A native Texan, Peggy Kingsbury has lived in the Houston area since age ten. She has painted professionally, showing in galleries, since 1990. Upon leaving her full-time job in 1999, Kingsbury increased her travel and plein air work. Her subjects include urban streets, landscapes, still life and interiors. She paints in oil on linen canvas.

Kingsbury readily admits to a great love of travel with other artists. She is a member of Alla Prima International (API), Outdoor Painters Society (OPS), and Oil Painters of America (OPA). In addition to an AA degree in fine art, Kingsbury has taken workshops with Ann Templeton, Gay Faulkenberry, Scott Burdick, Quang Ho, and other masterful teachers.

A participant in a variety of group shows, her award-winning work has been included in various magazine articles and in 100 Ways to paint Favorite Subjects, Volume 1, published by International Artist.

http://www.kingsburyart.com

Karen E. Lewis has canoed, hiked, investigated caves, climbed mountains, any excuse to be out moving in the natural world.  For years, she painted with words, never even thought of picking up a paintbrush, until one day in a workshop, she saw how the beautiful pigments of watercolors blend and flow across a paper. She was hooked.  Now, in all her wanderings, she is on the lookout for some image that can somehow bring the scene alive in a painting.

Her oil landscape paintings begin with trips to favorite places.  She spends many happy hours immersed in the sights and sounds of the outdoors, capturing her impressions of light and color.  The pleasures are many: warm notes within the cool shadows of firs, dancing light in the water, cool breezes on a hot day, even occasional visits from wildlife.

In the studio, these on-location paintings expand into larger works. Her style is characterized by enriched colors, minimally blended, and brushwork evocative of the movement of air and water.

http://www.karenlewisstudio.com

After an MFA in painting from the University of Georgia, Thaw spent 3 decades painting on Martha's Vineyard, MA. Mostly he painted plein air watercolors. In the mid 1990’s he switched to oils on canvas. Staying true to his plein air roots he began creating with oil sticks. Quickly moving on to an impressionist, pointillist style with palette knife, he now paints from life with brush and a limited palette in a direct manner.

In 2005 he moved to Texas where he has been exploring his newly adopted state through his paintings. For the last year he has joined the painting-a-day movement, creating a web site, email notification, and eBay link. Landscapes and flowers are favorite subjects, and his repertoire has widened to include still life and portraiture.

On Martha’s Vineyard he is represented by The Christina Gallery in Edgartown, MA.
In Texas he is represented by Sugar Moon Gallery in Hico, TX.

http://www.thawmalinart.com

http://www.dougmartinstudio.com

http://www.richardmcdaniel.com

http://www.kathrynamcmahon.com

Mike Menius lives in the wine country of Northern California.  He is a plein air painter of the entire California coastal area. As a member of the "Monday Morning Painters" group, he goes outdoors to paint in oils, at a number of venues; ocean side vistas, vineyard settings, the lagoon of Santa Rosa, etc. He also paints interiors, which use the same approach: to capture the atmosphere and mood of the setting.
 Art training has included the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, DC the Torpedo Factory School in Alexandria, VA; the Sebastopol Center for the Arts, in Sebastopol, CA

MEMBERSHIPS:

Laguna Plein Air Painters Association
Marin Society of Artists
Southern California Plein Air Painters Association
Sonoma Plein Air Foundation

http://www.mikemenius.com

Joan Metcalf’s creative passion is inspired by the rich and lush bounty of nature that surrounds her in her native Pacific Northwest.  Whether painting in oils, acrylics, watercolor on paper, or her current medium – watercolor on canvas, she has spent her 47 years as professional painter capturing nature at its most colorful and untamed.

Intrigued by nature’s patterns, she paints them in an impressionistic style with graphic elements, weaving a tapestry of vivid colors throughout the painting.  Her studio sits in a forest setting of vine maples and fir trees and she adds to these views by frequent photographic trips to mountain forests, rivers, and the Pacific Ocean.  From these photographs she creates her own imaginative forests, gardens and seascapes in large-scale compositions.

She received her B.A. in painting from the University of Washington and has exhibited extensively for many years.  Her paintings are in numerous public and private collections.

http://www.joanmetcalf.com

Landscapes are my primary subject and painting with mind-eye magic is the goal.  Our mind and eyes selectively ignore portions of what we see, isolating what catches our interest from the rest of what is in view.  Interesting adjacent scenes remain 'in sight' in memory as we turn to survey a wide panoramic view. And yet, when the scene is  reduced to a photograph, we can't seem to use this mind-eye magic. The mountains often lose their grandeur, power lines intrude, and wide expanses of uninteresting foreground or sky now stand out.  My objective is to build this mind-eye magic into my paintings; to capture some of what I am fooled into thinking I see, rather than the absolutes that come from a camera, and to do this while maintaining a sense of place.

http://www.jmossmanart.com

As a young man I loved backpacking throughout the American Rockies and West Coast; the beauty of the land and its creatures spellbound me. It actually intimidated me as an artist; I shied away from painting the landscape for many years and concentrated on the human form. A student asked why I didn’t paint landscapes and I told her that I was intimidated by the beauty and felt I could not do justice to a landscape; she laughed looking at my figurative and portrait work and could not believe that I was scared to do landscapes. Since that awareness I have loved painting the landscape, and now try my very best to get at least one plein air piece done each week. I have become commonplace to my neighbors here in the Texas Hill Country as they see me out in the local fields painting .

http://www.NapperFineArt.com

“Living on the high plains, and having the land and sky so much an influence on your daily life affects the way you perceive things.  When I paint, more often than not landscape appears.  Although I have an unquenchable fascination with land, sky, water, and light, I am constantly drawn also into traditions, and family, or music, or possibly wildlife.  I see the American landscape as more than just geography.”   

Always looking for visual metaphors, Ron seems to find beauty in the juxtaposition of objects and ideas: the value of hard work and fine craftsmanship; the virtue and strength of character that comes with age; the freedom and energy of youth; the awesome regenerating power of faith; the magnificent beauty and diversity of creation; even the images linked to past memories. His works evoke reflection, inquiry, inspiration, and appreciation for what is truly beautiful in our world.   

http://rnordyke.com