Throughout his career, Charles Basham has become more and more attuned to the subtle changes in weather and atmosphere. In his pastels and oil paintings, the energy and impact of light is realized in harmonized color whose saturation and temperature have been pushed and raised beyond previous limits. In doing so, he has captured dramatic and compelling moments of morning and evening light over the farmlands of the Midwest and the marshes and beaches of the low country in South Carolina.

Charles Basham received his B.F.A. and M.F.A. from Kent State University in his native state of Ohio, where he still resides on the family farm where he grew up. He has been making art for thirty years and as a result has enjoyed much acclaim for his visually stimulating and emotionally charged landscapes.

Frank V. Dudley (American 1868-1957) was born in Delavan, Wisconsin, the eldest of three brothers. Both parents were deaf, but the three children were fully hearing. In Delavan, young Frank was a childhood friend to future Brown County, Indiana, artist Adolph Robert Shulz (American 1869-1963). After high school, Dudley began working as a commercial painter for his father’s business. Frank had always showed artistic talent however, and his father encouraged him to study fine art. The next few years saw Frank traveling back and forth from Delavan to Chicago, alternating between business entrepreneurship and taking art instruction. Eventually, Frank and his brother Clarence established a commercial photography studio in Chicago. Frank also continued his fine art ambitions, and first had paintings accepted into exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1902, beginning his career as a professional fine artist. He also began exhibiting with the Society of Western Artists in 1903. After his wife Mahala’s death of tuberculosis in 1904, Dudley became more active in the Chicago art world, including exhibiting with the Palette and Chisel Club. Dudley married his second wife, Maida, in 1913. Dudley and his family were active with the Dunes Pageant of 1917, an event attended by 40,000 people that was centered on preserving the Indiana Dunes on the southern edge of Lake Michigan. Dudley created a seminal painting of the event, and he subsequently began featuring the area almost exclusively in his work. Dudley became nationally known for his Indiana Dunes subjects, and the number of dunes paintings he eventually exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Society of Western Artists, and the Hoosier Salon totaled well over 800. Frank Dudley won the prestigious Logan Medal at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1921, and he also won eight major prizes at the Hoosier Salon between 1927 and 1941. Between his artistic focus on the dunes, and his tireless environmental activism, Dudley became inextricably linked to the area. He was christened “The Seer of the Dunes.”

Sources: Judith Vale Newton and Carol Weiss, “A Grand Tradition: The Art and Artists of the Hoosier Salon, 1925–1990,” Hoosier Salon Patrons Association, Indianapolis, Indiana, 1993; Rachel Berenson Perry, “Frank V. Dudley: Artist and Activist of the Indiana Dunes,” in the magazine “Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History,” Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis, Indiana, Summer, 2004, pp.14–23; James R. Dabbert and others, “The Indiana Dunes Revealed: The Art of Frank V. Dudley,” Brauer Museum of Art, Valparaiso University, Valparaiso, Indiana, and University of Illinois Press, Urban and Chicago, 2006.

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.