Brian Carter is an extraordinary Pacific Northwest graphic artist and illustrator. His work reveals beautifully layered images, offering vivid spectrum’s of color, urban environments with dramatic lighting styles and distinctive local landscapes. Carter went on to earn his BS degree in Graphic Design from the Art Institute of Portland. Carter owns and operates Pearl Printing, one of the nation’s most reputable fine art reproduction companies, specializing in archival digital printing on canvas and fine art papers, using archival inks.

Laura Santi paints Tibetan and Nepali traditional-style Thangka paintings. Thangkas became popular with traveling monks because the scroll paintings were easily transported. Today, they continue to serve as important teaching tools offering depictions of the life of the Buddha and other deities. We offer limited edition Giclee prints of works originally created with natural mineral pigments, gouache, and 22 carat gold. Santi, a practicing acupuncturist, received training from Swami Chetanananda. Internalize the Buddha qualities in her amazing contemporary masterworks.  Laura's prints can be purchased here on ETSY.

Jeffrey began his painting career over 30 years ago as a resident of the beautiful coastal art community of Cannon Beach, Oregon. Though primarily self taught, he did study under three Northwest Watercolorists in the early 70’s. Known for his ability to capture the beauty and moods of the places where water joins land, Jeffrey controls the difficult medium of watercolor, often in very large paintings. Recently after many years of watercolor exclusively Jeff returned to painting in oil as well. He is rarely found far from the ocean’s edge, the source of his inspiration. His deep love for the area is clearly seen in his original paintings and prints.  You can see Jeffrey's website here.

I am a Portland, Oregon oil painter. My favorite subjects are people and animals and whatever lies between. Drifting between realism and surrealism, I love recreating vintage America, re-imagining the lives and stories of the characters on my canvas or just exploring the emotional color of faces in the crowd.

While I am inspired by many eras, I’m particularly interested in exploring images of people from the the late 19th century and early and mid 20th century. My maternal grandparents instilled a love of vintage things in me at an early age. When my family visited my grandparents, we would explore the local antique shops and flea markets. My love of vintage treasure hunts and the thrill of the “find” has carried over into my artwork as now I am always on the lookout for striking images from bygone days.

In my art I explore the magic and beauty of the fleeting moments that leave indelible imprints on our lives. By recreating scenes from past lives, I open the door to new possibilities and stories that may or may not reflect the sentiment of the moment. After all, a glimpse into someone’s bygone memory can only take us so far, but curiosity about who they were or what they were doing can lead us down the magical path of our own imagination.

My attraction to faces, people and the stories behind them is a consistent theme in my art. I have grown to recognize a mild deficiency in my own ability to recognize and track faces. Perhaps my focus on facial features in my art is a way of working through this and exploring what makes each person unique. I usually also try to enhance the stories behind the faces in my paintings with details that provide clues about how I see subjects’ psyches and moods.

For me, art is as much about building community as it is about process and refining technique. I take every opportunity I can to get out and see what others are doing at art openings, local festivals, craft shows and galleries. And I try to do my part to build community, whether by hosting a small artists group, attending other groups or helping organize and promote craft shows. I also love storytelling, thrift stores and everything vintage.

Anna's prints are available on Etsy here.

www.annamagruder.com

I aspire to capture and connect with an ethereal beauty that transcends reality. Whether it is a face that dissolves into empty space or a part of the body that emerges from absolutely nowhere. By only painting what needs to be described, I hope to leave it to the viewer to fill in the blanks. Beauty, to me is subtle, simple, elegant, and pure, stripped down to reveal the bare essence of what is true. I draw much of my inspiration from Michelangelo’s Unfinished Slaves, where even in their incomplete state the forms quietly emerge out of the marble in a manner that is both mysterious and powerful.

Although color has long been believed to influence emotion throughout the history of art, it does not serve my creative approach. As a figurative painter of the human form, I use the body itself as my emotional medium. So much can be said through gesture. With this minimalist approach, my intension is to create powerful imagery through a pallet of neutral tones. Rather than using color, I utilize the contrast between light and shadow to express feeling through my work.

All things include elements of both yin and yang, as light cannot exist without darkness and darkness cannot exist without light. This dichotomy inspires me to play with the relationship between what is real and what is unimaginable. A woman’s face explodes into delicate flames of paint, while her torso stays completely intact. These seemingly contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent. Opposites can only exist in contrast to each other.

Alexandra Becker-Black

You can visit her website and purchase prints here.

Glowing light and deep shadows are central elements in my paintings. As I interpret the natural world, realism is tempered by abstraction. I'm painting a memory of the wild.

 Water is often featured in my work. Water is life. Streams contain and attract life. This fluid environment is constantly changing and always exciting. 

I paint with transparent watercolors to capture the vibrant colors of the life around me. Recently, I've been especially drawn to using birds as the subjects of my art.

You can visit Mary's website here.

William Hernandez trained at Lima's Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes (1995-2002), and moved to Portland in 2009. He creates both figurative and abstract paintings with his distinct vision, incorporating intense colors, warm figures and humor. The work of William Hernandez has been exhibited in galleries and cultural centers from Lima to Portland and Seattle, including Instituto Cultural Peruano Norteamericano, Centro Cultural de Espana, and several venues around Portland. In 2007 and 2008, he participated in the U.S. Embassy's Noche de Arte: the largest art exhibition in Peru, a show that generates funds for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). In 2011, his work was exhibited throughout La Luna Nueva festival, a Portland event sponsored by PGE Foundation, The Oregonian, and supported in part by a grant from the Oregon Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts. Aside from painting, Hernandez worked as a graphic designer for both public and international institutions in Lima and worked as an art teacher for El Museo de Arte de Lima. He was one of the organizers for the first Intercambio de Artistas Latinos (Latin American Artists Exchange), which aims to create a network of artists in the Northwest to share ideas, expression and art. 

Hernandez artworks are in private collections in Spain, Lima, Germany, Guatemala, Chile, France, Australia, Belgium and the United States. Currently, He is teaching art classes at VOZ Workers’ Right Education Project.

William's website can be viewed here.

Ariana Richards possessed a love of traditional art at an early age.  An internationally noted actress, known especially for her role as “Lex” in “Jurassic Park,” she went on to Skidmore College to earn a B.S. Degree in Fine Art and Drama, with distinction.  She continued with instruction at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California and has been mentored by some of the finest names in Contemporary Impressionist art.

Art has long been a tradition in Ariana Richards’ family.  Her own genealogy can be traced back to the early Italian Renaissance with Carlo Crivelli, a contemporary of Botticelli.  Ariana’s ongoing work shows the classical influence of the Old Masters, along with the dynamics of Impressionist artists, most notably Monet and Degas.  She draws inspiration from historic painters such as John Singer Sargent, Anders Zorn, Mary Cassatt, and Joaquin Sorolla.

Scores of media interviewers asked, “What can she possibly do as a follow up to her film career?”  She hasn’t disappointed them.  Already she has become one of the most celebrated young artists of our time, known among her collectors for her evocative figures and landscapes.

She is an award-winning artist, and has been featured in many art magazines.

Ariana is a member of the Portrait Society of America, the Oil Painters of America and is a Member of the California Art Club est. 1909.

Richard Hallman’s passion for the water provides him a very unique perspective as a sport photographer:  he actually does all the sports that he photographs.  A long-time resident of Oregon’s Hood River, a mecca for water sports, Richard is an award winning photographer and an adventure seeking athlete.

Jill McVarish grew up in the Sacramento Valley, happily ensconced in an artistic family, one of eleven children. Her father, also a painter, encouraged her inventive nature and fostered the creative talents which she exhibited at an early age. Growing up in the agricultural region of California in the ‘70s left an aesthetic mark on the artist. She recalls fond memories of her mother straining amber-colored honey from bees’ wax, “under sunset that seemed stained yellow from the mustard pollen in the air from the surrounding fields.” 

  Jill recieved a BFA in 1993 from the San Francisco Art Institute, where she was further introduced to the world of art, not only through the curriculum, but from the exchange of energies and ideas with her fellow students. She continued her academic pursuits abroad at the prestigious Garett Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, which was founded by the architect and furniture designer internationally renowned as one of the forefathers of modernism. While in Holland, she studied the Dutch masters and often visited the Rijksmuseum to experience the Vermeers, Holbeins and, most remarkably, the Rembrandts first-hand. McVarish often now reflects on that time as the most definitive in the formation of her style, blending her passion for contemporary and more obsurdist art with a reverence for more traditional styles of painting and visual composition.. 

Jill's website can be viewed here.

Studying the Classics and starting out as a realist painter, I became delighted and intrigued by the art of the 16th and 17th century Dutch masters and their mastery of creating the illusion of back-lighting in their paintings.  I  was also captivated by Rembrandt's depiction of direct light on the subject in his paintings. This appreciation lead me to seek out great painters and teachers like David Leffel.

At one point, after years of traditional oil painting, I felt the need to no longer be constrained by style or content and began experimenting. My personal life and spiritual life were expanding with revelation, and my art demanded that I include these experiences. Upon seeing the works of Robert Venosa, I realized I wasn’t alone in this expanded view.  Studying and painting with him, I realized styles “I had self-discovered” were similar in many ways to styles he had mastered.Integrating Venosas methods and techniques with my own experimentation led to a doorway that is still opening to my artistic discovery.

Having moved through the stages of painting from life "that which is seen by the eye", to painting from concept "that which is seen by the mind", I now paint in an almost “automatic” painting style, trying to leave my mind completely out of the process.  The feeling is as if I am observing myself and my technical skills being used to present something being gifted me from a higher source, resulting in paintings that could not have been conceived by the mind and which leave me, upon observing, amazed and in wonderment. This evokes deep emotions as I feel humility and gratitude, and know that I am blessed to be a part of this process. 

Noel's website can be viewed here.

Danish-born Portland, Oregon artist, painter, and craftsperson Victoria Ann Worral creates happy colorful paintings and art for your home in a modern, contemporary style using a variety of media including pastel, acrylic, watercolor, and mixed media.

Victoria Worral's paintings include originals, copies on canvas or paper, and greeting cards in small and large sizes.

Victoria's website can be viewed here.