"Cascade at Dawn"

Oil, 20" x 24"

$11,000

Email Saks Galleries

"Feel the Beat"

Oil, 18"x24"

$3,600

Email Saks Galleries

"Dancing in Pink"

Oil, 8"x10"

$1,500

Email Saks Galleries

C A R O L Y N A N D E R S O N,    AISM

          Carolyn Anderson, a nationally recognized artist, is an accomplished pastelist and oil painter. Born and raised in the Chicago area, Anderson attended school at Illinois State University. She joined the Vista program (Volunteers in Service to America) in the early 70's and was assigned to work on an Indian reservation in Montana, She eventually returned to Montana and now lives in Havre, a small community in north central Montana near the Canadian border.

She is a member of the Northwest Rendezvous (NWR), participates in many of the nation's largest shows, and has had her work featured in numerous publications, including Southwest Art, Art of the West, and most recently, The Big Sky Journal, Awards include the C.M. Russell Artists' Choice in 1999. She is also the recipient of several NWR Award of Excellence, most recently in 2005.

Anderson teaches numerous painting workshops across the country. She has taught for the Frye Museum in Seattle, Walt Disney Imagineering, The Scottsdale Artists School, and the Fechin Artists School. Her work is in the collection of many well-known artists, and also in the collection of the Montana Historical Society.

S C O T T    L.    C H R I S T E N S E N,    AISM

          To ponder a Scott Christensen painting—be it of the Snake River gathering autumn from a cluster of cottonwoods, the Pacific Ocean swelling and breaking against the rocky coast of California, or a breathless morning in a southern marsh— is to trade for a moment the thrum of daily life for the buoyancy, the hopefulness of nature. In these works are traces of something Wordsworth once said, about how in the outdoors we find reflected the very spirit that drives our imaginations. Like the landscape itself, there is in Scott's work a sense that the painting is forever on the cusp of movement, that the light and leaf, the bloom and backwater, exquisite as they may be in that moment, are but one bright beat in the larger rhythm of the natural world.
Given that Scott rarely picked up an artist's brush until his college years, some would say he came to the canvas late indeed. Yet in a sense, art was with him all along. One of the strongest memories of his Wyoming boyhood is visits with his grandfather, who, having been injured in a farm accident and confined to a wheelchair, gave himself over to painting. "What I remember best," Scott says, "is the smell of paint in that house." That, and the fact that some of the only times his grandfather was content was either in front of an easel or showing off his work to his grandson.

Christensen, whose paintings are now collected by people around the world, was reared in Lander, Wyoming, son of hardworking parents who passed on a strong commitment to excellence and dedication to athletic competition. In fact, Scott did not direct his focus to art until he was sidelined by a serious neck injury in college. The life as he'd known it for so long melted away like a June snow. In the year following graduation he gave up a teaching and coaching position and launched a study of the great masters of traditional art, developing through this ongoing study a solid definition of good art. Early on, for example, he was struck by how the impressionists tended to sacrifice the drawing aspect of their art in order to get just the right vibration of pigment, producing works with an uncanny degree of light and atmosphere, paintings that fairly shimmered with color.

At the same time he strove to figure out how best to incorporate those aspects of nature that would make his painting stronger, without becoming a slave to the scene by trying to put in everything, pushing beyond what a painting could bear. For guidance he turned to the works of Sir Alfred East and Edgar Payne, men who were extraordinarily inventive when it came to selecting and arranging the most important elements of a scene. "You have to make sacrifices," Scott explains. "Maybe you're standing in a place where the sky and the mountains are very dramatic; the trees have incredible color and the water is vibrant. You have to decide what you want your painting to be about, render that element most important, and then paint everything else to support it."

A L B E R T    H A N D E L L,    AISM

          Albert Handell, one of the nation’s foremost impressionist artists, lives and paints in his adopted city, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Known internationally for his works in the pastel medium, in 1987 the Pastel Society of America, N.Y.C., elected him into the Pastel Society of America’s  Hall of Fame, making him, at that time, one of three living American artists so honored. 

In 2000, the Pastel Society of the West Coast honored him by electing to give him their first-ever Lifetime Achievement Award for Pastel.

In 2007, the Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio, honored him with a retrospective exhibition of his pastels, adding one to their permanent collection.

During the warmer months one will find him painting on location from coast-to-coast with one of his two favorite mediums, pastel:

     “I love traveling around our enormous, wonderful country, which I consider more a continent than just a country.  I no longer like to travel abroad. There’s a lot of beauty and plenty to paint right here.”

During the winter months you’ll find him snuggled into his Santa Fe studio, painting larger works with his oils. This seasonal changeover keeps Handell ‘fresh’. 

P E G G I K R O L L - R O B E R T S,    AISM

          Award winning natinal artist, Peggi Kroll-Roberts, was trained at Arizona State University and the Art Center Colleg of Design in Pasadena, CA. Peggi worked as a fashion and advertising illustrator before making the transition into fine art. Using intense color and value to accentuate her subject, she moved into fine art with a bold palette, a love for small paintings and a very loose style that achieves a lot with a fe very energetic brush strokes. She prefers to suggest reality than render it. Inspired by her children she paints beach scenes and other aspects of their lives. She also breaks away from the conventiaonal still life by painting scenes of cosmetics and the occasional coffee cup or slab of butter. Peggi's work gives us a new appreciation of our own daily life.

C A L V I N    L I A N G,    AISM

          Calvin Liang began painting in high school and completted his art education at the Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts, recognized as one of China’s one most prestigious and competitive art academies. In China his skills as a fine artist were applied to the theatrical industry where he designed and created sets for operas and musical dramas for the Canton Opera Institute.

K E V I N    M A C P H E R S O N,    AISM

C H A R L E S    W A R R E N    M U N D Y,    AISM

          b. 1945, Indianapolis, Indiana

"I constantly search for the academics, emotion, expression, and at-the-moment character of a scene. Every painting should have a fine balance of these components. Toward that end, each piece develops its own unique personality." --C.W. Mundy

EDUCATION  Long Beach State University, California, Ball State University, Indiana, BFA

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS American Society of Marine Artists National Exhibition, 2008- 2009, American Society of Marine Artists New England Exhibition, 2008 -2009, Oil Painters of America Juried Annual National Exhibition, 1993-current, Chicago, Illinois, American Impressionist Society Annual National Exhibition, 2007- current, Vero Beach, Florida, Gilcrease Museum, American Art in Miniature Invitational, 2006-current, Tulsa, Oklahoma, Bennington Center For The Arts, American Artists Abroad Invitational, 2005-current, Vermont, Indiana State Museum, Hoosier Salon Juried Annual Exhibit, 1990 - current, Indianapolis, Indiana, Indiana Heritage Arts Exhibition, Brown County Art Gallery, 1990 – current, Nashville, Indiana, Colorado History Museum, Salon D' Arts Invitational, 2002-2005, Denver, Colorado, Great American Artists, 1997-2003, Cincinnati, Ohio, International Masters of Fine Art, 2001 – 2005, San Antonio, Texas, Mystic International Marine Exhibit, Mystic Maritime Gallery, 1993, Mystic, Connecticut

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS Memoirs: Charles Warren Mundy, American Impressionist, (International Artist Publishing, 2003).

Z H I W E I    T U,    AISM

          A painting prodigy, Zhiwei Tu exhibited an extraordinary artistic talent from a very early age. Unfortunately, his talents were looked upon by the Chinese villagers as only an amusing pastime. It was not until the equivalent of high school age that Zhiwei happened by one afternoon and saw at work an experienced artist whom the government in Beijing had hired to create a huge picture of Chairman Mao Tse-tung. Fascinated, Zhiwei watched for hours on end.

The next day, returning to where the artist was still at work, he boldly set up a work space next to the artist and began painting his own portrait of Mao. When both the artist and the boy were done, the village elders were shocked to discover that Zhiwei's portrait of Mao was far superior. They even selected it for public display instead of the artist's own painting.

After news of Zhiwei’s talent spread, he was offered a full scholarship to the Wengyuan Cultural Center. He later earned a Master’s degree from the prestigious Guangzhou Institute of Fine Arts and received a Master of Fine Art at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.

Zhiwei’s paintings are included in the permanent collections of many notable Chinese museums.