Interesting Facts about the Artist: I have been in love with the arts since childhood. Art was the only thing that made elementary school bearable. Dancing, singing, playing musical instruments, and of course drawing, painting, and modeling with clay were my interests; each held equal merit, all giving me equal happiness, with endless avenues for self-expression. Naturally I studied art in college. While there I studied classical voice. This training enabled me to perform as a soloist in youth, and university opera and oratorio. I continue to explore all of these interests. Life should be happy. It is if you find something that you love.
Penny Beesley was raised in an art loving family and her weekends were often spent at her father’s elbow in his studio. Art was a focal point during high school followed by Eastern Michigan University, attaining a BFA in ceramics and painting. Inspiration and motivation continue to come from nature’s surrounding stimulus of color, form and light, a background presence of music, man-made or natural, and the emotions brought on by them.
Color, shapes, negative space definition and the motion of abstract expressionism come from an inner spot that flows and speaks for her. She also finds a mix of media opens more opportunities for chance chemistry. The argument inside the skin has always been to be abstract and spontaneous, to follow the push-pull.
Patrice Boyes, who wields a palette knife to work acrylic paint in the abstract tradition, is a Pennsylvania native who moved to Tampa, Florida in the late 1970s, and then Gainesville, Florida in the late 1980s. She studied under numerous private teachers as a child, including her artist father, and later studied under Dennis Akin at Dickinson College in the mid-1970s. After a detour into two careers and family, she returned to the easel with a passion for abstract expressionism inspired by nature and the built environment. Her works have been displayed in solo exhibitions and group shows, and are in private collections in Florida, Washington, D.C., and New York City.
Exploring the human condition, our stories, and how we treat each other is Judith Carlin’s continual theme. Carlin wants her art to have an impact on the world: to inform, reflect, and evoke strong emotions. She strongly believe in the power of art, that a work of art can make a positive change in the world. In Carlin’s own words, “We're living in strange times and as an artist I feel the need to address that. I'm trying to paint our world with a compassionate and empathetic eye. I have many things to say and I feel like I'm writing with paint”.
When Carlin paints, it's not a physical reality she’s after but an expressive and emotional one. The people in her paintings are depicted at a heightened moment in their lives. Carlin wants people to look at the men and women in her paintings and see and relate to their fellow human beings. The hope is that someone will look at this work and come to a greater understanding and appreciation of how wonderful and diverse we all are in our shared humanity.
RM Cimini, lives and works as a fine artist in Delaware. Her radiant paintings, informed by a daily meditation practice, investigate links between sight and interior vision.
Featured in multiple group and solo exhibitions, her work was notably included in an exhibit at Belskie Museum in Closter, NJ and the Monmouth Museum. Cimini facilitates meditation groups and writes about art and spirituality and served until June 2019, as President of Studio Montclair, a non-profit visual arts organization. Cimini holds an MFA in painting and sculpture from Bennington College. Her work is held in private collections in the US and abroad and in the public collections of Atlantic Health Systems, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and and the MC Hotel.
For Rose Cofield, art has been a life-long adventure. Her passion for exploring the possibilities of form and shape has been her prime motivation throughout her journey. Challenging herself with different materials has taught Rose to bend to the inherent attributes as well as the limitations of her chosen medium. Her abstract works in mixed media include collage, acrylic paints, mixed media, canvas and found materials.
Rose’s fascination with architecture is evident in her current work. Her experience in sculpture allows her to see the content of her mixed media pieces as form and shape. Born in Brooklyn, NY, Rose credits some of her images to that urban environment.
Rose studied art at New York University and The Johnson Atelier Technical Institute of Sculpture. She has attended stone carving workshops at the Corsanini Studio in Carrara, Italy. Rose has taught sculpture workshops in schools and arts organizations through the South Carolina Arts Commission’s “Artist in Education” program. Rose has displayed her work at the Kershaw Fine Arts Center in Camden, SC, The Art League of Hilton Head Gallery, Hilton Head, SC, the St. John’s Museum of Art, Wilmington, NC, The Louise Gilbert Gallery, Statesville, NC, Florence Museum, Florence, SC, and Havens Gallery, Columbia, SC.
Catherine Conrad is an emerging modern artist based in Spartanburg, South Carolina. In 1988, she graduated with a BFA in painting from Savannah College of Art and Design, before adventuring up to Alaska with her husband. After diagnoses of autoimmune diseases, she moved back to South Carolina. Although affected by chronic illness, she started the next stage of her life as a homemaker and a mother. Having only recently resumed her art career during covid-19, she uses her art to explore the concepts of journeys, illness, nature, and faith.
As a Carolina artist and illustrator, Connected Collage is Lisa Anne Cullen's unique style of creative expression. Each watercolor painting is meticulously built by hand connecting smaller elements together to create the larger work. She graduated from Vermont Collage of Fine Arts with a Master of Fine Arts degree in writing, pairing her studies with art, illustration, and photography. Lisa Anne Cullen is a member of NAWA, MACK Artists Guild, and the Seacoast Artists Guild.
Penny Dell was born in Mexico and lived there until she was thirteen. She received her BA from Simmons College in Boston and took graduate courses in bilingual education at City College and Lehman College in New York. The artist Francisco Dos Amantes and the zoomorphic figures of Aztec friezes influenced her early work. Dell studied art at the Triveni Kala Sangam Akademi in New Delhi as well as other art centers. For many years she taught printmaking, transfer processes and cartooning at the Old Church Cultural Center in Demarest, as well as the Art Center of Northern New Jersey in New Milford. Additionally, she has presented many workshops in the metropolitan area, including the Hunterdon Museum of Art, The Printmaking Council of NJ, the Rockland Center for the Arts.
After spending 20 years in architectural photography in Connecticut, Sandy now concentrates on fine art photography. Sandy presently serves the Chairman of the Pictorial Print Division of the Photographic Society of America and was one of the founders of the Photography Club of Beaufort. She was juried into the National Association of Women Artists in 2019 and serves on their South Carolina Board of Directors. She has judged both art and photography competitions throughout the Tri-State area, as well as in New England.
Her books include Hands Across the Lowcountry and The Cats of Beaufort. Sandy’s images appear in numerous books and two of her photos have appeared covers of coffee table books.
Her work is exhibited at Beaufort Art Association. www.Dimkephoto.com
Jo Dye became involved in the creative process at an early age. Over the years she has painted in oils, acrylics, and pastels, worked in printmaking, scratchboard, pen and ink, and made her own paper. Her experimentation with art forms continued, changing as did her life. Says Jo, "My art is not stagnant, but always in transition."
A native of South Carolina, Jo and her family traveled extensively. Jo is a well-known wildlife artist. Her scratchboard wildlife work was featured in many national shows and East Coast galleries. Over the years, she worked as an artist for a large firm, started a gallery, became director of the Vienna Art League Gallery in Vienna, VA, and was president of the Reston Art Gallery in Reston, VA. While living in Hungary, she started an English-speaking docent group at the Budapest Museum of Fine Art.
Jo has recently become more interested in color and texture, and the freedom that collage represents. In this rediscovered medium, Jo's flair for design, color and attention to detail truly blossomed. Her collages are alive with bright colors, excellent composition and surprising detail.
Eckhardt's images have been juried into national exhibits across the country. They have won numerous awards and been selected for inclusion in South Carolina lowcountry arts publications. Eckhardt was juried into the National Association of Women Artists in 2020 and exhibits with NAWA’s South Carolina chapter.
1989 -2013 Ashley Hall, Charleston, Arts Chair, art teacher middle and high school, studio Art AP
1988-1989 East Cooper School, middle and high school art teacher
1980 moved from UK to Crystal Lake, Illinois
1970-1980 High School art teacher at three schools in North Wales, exhibiting artist
The University of Chester B.Ed/Art
Flintshire College of Art Dip.AD
Sold work in UK and Europe
1983-88 Represented by Charleston galleries
2015-18 Represented by Fabulon Gallery, Charleston
The desire to paint and create has been with Mary Ann since childhood. While growing up in Cleveland Heights, Ohio she discovered the joy of art by attending children’s art classes at The Cleveland Museum of Art and later, the Cleveland Institute of Art and Western Reserve University. After divorce in 1970, she raised her three children while building a career in the advertising world (J. Walter Thompson in Washington, D.C. and Bank of America in San Francisco). She was able to pick up her paint brushes after retiring from corporate world by starting a new career in 1992 as a muralist – painting for her clients in fabulous homes throughout California, Seattle, Dallas, Charleston, Hilton Head and Argentina!
Member of National Association of Women Artists
Teaching art for various Senior Living facilities
Scenic artist/designer for Center for the Arts, Beaufort, SC
Best in Show – 25th Annual Judged Show, Society of Bluffton Artists March 2019
A native South Carolinian, Fran Gardner lives in Heath Springs. She earned her BFA from Columbia College (1982) and later, her MFA from Vermont College of Norwich University (1993). She is professor emerita of art and art history at the University of South Carolina Lancaster where she taught studio courses and art history for 32 years. Gardner has gained attention in mixed media collage. She paints and draws with traditional materials, but also with the sewing machine, layering her work with rich texture, color and mark-making. In addition to creating and exhibiting her work, she writes critical essays about art, leads retreats, teaches workshops, and judges and curates exhibitions. Her work has been exhibited regionally and nationally and published in Fiberarts and Needle Arts magazines and in the books Crafting Personal Shrines, by Carol Owen, The Art of Textiles, by Mary Schoeser and Scanning the Hypnoglyph: Sleep in Modernist and Postmodern Representation, by Nathaniel Wallace.
A trip to the East African nation of Uganda in high school lead Muffy Clark Gill to an interest in the ancient art of wax and dye resist painting known as batik and later the Japanese wax process known as rozome. Her main source of inspiration is based on her memories of life and travel.
Continuing education in mixed media processes along with extensive use of photography has been the backbone of her art making. Work has been on display in many public institutions around the state of Florida including the State Capitol 22nd Floor gallery and the Office of the Florida Secretary of State. Recently she was designated a Master Silk Painter by Silk Painters International where she also serves on their Board of Directors. Muffy is currently the Vice President of Exhibitions for NAWAFL.
Karen Gottschall is a fine art digital artist with a love of nature and travel, who combines photography and digital artistry to create stunning images of all aspects of our world from all seven continents She is the founder and owner of Scenic Shutterbug, LLC, a company which creates high quality “functional art” for use in any home or business setting. Her work has been published in several books and commercial applications. In addition, her art has also been featured as the cover art for published books, note cards, commercial interiors and in numerous private collections.
In addition to NAWA, she is a member of the Professional Photographers Association of America, the Carolina Nature Photographers Association, a contributing member of Nikonians.org, and a Nikon Professional.
Sheila Grabarsky recently had featured paintings in Willliams Sonoma catalog and had seven paintings selected for the Hollywood movie American Pastoral. She was recently interviewed for “A Night In The Art Gallery” on NJDiscover cable TV and wrote a published back cover testimonial for a book of art/poetry entitled Leaves of Absence by Sally Brown Deskins, published in February 2016. Sheila is a seasoned, classically trained, national award-winning artist who has worked and exhibited across the U.S. for over 35 years in corporate, educational, commercial, and healthcare venues as well as museums and online. Her work is in numerous private and public collections and is currently represented by Beauregard Fine Art, Rumson, NJ, Boxheart Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA, Lori Austin Fine Art, Sebastopol, CA and ArtWorks Gallery, Cedar City, UT as well as online at UGallery.com, Zatista.com and CharlotteFineArt.com. She is also represented by Elizabeth Sadoff Art Agency, Integrated Art LLC, Artists Circle, MD.
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