A Canadian native, Boxall holds a MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. After moving to Charlotte in 2018, Boxall immediately began constructing her intelligent, expressive paintings using a mix of materials: acrylic, spray paint, pastel and oil.
During Boxall’s academic years she was the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Artist Grant and the San Francisco Art Institute MFA Fellowship. Boxall’s work has been featured in exhibitions across Canada, Australia and the United States, most recently in a solo exhibition at the Mint Museum.
Born in Columbus, Ohio, into a prosperous family, Alice Schille pursued art from an early age. She began her art training at the Columbus Art School, where she advanced quickly and began teaching within a few years. In 1897, she moved to New York City to enroll in the Art Students League. For several years she studied there, as well as the New York School of Arts with the renowned painter William Merritt Chase.
In 1902, Schille made her first trip to Europe, traveling to Germany, Italy, Spain, and France. In Paris, five of her paintings were accepted for exhibition at the Paris Salon, a significant accomplishment and an indication of Schille’s upcoming success as a painter.
Schille’s style shifted during her European travels. She was influenced not only by the culture, but also the painters of her time — Vincent van Gogh, George Seurat, and Henri Matisse. She was among the earliest American artists to fully embrace European modernism and she is often credited for bringing the style back to the United States through watercolor.
During the early 1920’s through the 1940’s, Schille painted in Mexico, Guatemala, North Africa, and throughout the United States. Her travels continuously influenced her perspective, inspiring unique and varied paintings. Over the years, Schille’s technique became looser and her colors more arbitrary. However, her style did not change in a linear fashion – her paintings were consistently energetic, whimsical, and brightly colored.
E. Martin Hennings was born in Pennsgrove, New Jersey, the son of a skilled craftsman. His family moved to Chicago, where he enrolled at the Art Institute, graduating with honors after five years. He then traveled to Munich to study with leading teachers Franz von Stück and Angelo Junk and remained in Germany until the outbreak of World War I.
Hennings returned to Chicago and was soon commissioned by noted art patron, Carter Harrison, to paint at Taos. Hennings then spent two more years as a commercial illustrator in Chicago before deciding to pursue a career in fine art. Though he maintained a part-time studio in Chicago until the Depression, Hennings made Taos and its many attractions the subject of his life’s work, settling there in 1921.
By 1922 Hennings was gaining recognition and winning many prestigious awards, including the Art Institute of Chicago’s Clyde M. Carr Memorial Prize and the Martin B. Cahn Prize. The National Academy of Design awarded him the Ranger Fund Purchase Prize in 1926. A one-person show at Marshall Field & Co. in 1925 led to his meeting of and subsequent marriage to Helen Otte. After a sixteen-month honeymoon in Europe, the couple returned to Taos, where Hennings enjoyed a successful career until his death.
Hennings was an incomparable draftsman, which enabled him to create his lyrical compositions. He is most noted for his paintings of Indians placed against the incredible background of the high desert landscape. Often infused with dappled sunlight, his paintings are like tapestries; their rich colors and stylized forms create peaceful and luminous images of life in Taos.
Fremont Ellis was the youngest member of Los Cinco Pintores, the 1920s society of Santa Fe artists. He and his colleagues, Jozef Bakos, Walter Mruk, Willard Nash and Will Shuster, created an awareness of contemporary art which was essential to the foundation of the Santa Fe artist colony. Although each painter maintained an individual style, their friendships and philosophies held the group together. Ellis, committed to an impressionistic style of painting, had an ongoing love affair with the natural light and beauty of New Mexico as seen in each of his colorful landscapes.
Born in Virginia City, Montana, Ellis never pursued formal education past the first grade. His father’s traveling life as a dentist and later a showman kept the family on the move. At age 14, Ellis saw his first impressionist painting in New York. He became intrigued and enrolled in the Art Students League. Three months of formal training convinced Ellis that he could work out his own methods of painting. Attracted by the growing art colony in Santa Fe, Ellis moved here permanently in 1919 to pursue his ideas.
There is an element of sheer pleasure in all of Ellis’ work. Each painting portrays a moment, capturing the atmosphere and emotions of the time. Ellis’ commitment to his career and the admiration of his audience are evident in his awards. These include the Huntington award for best landscape in the Los Angeles Museum in 1924, the Hazel Hyde Morrison Prize and the Bronze Medal at the Oakland Museum, and a gold medal in 1975 from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City. The Nedra Matteucci Galleries held a major retrospective of Ellis’s work in 2001.
Award-winning sculptor Mardie Rees grew up in the Pacific Northwest. Born into a creative family, her childhood was spent building houses, sewing garments, drawing pictures, and visiting museums. When she was a teenager her family moved to Ecuador to facilitate community building. Rees’ immersion into Latin American culture broadened her worldview and set her on a path to become an artist.
In 2003, Rees earned her BFA from Laguna College of Art and Design. She is a regular faculty member at Gage Academy of Art in Seattle and she recently launched her own art school, Apprentice Academy. Rees has created life-size bronze sculptures for museums, hospitals, and schools, and she has won numerous accolades for her emotive sculpture. Her delight in people and their stories is evident in her expressive sculpture.
Ed Smida is a Santa Fe, New Mexico sculptor working principally with the human form in bronze. After earning degrees in engineering and economics from the Colorado School of Mines, Smida embarked on a thirty-year career in energy, telecommunications, and finance. During this time he traveled and worked in over twenty-five countries around the world. He has been a full-time professional artist since leaving the business world in 2012
Smida focuses on figurative work because of its limitless possibilities to hold and express feeling, emotion, and gesture. It is his belief that effectively composing with the human form requires an intellectual dive into the human condition. Each piece becomes a journey, offering a better understanding of himself and the world around him.
Smida is an Associate Member of the National Sculpture Society and exhibited in the 85th and 86th Annual Awards Exhibition at Brookgreen Gardens. In 2019 his sculpture was part of an exhibition at the Harwood Museum of Art and in 2020 Smida’s sculpture was included in the annual open exhibition of the Society of Portrait Sculptors in London. His work is currently held in private collections in the United States and internationally.
Mark Daily is renowned for his bold and colorful impressionistic brush work. However, what Daily considers most important is the ability of a painting to evoke a sense of place. As he puts it, “We figurative painters are so in love with life that what we see is constantly a thrill.”
Daily was born in Chicago in 1944 and from an early age was interested in art, attending summer classes at the Art Institute of Chicago when he was eleven and twelve. In 1962 he entered the American Academy of Art – also in Chicago – but found that it focused on commercial art more than on the fine art he found interesting. It was not until 1967, however, upon discovering the paintings of Nicolai Fechin that Daily’s artistic ambitions really took hold. That year he decided to drive west to Taos. Inspired by New Mexico and the Taos Society of Artists, Daily lived there for the next nine years building his career as a painter.
During this time in Taos, Daily became friends with other artists such as Ned Jacob, William Sharer and Buffalo Kaplinski. They started showing together first in Taos and then eventually in Denver. This group became known as the Denver School and shared a love for plein air painting and drawing. As Daily recalls, “we painted, partied, traveled, and showed together…it was rare to find an art group as large as ours and with our degree of interaction.” The Denver School faded out by the early 1980’s. Daily continues to reside with his family in Denver today.
Daily has an approach to the process of painting which emphasizes the overall emotional responses and physical activity necessary to create a powerful work of art. Likewise, he views his use of color in broad terms. Each color finds its place within the context of all the others on the canvas, all working to capture accurately the brilliance of natural light no matter what the subject matter.
Western painter Jill Soukup grew up near Denver, Colorado, where she still lives. Her mother, who had an affection for abandoned pets, and her father, a veterinarian, encouraged her artistic tendencies. As a young girl, Soukup loved horses and sketched obsessively. As a teen, she began a pet-portrait business, sketching animals in chalk pastel.
After graduating from Colorado State University, Soukup worked as an illustrator for about a decade, painting part-time. While taking classes with Artist Quang Ho at the Art Students League, Soukup joined other students for a group exhibition at Denver’s Abend Gallery. At her first gallery show, Soukup sold three of her four paintings; shortly after, she shifted to a successful fine art career.
Soukup’s paintings of the West — horses, bison, architectural images – have dynamic energy and uncommon compositions. “The intent of my work is to capture the balance that exists at the intersection of opposite elements, and to expose underlying similarities in things that are perceived to be fundamentally different,” says Soukup. Her original paintings have earned multiple awards, including an Oil Painters of America Award of Excellence, and the People’s Choice Award at the Coors Western Art Exhibit & Sale.
William Berra was born in York, Pennsylvania, the youngest of three children. His interest in art started in grade school and continued to thrive through high school. Rather than following the usual course of study at the public high school, Berra was fortunate enough to attend the York Academy his junior and senior years. He then attended the Maryland Institute of Fine Arts in Baltimore, where he experimented briefly with abstract expressionism and non-objective painting. He discontinued his course of study at the Institute to follow a path of his own choosing, working in a more traditional manner and en plein air. Berra prides himself on being self-taught and takes satisfaction in having cultivated his own style of painting.
Berra is greatly inspired by his surroundings and enjoys painting on location. When he paints, he begins by visualizing the composition. As the work evolves, it becomes a composite of visual stimuli, memory and experience.
The greatest influence on Berra’s approach to painting is the work of the Macchiaioli, a group of 19th century Italian painters. While the Macchiaioli held many of the same concepts as did the French impressionists, they were not as scientific in their approach to painting.
Berra’s paintings have been exhibited extensively in the United States and are represented in private and public collections around the world, including those in Taiwan, Spain, and the U.S. State Department.
The female forms that Felipe Castañeda creates out of marble, onyx, and bronze embody both the traditional and modern sensibilities of Mexico. Forms of motherhood and fertility evoking the pre-Columbian culture are coupled with an abstract, stylized interpretation of sensuality that is universal in its depiction of female beauty. Castañeda transforms his subjects’ contemplative expressions and simple gestures into noble artistic expressions.
Castañeda was born in La Paloma in the state of Michoacán, an area rich in pre-Columbian artifacts. As a young man he made his way to Mexico City in order to participate in the country’s more contemporary artistic culture. In 1958 he entered La Esmeralda Painting and Sculpture Academy of the National Institute of Fine Arts and began to develop a distinctive style in his approach to sculpture. He finished his studies in 1963 and worked hard to achieve his first major one-man show in 1970.
Castañeda has exhibited and been recognized in his native Mexico and around the world. His commissioned public sculptures are placed in a number of Mexican cities as well as in Palm Springs, California. His work can be found in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of Art History in Cuidad Juarez, Mexico, among many others. Honors, including one from UNICEF in 1980, from Israel in 1996, and from the International Academy of Modern Art in Rome in 1998 have been bestowed upon him.
Reflecting on his life experience, Castañeda still marvels at the mysteries of an artist’s creation: “I still consider it a kind of miracle that forms almost identical to human beings are born out of a rock – and in some cases, the only thing lacking for them to be alive is for them to move of their own accord and speak.”
