Susan Abbott  graduated Summa Cum Laude with a BFA and MFA in painting from the Maryland Institute, College of Art. She has worked as a professional artist since that time, exhibiting in galleries and museums around the country, and her paintings are represented in numerous corporate and individual collections. Her work has been featured in publications that include American Artist, International Artist and Watercolor Magazine. She has been a recipient of Creation Grants from the Vermont Arts Council and the Maryland Arts Council. She lives in Marshfield, VT

Mariella Bisson was born in St. Johnsbury, attended a one-room schoolhouse in East Burke, Vermont, earned her BFA at Pratt Institute and a Masters in Museum Education from Bank Street College of Education. Her work has won support from the Pollock-Krasner, Gottlieb, and Vogelstein Foundations and Robert Rauschenberg’s Change Foundation. She has painted waterfall and geological sites during 19 artist residencies. Her collage works, paintings and drawings depict rock and water in constant tension and motion. Drawing is always at the heart of her work. She is currently building a new geothermal/solar home in Woodstock, NY.

Gayle Boyajian feels that this project fits well with her interests and skills as a painter, teacher, architect and Vermont homeowner. She received her degree in Architecture from MIT and practiced for many years in Boston and New York. She now teaches Architecture at Phillips Academy, Andover MA. Her mother’s family has been in Vermont for many generations; she has spent time every year (except one) of her life in Strafford, VT, where she has witnessed profound changes in land use and population. Her paintings reflect her interest in the environment, the landscape as shaped by human uses, and her love of nature.

Colin Brant is a painter who lives in North Bennington, VT with his wife and three year old daughter. He grew up in Northern California where he studied painting at the University of California at Santa Cruz, and later attended the University of Iowa where he received an MFA in 1995. He is represented by the Adam Baumgold Gallery in New York City, and by the Beth Urdang Gallery in Boston.

David Brewster of Halifax, VT is an alla prima oil painter working outdoors year-round. His formal art education includes an MFA from University of Pennsylvania, and many artist residencies abroad. He has taught and lectured at secondary and collegiate institutions and his award-winning work has been widely exhibited. His 2007 installation for the St. Albans, Vermont DPS facility renewed his commitment to public art. He was recently commissioned by the WP Carey School of Business at Johns Hopkins University to create a permanent installation of paintings on historic Baltimore.

 Annemie Curlin a native of Austria, came to live in Vermont in the early 1970s. She studied art in Bordeaux, France and at Hunter, Vassar and Goddard Colleges and earned an MFA in Art Education and Printmaking at the Rhode Island School of Design. She taught art at the Woodside Juvenile Rehabilitation Center, Trinity College and the Union Institute. For the last six years she has devoted herself entirely to painting. Recent work includes exhibitions at the Vermont Life Insurance Gallery, Vermont State House, Burlington City Arts, Trinity College and a permanent installation at the Rutland County District Courthouse.

Tom Deininger was born in Boston, and raised in Norwell, MA. He attended Salve Regina University, graduating with Academic honors in art. Upon graduation he was selected to execute two large commissions for a local church. With the money he traveled to Europe. He spent his twenties going from place to place setting up studios, selling artwork. In 1999 he moved to Newport, RI where he found a large studio space in nearby Fall River, MA. to execute large found object works. His work is in numerous public and private collections throughout the world. He lives with his wife and three children in Bristol, RI.

Clair Dunn lives on Fletcher land that’s been in her family since 1867. This deep history with land is the source of her Vermont images which center on the disparity between very early memories of Vermont and the current state of the State. Clair’s Honors M.A. in English (Western Michigan University) and All But Dissertation in British Literature (University of Western Ontario) provide a background for her landscape work; and thirty plus years as a graphic designer and typographer have kept her active in the visual arts field. Selected images are always on display at the STAART Gallery in St. Albans, VT.

Phil Godenschwager grew up in a military family moving constantly and traveling around the world for the first quarter of his life. Art, in particular drawing, has always been the one constant that has traveled with him. He graduated from Ohio University with a degree in Graphic Design and has spent the last 35 years working in varied yet related design fields. A background in illustration, packaging, architectural drawing, sculpting and stained glass fabrication has laid an eclectic and broad creative base that informs his personal art making today. The core of his work has always been centered around social and political commentary through keen observation of the world and events around him. Phil has maintained his home and studio in the town of Randolph, in the heart of the Green Mountains since 1976.

David Guinn lives and works in Philadelphia PA. He was originally trained as an architect but decided to pursue his passion of painting. Since 1999 David has painted community-based murals in Philadelphia and around the country. His mural work has been profiled in newspapers, magazines, and on television. His studio paintings have been shown in galleries and museums in the Philadelphia region and beyond. David fell in love with Vermont in the winter of 2005 as a fellow at the Vermont Studio Center and has returned many times.

Curtis Hale is originally from Saint Johnsbury Vermont. He is fourth in a lineage of family painters that work in landscape. Hale paints with oils, working primarily from life. While celebrating the environment, and painting as ritual, his work often cites the outcome of civilization on the natural world. His paintings are broadly painted, without excessive detail, and aim to establish a mood visually. After travelling in the United States, Europe and Asia, at 30 years old, he has settled in Danville, VT.

Val Hird was born in Massachusetts in 1955 and grew up in Waterford, VT. She received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1978, and an MFA from Vermont College in Montpelier, VT in 2007. She is an Adjunct Professor of Art at Saint Michaels College. Recent work includes  exhibition in “Drawing Beyond The Plane” at the Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, FL, “Diva” in Paris, FR and executing the drawings and animation for “Maiden Voyages” a web project. She has been represented by the Nohra Haime Gallery in New York City since the early ‘90s, and has also shown there yearly in solo and group exhibitions. She has exhibited extensively in solo and group exhibitions in the US and abroad, and is also represented by the Lucky Street gallery in Key West, FL.

Charlie Hunter’s paintings are not ‘comfortable’ depictions of Vermont. Working from a studio in the rejuvenated mill town of Bellows Falls, Hunter, a Yale graduate with a degree in art and a long family history in the state, creates work that is easily accessible, yet strives to re-examine what the viewer normally takes for granted. His background in graphic design (he was a well-known album designer in the 90’s, creating over fifty package designs for artists such as Greg Brown and Dar Williams) allows him to show the beauty in a dead factory or forgotten storefront while respecting the dignity of the landscape and not descending into easy satire.

Karol Kawiaka is a third generation Vermonter, artist and architect. She studied art and architecture at Smith College, and earned her Master of Architecture degree at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design in 1994. Kawiaka has a studio in White River Junction, VT where she lives and designs buildings and everyday objects, Her installations, drawings and photographs are observations of the world around her in her native Vermont. Her work focuses on issues related to sustainability and new technology. She has work in the New Britain Museum of American Art collection and was nominated for a Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award in 2008.

David Kearns was born 1975 in Rockville Centre, NY and raised on Long Island in a family of eight children. He began drawing as early as could physically manage the task, and drew obsessively through teenage years. He began to become aware of the potential of drawing as a means to reflect on day-to-day experience in the world. After a brief detour into installation based work while a student at Yale, he returned full tilt to drawing and painting in 1998 after relocating to Castleton, VT. Ten years later, his work continues to be inspired by the people and places of this state.

Kathleen Kolb has been living in Vermont and exhibiting as a professional painter in the realist landscape tradition since her graduation from Rhode Island School of Design in 1976. Her work is represented in New York by David Findlay Galleries and in Vermont by Clarke Galleries, Furchgott Sourdiffe Gallery and the Southern Vermont Art Center. Her large watercolor “Bristol Sawmill” won the Paton Prize for watercolor in 1998 from the National Academy of Design. Her painting “Dawn Loading” was published in Freedom and Unity, A History of Vermont in 2004. Kathleen has two grown children and lives in Lincoln,VT.

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Janet McKenzie is known for her strong paintings of women. Her controversial image of Christ, “Jesus of the People”, dark and modeled by a woman, was first revealed on the “Today Show”, receiving worldwide publicity. She has been interviewed on “Profile”, “Art Express” and CNN. Solo exhibits include, The Pope John Paul II Cultural Center, Washington DC and Clinique Ste. Therese, Luxembourg City. Her art has been published in America Magazine, The New York Times and The London Times, and collections include, Loyola School, NY, Pfizer, Inc., NY, and Francis Cardinal George – Archbishop of Chicago.

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John Miller a documentary photographer, began his career working for the Shelburne Museum and has since been the project photographer for seven major exhibits funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Miller is Chair of the Johnson State College Fine Arts Department where he is an Associate Professor of Photography and Digital Media. Miller is a native of Coventry,VT and has worked with elementary school children on documentary projects in the Northeast Kingdom. He is the author of Deer Camp: Last Light in the Northeast Kingdom, Granite and Cedar and directed and edited Voices and Faces: Portrait of a Community.

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Elizabeth Torak a professional artist for 20 years, she has exhibited throughout the country and received over 40 awards. She is listed in Who’s Who in America and the Biographical Encyclopedia of American Painters, Sculptors & Engravers of the U.S.: Colonial to 2002.In 1994 she was the subject of a feature article in American Artist Magazine. Her work and techniques are profiled in the book Creative Oil Painting, Techniques from 15 Master Painters by M. Stephen Doherty. She resides in Pawlet, VT and is represented by Tilting at Windmills Gallery in Manchester, VT.

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Dana Wigdor is a painter who lives and works in Brattleboro, VT. She was born in Bryn Mawr, PA and earned her BFA from The San Francisco Art Institute in 1990, and her MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2008. She has exhibited in San Francisco, New York, Moscow, and Berlin, as well as Vermont. In 2003 The Fleming Museum in Burlington and the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center both featured her artist’s talk “The Anthropomorphic Machine” where Wigdor introduced the mystifying creatures that populate her image world spanning across twenty years of work. In 2003 she was a finalist in the National Museum of Women in the Arts “From the States” program and in 2004, Wigdor received a Vermont Arts Council Creation Grant. In 2006 Dana Wigdor’s solo exhibition “Liminal Places” was featured at the Vermont Arts Council’s Spotlight Gallery in Montpelier.

Video coming soon!