses each one for different applications.  Paulette says, “ I love seeing beautiful nature in my viewfinder,  particularly cows and other animals, and rainbows are a favorite of  mine. Also, I find it satisfying to see something I photographed come  out so beautifully in print. There are moments that have taken my breath  away. I guess that's why I always come back to photography again and  again.”

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Sergey Kir is a unique and innovative artist who's created his own remarkable, new art style, which was he coined "Conceptivism." An ambitious approach to painting, conceptivism synthesizes technology, financial modeling, and art history into a cohesive whole. Utilizing hand drawing, digital photography, and the analytical methods from quantitative finance, Kir's ultimate goal is to create a “gesamtkunstwerk,” or absolute work of art, which goes beyond the visual to incite, provoke, inspire, and enrich the minds of his viewers.    

Kir’s compositions are planned using computer algorithms, with strong philosophical and socio-political messages as their underpinnings. By mixing machine learning, finance, humanity, storytelling, and vivid colors, Kir believes that he’s able to create images just this side shy of perfection. His work generally centers around several themes, namely New York City, “the city of peoples' dreams;” Toronto, water, abstraction, Biblical stories by his family background and his personal connection to the "Kir" fortress mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, and world finance, something he describes as being as much an art as a science.    

Kir was born in western Ukraine during the time of the Soviet Union and lived in Russia for many years. He now lives in New York City, where he pursues his art career, while working in financial risk management.

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Kristi Ponder's Statement:    

My artwork focuses on the commonalities that the human race shares, instead of the differences that pull us apart.  Each artwork visually represents a location meant to elicit certain emotions and responses from the viewer.  My artwork reminds the viewers of different emotions or experiences that person is connected to, while linking them to the larger theme that so many others have experienced.    

Through contemplative landscapes with large colorful skies, I emphasize the vastness of nature and the smallness of humans to remind us of our relationship to nature.

Website

F. Kenneth's Statement:    

Although art has been a passion since childhood; I stepped away from it for years and pursued writing, in which I'm also a proud Self-Published Author of 9 books, with #10 in the works. In 2018, under the moniker, F. Kenneth Art, I returned to my artistic roots with a newfound passion for my craft.    

I began studying all aspects of art; both the business and creative sides, and pursued it wholeheartedly. In 2019, I held my first artist exhibition in Clayton, MO and was featured in Urb Arts', "Abstract Pop-Up" Exhibit, curated by Susan Lively.      

In April, 2021, I was invited by Urb Arts, Owner, MK Stallings to be in the "Balm" Exhibit, curated by Billy Williams. In addition to creating character sketches for books and collaborating with several local entrepreneurs on new projects, I currently strive to become a self-employed artist and studio gallery owner.

Website

John Scala's Artist Statement  "My images focus on the beautiful scenes of outdoor Long Island. I have a lot of landscape images but also some flora and fauna. One of the things I like about photography is the fact that the camera can capture images that the naked eye can’t see like long exposure images and black and white images. I love getting up before the dawn and capturing sunrise images."    

Website   

Vesna Longton is a professional artist with a formal art education and an experimental approach in 3d glass and resin art.    

She was born in Soviet Russia in 1974. She graduated from the Moscow State Pedagogical University, Faculty of Fine Art in 1992. From 1992 through 1997 she studied fine art at various Moscow art studios and since 2006 Vesna Longton has lived in Massachusetts, USA. She is a freelance artist and a member of Attleboro art Museum and Pawtucket Art collaborative. Throughout her art career she has been a free-lance artist and worked as an art teacher, illustrator, and live event painter. Since 2019 Vesna has been working in a unique technic of 3d glass and 3d resin painting, in which she uses a multilayered image incorporating a LED lighting effects in her art project.    

Vesna has been taking part in art exhibitions in US and Russia, and her works are in private collections around the world.    

Michael Coppage has lived and worked in Cincinnati since 2007. Coppage earned a B.F.A in Sculpture from Memphis College of Art and an M.F.A in Studio Art from The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Primarily a conceptual artist, Coppage has uses a plethora of artistic media including photography, video and sculpture to address issues around subconscious bias and racial disparities. He has traveled around the world extensively and has work in a number of private collections. Coppage has recently been featured in print an online for a controversial and provocative series entitled "American +" where he addresses the appropriation of African-American culture and the simultaneous demonization of black men as well as depicts white Americans as monkeys. Coppage is the winner of the Ohio Psychiatric Physicians Foundation Enlightenment Award for his work in providing education and reducing stigma in the community. He also received a Truth and Reconciliation Grant to expand his Black Box community engagement series which addresses the stigma associated with the color black. His TEDx Talk “Everybody’s Racist” premiered on 2/27/21.       

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Tony Lipps is an artist out of Cincinnati, Ohio. He is married with two sons and resides just outside of Cincinnati. He attended Kent State University from 2001-2005 before joining the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office in June of 2005. From 2005-2019, Tony served as a Deputy in the jail and as a Patrol officer before making the decision to leave law enforcement to pursue a career as a full time artist.     

Tony works in oil paints out of his studio in Essex Studios, located in Downtown Cincinnati. Tony has spent the past two years learning new techniques for paint application and still developing his subject matter. He has focused mostly on cityscapes and urbanscapes in varying techniques as a source of experimentation with colors and textures.     

Website and Social Media  

A native of California with a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, T Barny has been creating sculpture professionally for over 4 decades. During his career, he has produced more than 1000 sculptures that range in size from one-foot-tall tabletop pieces to twelve-foot-tall corporate and public installations that can weigh upwards of 9 Tons in steel, bronze, wood, and water, though his curvilinear, Mobius-inspired stone sculptures are his most celebrated.     

His works have been shown in over 100 galleries in 18 countries worldwide and he has participated in more than 400 group and individual exhibitions. His sculptures are collected in 23 countries He has worked as an artist-in-residence in such locations as Greece and Italy, as well as several locations throughout the U.S., though the majority of his work is done from his home studio, the T Barny Gallery & Sculpture Gardens, in Healdsburg, California.    

It is his great love of stone as a medium that allows him to create serene and evocative works that continue to grow in their market presence and are increasingly sought after in both private and public arenas.    

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Will is an experienced landscape/horticultural photographer who started shooting B&W/color film in the 70's. He purchased his first camera, Olympus OM1, after winning first-place in the University of Illinois writing contest for poetry. He has been mainly photographing Colorado, Michigan and the West for about the last 30 years.     

Gardening has always been his passion, especially at 8400 feet in the foothills of Colorado, where he would grow colorful vegetables and flowers mainly poppies to photograph. He was considered a Horticultural Hero by Garden Design magazine for being able to successfully garden among the many heard of elk. He was also considered the purple potato mountain man before purple potatoes became popular. He would share his gardening and photography exploits as the High-Altitude Garden Writer for the local newspapers. Besides the iPhone12Pro, his current camera of choice is the Sony A7Riii full-frame, mirrorless DSLR.     

He looks for the unusual image among the commonplace, the overlooked, whether it is in a spectacular place like The Great Sand Dunes National Park in Southern Colorado or a close up of flowers in his various gardens. BTW, you can always find Will chasing the early morning and evening light.

Kevin Grass is a Florida artist known primarily for his landscapes and series of hyper-realistic figurative paintings that comment upon social issues of the day. These complex, thought-provoking images were well represented in juried and invitational exhibitions, galleries, and prestigious art publications, but sales were intermittent and unreliable. 

Xan Blood Walker was born in Seattle Washington in the heat of the summer. She learned print photography in high school, and went on to obtain two BFA's, one in printmaking and another in painting from the University of Washington. Many years later when pursuing graduate studies in counseling she obtained a Masters certificate in Art Therapy. Prior to her higher education she attended the school of hard knocks in Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, as an 80's street punk at the height of the punk rock scene. With over 20 years in recovery she finds a way to blend her varied experiences into a unique and personal style. Currently she is branching out into two new areas: documenting the living breathing urban landscape through photojournalism; and incorporating mixed media into her photography. She has already begun using graffiti marker, and hopes to add beeswax from her bee hive, as well as dip back into her printmaking background with stenciling, linoblock, and woodcutting.    

ARTWORK  

Xan has exhibited her work primarily in group shows in Seattle, San Francisco, Emeryville, Alameda, Oakland, and New York.     

HONORS AND ACTIVITIES  

Xan was awarded a Links Scholarship for her woodblock print depictions of her emotional experiences around rape. She contributed as an intern artist for the mural project on the Women's Building in San Francisco, CA., in 1994.     

PRESS  

Studio Notes wrote an article about Xan in December of 1995, and she was honored to have a photo of hers used as the cover for the book 'Representations of the Cuban and Philippine Insurrections on the Spanish Stage 1887-1898" published in 2001  by D.J. O'Connor.    

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Kate Simon is a Louisiana native, now Florida resident where she works as a technical writer during the day and an artist in the evenings.  Kate uses art as a form of healing, meditation, and exploration. Fond of many artforms, she is particularly drawn to abstract works because of the benefit it has on the brain. It is her mission to extend the positive effects she has felt through art to homes, businesses, and medical offices.     

Bryan Hobein is an artist living and working in Astoria, OR.  He is  currently creating figurative watercolors that conceptually center  around the ideas of sexuality, comfort, stillness, and how they're  contained and expressed in the body.      

Previously Bryan has worked in pen and ink and digital medium centered  around the ideas of monsters, ninjas, and pew pew action.    

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Ashira Siegel Fox was born and raised in Southern California. She  studied media and studio art at Hunter College in New York City though  she is largely self taught. Her art practice involves experimenting with  various combinations of artistic methods and mediums in an effort to  create unconventional paintings, unique variant prints and art objects  that explore color, texture, depth and dimension.     

Her work over the years has included (and often combined) sculpturally  sewn and collaged hand dyed papers, plaster castings, layered resin,  glass kiln work, ceramics, photography, and many many different ways of  painting and printing. She is currently working on a body of work that  includes a series of sewn mixed media paintings.    

Ashira draws inspiration from decades of studio experiments and her  wildly varied life experiences.    

Kyle is a self-described creative polymath, who balances her work life between fine art, illustration, and graphic design across all platforms. She’s a wildly creative, unapologetically self-expressed free spirit who lives a daily practice of gratitude. Her fine art ranges from abstract to realism and involves a wide variety of mediums. Collage, textures and circles are a focal point in her pieces.     

Her other latest projects include illustrating a children's book, client work in print, VR and motion graphics, sound design and writing.      

Kyle has a fondness for illustrating animals and botanicals, and for loose, unplanned abstract work. She is also currently writing two books - a memoir and an interactive book about gratitude. Having maintained more than 1800 days of posting her gratitude, she’s also given talks on the subject and hopes to offer both books in the very near future.     

When she is not painting or drawing, Kyle is creating products for her online store, and staying safe with her husband, son and their two dogs, Doodle and Scout in their Woodland Hills home.     

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Doug Weaver is a real cool guy! He lives in Old North with his wife  and son, where he paints magnificent paintings in his basement. Weaver  received his MFA in painting from Fontbonne University in 2013. After  graduating, he moved to Rwanda in the Peace Corps where he taught art,  music, and drama. He also found time to organize and implement women’s  empowerment trainings for young men as well as wrestling wild dogs in  a spay and neuter campaign.    

In 2015, Weaver moved back to St. Louis and became a father. That’s  when he went from being merely a cool guy to a REAL cool guy. He  teaches art as an adjunct instructor at Stevens - The Institute of  Business and Arts, as well as pursuing his own artistic excellence. In  his spare time he reviews grants for the Regional Arts Commission and  grows rare and exotic plants, because of course he does.    

His recent work focuses on the city of St. Louis and volunteerism. In  2019, Weaver had two solo shows. One series of cityscapes at The 3rd  Degree Glass Factory, and a series of 10 paintings representing  nonprofit organizations in St. Louis. These paintings were donated to  volunteers at those nonprofits, because Doug is baller AF.    

Doug Weaver makes all of his paints by hand using pigments from plants  he grows in the Old North Community Garden, oils from farms in  Missouri and Illinois, and beeswax from Clayton, MO.    

I think we can expect big things from Doug Weaver.    

Michael Snider's Artist Statement:   

" To produce artwork that facilitates meaningful and memorable feelings that empower, inspire and return childlike wonder to the viewer.  Thank you,  peace and love."

After a long career as a software engineer and serial entrepreneur, Ron is returning to his childhood fascination with photography as an interpretive documentary art form. Even in his early teens, he was fascinated with photography's ability to capture a specific moment in time. A place, A look. A feeling. As he again opens his eyes to the wonder and beauty that surrounds us, he is pleased and honored to be able to bring you a brief glimpse into that world through his eyes.     

Ron's motto is "I'll 'shoot' anything that gets in my way."  Rather than focus on any single category, he chooses to bring his eclectic vision to everything he finds around him.    

That being said, he has recently undertaken a select few more extensive projects.  The most ambitious goal is to photograph every historic railway and railway museum in California (there are 32).     

Also, he hosts a discussion of his work and shares photography tips every other Sunday on "Sunday Morning Live with Ron." It streams live on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram, and replays are available on YouTube and Facebook.

Gary Kessler is a commercial advertising photographer with over 35 years’ experience in the industry. He has traveled extensively around the world on business, allowing him to capture personal shots for his own use along the way.    

This collection of rarely seen work includes photos from trips to Brazil, China, and France. Closer to home photos are featured from New England, the Catskill Mountains, horse farms of Kentucky, and his hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio.      

By providing images for marketing and advertising campaigns, Gary has photographed exotic flowers and landscapes. A long-time supporter and volunteer for Cincinnati’s Concours d’Elegance has introduced Mr. Kessler to car owners who show their wheels at shows that benefit charitable causes such as juvenile arthritis.     

Using a combination of both black, white, and color, this artist is always looking for the unusual view. Gary’s images are made to resonate with the viewer, speaking to their feelings, moods and memories.

Jasmine is a self taught artist with a background in science. Her art explores the emergent patterns found in natural growth, form, and collective systems. With elements of archetypal myth and a dash of futurism, her work seeks to create a language that crosses all barriers of time, space, and culture.      

Outside the studio, she works as the Lead Art Facilitator at the inclusive nonprofit studio Artists First and as a professional coach working with groups and individuals to use the power of art and imagination for personal growth.     

Unus Mundus    

Latin for "one world",  Carl Jung's concept of an underlying unified reality from which everything emerges from and returns to one.     

Websites   

Jo Padgett is located in Fairborn, OH.  Known for her acrylic paintings.   Jo taught painting for 7 years and is a Charter Member for "Artist  United ".  Jo Padgett has worked in oils, watercolors and now focuses  primarily in acrylics which she has found a great love for. Jo is a life  time student in the arts and has often traveled out of state to learn  new techniques to improve her craft.  When not painting she works part  time, cares for her dog, her flower garden and spends time with her  family.      

Björn Kleemann's Bio:    

I'm a photographer currently based in the Bay Area south of San Francisco. Originally from Germany we have left our home country more than 15 years ago and since then have lived in Ireland, Argentina and now California.

I started with photography late in life, I picked up a camera a bit more than ten years ago just with the idea to improve our holiday photos. I found out quickly that there is so much more to discover with a camera and I spent a lot of time on learning many different styles of photography from landscapes, portraits to street photography and more.    

Today I am most interested in abstractions by either distorting the picture while out shooting or manipulating it in processing. I'm also a big fan of minimalism and I spend a lot of time finding good places for architecture and landscapes I can turn into minimalist experiments. My photography is not representational, I don't document the world around me - I intend to interpret it based on what I see and feel.    

Should the opportunity arise I'm also happy to get my long lens out and chase some wildlife - from bobcats and eagles in our backyard to orcas and humpbacks out on the pacific ocean.

Sej Saraiya (b. 1985) is an ethnographic and fine art photographer who  has spent the last several years documenting indigenous cultures. She  graduated with a Master’s degree in Film and Writing from the University  of Southern California in 2009, and has since traveled to the deep  interiors of Asia and the Americas, capturing portraits that tell  stories of remote cultures.    

Reflecting her own perpetual search for a deeper meaning in life, her  work can best be described as spiritual and philosophical, hoping to  create a yearning in the viewers that is tantamount to her own.    

Her photographs have been exhibited in America, Europe and India, and  hang in the homes of private collectors in Belgium, Switzerland,  Australia, India, Germany, South Africa, Canada and the United States.    

Karlana Pedersen founded, Karlana Pedersen Visual Art &  Photography in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 2015,  before relocating her business and returning with her family to  Chicago, Illinois in 2019. Since then, Karlana Pedersen Visual  Art & Photography has expanded to become a fully online  sustainable custom art services provider with three distinct  company brands:   

Linda Sacketti's Bio:   

Art is an interpretation of reality, not a copy.    

I am a self-taught artist.  My medium of preference is acrylic paint on  canvas.  I love to travel and I take lots of photo’s during my visits.   When I get back home to my studio, I use these photos to create  expressionistic paintings of the places I’ve been.  I try to capture the  feeling of these places in my art.    

I'm a self-taught artist and I have been painting all my life.  Art is  my passion and now my full time career since I retired from corporate  America on June 1st, 2018.  I love to travel and when I do, I take many, many photographs.  Then  when I return home to my studio, I take my photos and create my art.  My  media of preference is acrylic paint on canvas.  Acrylic paint gives me  more freedom than oils and I don't need to use any linseed oils or  solvents.    

When I create my art, I like to convey the feeling of the place or  object I am painting.  I like to use bright colors and I'm inspired by  everything in nature.  Art is emotional and I strive to stir the  emotions of my audience when they look at my art.  I hope they will  touch you as well.    

Rick Berk's Bio:   

 I'm a photographer based in Freeport, Maine, but I'm originally from New  Jersey and spent 21 years living on Long Island, New York. My first  love is exploring the landscape around me, across the country, and  around the world. There is nothing more satisfying than being awake to  witness the sunrise, whether it's at Quoddy Head State Park in Maine, or  from the top of Sentinel Dome in Yosemite National Park. My aim is not  to create a literal reproduction of the scene, but to use the tools at  hand including my camera and lenses, filters, and tripod, to capture my  own personal interpretation of the scene. My goal is to capture the  emotion I feel when I witness the scene.    

While I primarily focus on landscape photography, I like to dabble in  other genres as well. I love working with models to capture the human  form, portraits, or just everyday life. I will also try my hand at still  life or macro when the opportunity presents itself. Varying my subject  matter keeps me fresh, and allows me to jumpstart my creativity and  avoid creative ruts at times.    All of my images are captured in RAW format, and processed to bring out  the details, color, and contrast present in the scene.    

Christina Sodano grew up in Monmouth Beach, New Jersey, a small beach town with beautiful beaches which inspired her drawing at a young age. Her parents saw her enthusiasm to paint so they enrolled her in private art lessons at the young age of 8.     Christina majored in illustration and concentrated in advertising at Moore College of Art in Philadelphia. Following, she worked as a professional advertiser, embracing the creativity of logo design, packaging design, magazine ads, and much more. 

In 1988, in Scottsdale, Arizona she worked at Phoenix Art Group until 1992 when Christina created her own art business representing 20 artists throughout the country selling to interior designers, furniture companies, private collectors, and galleries.    Painting remains Christina’s first love and a vibrant testament to her profound talent. Her brilliant use of color expresses her passionate respect for the harmony of nature. Christina loves to exaggerate her color and design while transforming the subject on the canvas.     

christinasodano@gmail.com  

Carol Boss, born and raised in a small town in south-central Missouri, has been a St. Louis resident since 1995. Before fulfilling her dream of becoming a full-time visual artist in the fall of 2016, Carol was a successful digital illustrator and photography re-toucher, as well as manager of Big George Brock. The decision to become a full-time visual artist was made after upon meeting Sharon McConell-Dickerson along with a series of events that made her feel like she was being led to paint full time. Most of Carol’s time is spent with her family, making art and seeing music.     

She is known for several larger painting projects such as the musician wall mural at HWY 61 Roadhouse and Kitchen in Webster Groves as well as Big George Brock’s Blues Bus. Carol has always had a profound passion for painting and music, and she often combines the two. Influenced by Toulouse-Lautrec and Van Gogh’s vibrant use of color and harsh brush strokes, Carol’s painting style is typically realistic in shape with bright accents of color. Her paintings often tell a story. Her most recent works focus on hope and the blues.    When asked about her art she simply says, “I’m a painter.”    

Jason Bly resides in Wichita Falls, TX where he is Assistant Professor  of Art at Midwestern State University, teaching painting and drawing  since 2017.  He is a board member for the Texas Association of Schools  of Art and contributes to their conferences held annually in Texas.   

Previous experience includes teaching at Southern Illinois University  Edwardsville (2009-2017) and Lewis and Clark Community College  (2009-2017).  Bly also served as Director of Exhibitions at the  Edwardsville Arts Center (2013-2017).  His paintings have been shown in  solo, invitational, and juried shows.  He holds his MFA in painting from  SIUE and MA and BA degrees in painting and printmaking at Eastern  Illinois University.        

In his current work, Bly creates oil paintings that explore the  connections between technology, simulation, and the everyday experience.  Traditional paintings methods are used to mimic graphic design  sensibilities combined with realistically painted objects from life.  Through layering several thin layers of oil, a trompe l’oiel technique  renders an environment of imagery related to the multitude of visual  stimuli which we encounter everyday.    

Nothing is as rewarding as someone having an emotional connection to my  art and hanging it in their home. I've always been called to chase my dreams and follow my heart. The robots in my paintings, "Junkbots" as I  call them, are on the same journey as I am, chasing their dreams and following their hearts. It’s displayed more with them missing their  hearts.  

Ultimately the goal of my art is simple, I want to make the viewer smile  that's why I say,   “I paint smiles". I hope you enjoy my  art!         

-Randall Smith-

Howard Lawrence first studied art in 1972 and by 1974, Howard stopped creating for  decades. Two years ago Howard picked it up the old drawing pad and pencil to start anew. He does charcoal drawings of many subjects which includes dogs and cats. Howard describes his work as an exercise in finding a greater reality.    

You can find him at:  

Hello True Art Believers!!!    

In today's podcast I will be talking with Limor Dekel a fine artist with a passion for painting.