Artist Profile: John Fisher

I first met stone carver John Fisher during one of his public sculpting events, which took place over a 3-month period in 2012. I visited John weekly while he sculpted a 12-ton block of Texas limestone, transforming it into 11 life-size human figures (8 adults and 3 children), along with a dog, a cat, a mouse, a squirrel, a lizard, an owl, a fox, a chicken, a turtle and a rabbit--all done on the spot and made up entirely from his prodigious imagination.

As John and I became friends I grew ever more impressed by his generous spirit, passion for art, and joyful pursuit of excellence.

For a more in-depth look at John Fisher and his art, please see my interview with him here.

Tribute: Fred Fixler

I'm sad to report that the great Fred Fixler died yesterday. Fred was an extraordinary artist, teacher, and friend, and one of my mentors. He was the original owner of the California Art Institute, and inspired hundreds of artists in Southern California—several of whom are among the world's best. It amazes me how Fred's influence has prospered. Jeremy Lipking never knew Fred, for instance, but some of his early teachers did, and because of this I can see Fred's influence in Jeremy's work.

Fred didn't complement his students much, but if he liked one of your drawings or paintings, he would put it up on the classroom wall. In time, if he really liked it, he would transfer the work to the main hallway wall, where visitors could see examples of the school's student work. Believe me, it was a high honor to have one of your pieces placed on that wall.

One day when I arrived at a class taught by Mark Westermoe at the California Art Institute in Calabasas, Fred approached me and said that Mark was too busy to teach that day, and could I take over for him? I was nervous as hell but accepted the invitation, and did my best to give a good demonstration for the other students and teach them well. Apparently I passed the test, because from that time onward whenever Mark couldn't make it, I was called upon to substitute. Before long Mark became busy enough with his freelance work to stop teaching many of his classes, and I was asked to take them over. Soon I was teaching three classes each week—sometimes four—and I continued to do so for 15 years, even after Fred retired and sold the school to Buddy Schumann.

Let's see: an average of 7 students per class, 3 days per week, 4 semesters per year... that equals some 1,260 students. Wow! And it all started with Fred having enough confidence in my abilities to ask me to teach. It was one of the best experiences of my life and I'll always be grateful for the opportunity he gave me.

I wish to express my sympathy to Liz, Evan, and the rest of Fred's family and friends. We all miss him, and are profoundly grateful for what he gave us.

Postscript: Greg Pro has put together a wonderful website as a tribute to Fred, which can be found here. Many of his past students have left comments (including myself), and the list is growing. Check the website often as more items are being added all the time.

Artist Profile: Jennifer McChristian

Award winning artist, Jennifer McChristian, was born and raised in Montreal, Canada. From an early age, she knew she wanted to be an artist. Upon completing high school, McChristian began her art education at Dawson’s College in Montreal, Canada. In 1986, she and her family took permanent residency in California, where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Art Degree with Honors from Otis Art Institute in 1990.



McChristian was employed as a full-time animation artist and worked on projects for various animation studios including Disney and Nickelodeon. She has continued her studies under the tutelage of renowned artists Robert Blue, Karl Dempwolf, Scott Burdick and Steve Huston. Her inspirations consist of notable artists such as John Singer Sargent, Anders Zorn, Nicolai Fechin and Cecilia Beaux. McChristian primarily paints in oils and occasionally watercolors. She has an affinity for painting ‘en plein air’ and also enjoys creating studio works using her outdoor sketches as inspiration. “Plein-air painting is somewhat of a spiritual experience for me. Although challenging at times, the end result evokes within me a sense of elation, nostalgia and harmony."



Since 2000, McChristian has devoted herself to painting full-time and actively participates in art events and community building programs. She conducts an ongoing, uninstructed figure drawing workshop twice a week out of her spacious 1200 square foot studio (that she refers to as her ‘sanctuary’) located in the heart of Los Feliz Village, CA. In addition, McChristian teaches private painting lessons once a week. She also finds the time to pursue other artistic interests such as classical ballet. McChristian believes learning is a never-ending process and continues to develop and refine her artistic talent through workshops, research, travel and frequent excursions to museums and galleries.

Visit Jennifer McChristian's website

Artist Profile: Ann Gale

Ann Gale (born 1966) is an American figurative painter based in Seattle, Washington. She is known for her portrait paintings, which consist of an accumulation of small color patches expressing the changing light and the shifting position of her models over time. Some of her main influences include Lucian Freud, Alberto Giacometti, and Antonio Garcia López.

Gale works from live models and her process is lengthy. Once she begins to paint, she works for three-hour sessions, and takes from four months to two years to complete a painting. Her pieces possess a strong psychological component due to the amount of time she spends with her models.



Gale received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1988 and her MFA from Yale University in 1991. She has been the recipient of several awards including: Western States Art Federation/National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (1996), Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant (1997), Trust Grant/GAP Award (2003) and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship (2007). The artist's work has been shown in galleries and museums across the United States including solo exhibitions at the Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon (2007) and the Weatherspoon Art Museum at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (2008). Gale is a professor of painting at the University of Washington School of Art.

Artist Profile: Chelsea James

Chelsea James feels that painting is a study of our existence, spirit, and environment, derived from experiences in life. She chooses objects that evoke childhood memories, create situations of atmospheric mystery, and bring visual interest through interaction. She is intrigued by subtle shifts in value and color; yet seeks a personal interpretation of the objects rather than a replication. She finds that personality is revealed through the process of painting. Abstract remnants from her process remain visible in the final product. The hand, she believes, must obey the spirit.



Chelsea earned a Bachelor of fine arts degree in painting and drawing from the University of Utah, and attended intensive workshops in Helper, Utah during the summers of 2002-2004—including landscape, figure drawing and figure painting. Her work has been represented in prominent exhibitions and she has received numerous awards—including being featured in Salt Lake City Magazine's “Upcoming Artists” in Sept. 2006.



Visit Chelsea James' website.

Artist Profile: Monte Rogers

Award winning painter Monte Rogers is a graduate of Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles. For 30 years he supported his family as a commercial freelance illustrator of books, magazines and advertisements. Monte also taught figure drawing and picture making at the California Art Institute.

He began showing and selling his paintings at art shows and galleries and his sell-out shows allowed him to abandon his career as an illustrator and devote full time to doing paintings of his own choosing.

Regarded as a Western artist, Monte's cumulative work shows the influence of a childhood spent in Oregon's Hood River Valley and California's central coast. In subjects from rodeos to amusement parks and beaches, his paintings reflect the West Coast style infused with a "plein air" approach to light-filled images made up of full-intensity paint applied in boldly expressive, unblended strokes of color.



Monte's paintings can be found in private and corporate collections. Residing on the southern Oregon coast, he enjoys a following in Europe, Asia, and Latin America.

Monte Rogers can be contacted at:

monterogers@charter.net

Artist Profile: Felicia Forte

Felicia Forte was born in Los Angeles, California. She has lived in Florence, New Orleans, New York and San Francisco. Her influences include Sargent, Vermeer, Duveneck and Whistler. Her mode, primarily, is the portrait. She says of her work:



"When I see a portrait, I feel a connection with the subject—there is a thread that runs through time and class. And the tired old man, or the grand lady who I am allowed to stand and gaze at for as long as I'd like, are part of what we are all living today, and what others will be living some day. To be beautiful, destroyed, triumphant or simply at peace. This is what life is. When I can assist in the capturing of these moments; these truths, I feel my strongest creativity. For an instant or for a day I hold fast to that connecting thread as I paint, and thereafter each painting adds to the tapestry that is art and history."



Visit Felicia Forte's website.

Artist Profile: Max Turner

For many years I have had the privilege of calling Max Turner my friend. He is the most skilled artist I have ever known, and continues to inspire -- and awe -- his students and fellow artists alike. You may not have heard of Max, for he is a humble and unassuming fellow. But local artists know who he is. Max is the sculptor's sculptor, whose breadth and quality of work would astound you. He's the consummate draftsman, whose head and figure drawings rival those of the renaissance masters. He's the gifted painter, whose bravura style is startling and magnificent. Max is, quite simply, a master.

Growing up during the depression in the small mining town of Bingham Canyon, Utah, with no culture to speak of, somehow Max's interest in art was kindled and the creative seed was planted. It took sixty years to take root, for during the interim he was a soldier in World War II, a printer, a machinist, twice a husband, and a dedicated and conscientious foundry worker. Later he had the good fortune to meet a fine artist named Hal Reed, who encouraged him to pursue painting. Since then art has been his passion.

Over the years there have been many artists whom Max has admired, but a few that stand out in his mind are Frank Brangwyn, Sergei Bongart, Mariano Fortuny, Abram Arkhipov, Nicolai Fechin, Antonio Mancini, and the sculptor Stanislav Szukalski. Among present day artists Max appreciates the work of Richard Schmid, Dan McCaw, Peter Liashkov, and Jeremy Lipking.

Max's taste in music varies, but he enjoys listening to the Big Bands, Ellington, Billie Holiday, Gershwin, and Ray Charles, among so many others. For entertainment he enjoys watching football and Nascar on TV, and attending the Saturday workshop at the California Art Institute in Thousand Oaks, California.

Max has published two wonderful books, both of which are available on his website: Faces, a gallery of his amazing head drawings, and Figures and Faces, a marvelous compilation of some of Max's incredible figure and head drawings, plus a generous sampling of some of his sculpture and paintings.

Both books are reasonably priced and highly recommended.

Visit Max Turner's website

Artist Profile: Sunny Apinchapong-Yang

Sunny Apinchapong-Yang was born in Bangkok, Thailand, where his Chinese parents settled after World War II. He arrived in the United States in 1970 where he received his first formal art instruction. He attended Art Center College of Design, and California State University, Los Angeles, earning both B.A and M.A degrees in Fine Arts.

In 1977, he began studying painting on scholarship at the Sergei Bongart School of Art in Los Angeles, and later worked as Mr. Bongart's assistant at the Los Angeles school and at the Summer workshops in Idaho. From 1987 to 1989 Sunny lived in Dublin, Ireland and participated in anexhibition sponsored by the Royal Academy of Arts. Sunny also had a one-man show at the Polo-one Gallery in Dublin. He has won numerous awards for his paintings in regional competitions and has held many private workshops around the country. In addition, he has taught at Brandes Art Institute in Los Angeles, California, the Businessmen's Art Institute in Los Angeles and the Fechin Institute in Taos, New Mexico.



He has held solo exhibitions in 1992, 1996 and most recently 2003 at the Moresberg Gallery in Los Angeles and in 1984, a one-man exhibition as well as, 1991 a duo exhibition at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle, Washington, and also participated with many group exhibitions, including theannual Gold Medal show with California Art Club at the Pasadena Historical Museum.Galleries that have exhibited Sunny's paintings are: The Saks Galleries, Denver; The Taos Art Gallery, Taos, NM: The Amparro Gallery, Scottsdale: Esther Wells Collections, Laguna Beach.

Sunny has been working for Walt Disney Studios since 1992, as a Background Artist in the Feature Animation Department. Most recently he has been working as an Art Director at the Disney TV Animation division. He is a resident of Glendale, California where he lives with his wife Pennee and their two children Tess and Jason.

Sunny Apinchapong-Yang is a Signature Member of the California Art Club and a member of its Advisory Board. He is also amember of theOil Painters of America.



Visit Sunny Apinchapong's website.

Artist Profiles: Leopold & Rudolph Blaschka

During the late 19th century, the Dresden studio of LEOPOLD BLASCHKA (1822-1895) and his son RUDOLF (1857-1929) produced beautifully detailed glass models of exotic plants and bizarre sea creatures for natural history museums and aquaria all over the world.

For over a century, thousands of people have peered into the cherrywood cabinets in the Botanical Museum at Harvard University to see hundreds of astonishingly life-like glass replicas of exotic flowers. Each flower was made thousands of miles away from Harvard in the German city of Dresden by the artisanal glassmaker Leopold Blaschka and his son Rudolf.

The Blaschkas not only supplied Harvard’s Botanical Museum with some 4,400 replica flowers, but over a period of 50 years they created thousands more remarkably realistic glass flowers and sea creatures for natural history museums as far afield as the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff and India.

At a time when the public was entranced by the bizarre plants unearthed by explorers and by the splendidly surreal creatures discovered beneath the sea (since the invention of the submarine and deep sea diving kit in the mid-1800s) the Blaschkas offered a glimpse into those exotic worlds.

More Information about the Blaschkas

More samples of the Blaschka's work

Artist Profile: Philip Craig

Philip Lorne Craig was born in Ottawa in 1951 and started his career after completing 6 years of studies in life drawing, painting and graphic design. While serving as art director at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Newfoundland, Philip continued to paint part-time. After a number of exceptionally successful one-man shows he left the CBC to pursue his talents as a painter full-time.



Philip is currently working exclusively in oils. His work is represented by Canada's pre-eminent dealer in Canadian art, David Loch of the Loch Gallery in Toronto. He is also represented by the Diana Paul Gallery in Calgary, the Whistler Village Art Gallery in Whistler and Emma Butler Gallery in St. John's. A wide selection of Philip's images is available in poster form through Canadian Art Prints of Vancouver. His work is included in important collections nationally and internationally, including the collection of Diana, the late Princess of Wales.



Philip spends part of each year touring through the wine regions of Europe, the U.S. and Canada, where the combined experiences of landscape, architecture, food and wine provide the main inspiration for his paintings. Today, Philip resides in Ottawa with his wife Diane, continuing his life as a principal Canadian painter that has spanned more than 30 years.



Visit Philip Craig's website.

Artist Profile: John Holub

Born on Long Island, New York, John Holub was always interested in art. Even as a child, he spent much of his time painting and drawing. Years later, after a tour in the United States Air Force and a move to Maine, he finally decided to pursue his childhood fascination. He began with pen-and-ink renderings and later on developed his skill as a water color painter. He has since gone on to gouache and oil.

Self taught for the most part, John took a number of workshops when he first started painting in watercolor. Now he works mostly in oil. At first he attended outdoor art shows, displaying his pen-and-ink renderings and watercolor paintings. For a short time he was a sketch artist, drawing quick portraits at various shows. To promote the pen-and-ink illustrated a book and wrote and outdoor column. At one point, he even co-owned an art gallery.



John's paintings are distinguished by their varied brush strokes and rich color. They appeal to those who enjoy the tradition of open-air painting. To John, the essence of the painting begins on the scene. "I will use either oil, watercolor, gouache, or pencil, as long as I record what excited me about the scene," he says. "I like to focus on surprises, the unexpected, and object of beauty that has been overlooked. Sometimes it's commonplace, sometimes the unusual." John paints what excites him. When a scene inspires him, his painting is more likely to communicate that excitement to the viewer.

John Holub travels to a number of different places throughout the year to paint on location. While traveling, he also gathers information to be developed further at this studio in Winthrop, Maine, an area of lakes, streams, and a rolling farmland in the central part of the state. Painting locations vary. Recently, John has painted in the Caribbean, followed by a sojourn in Tuscany, a paint-out in Wisconsin, and a stay on Monhegan Island off the Maine coast. Future trips include a return to the British Virgin Islands and another trip to Europe to paint in Italy. Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Russia are strong possibilities for the distant future.

See more John Holub paintings.

Artist Profile: John Berkey

While the name John Berkey may not be as well known as Norman Rockwell, Berkey is arguably as famous. His spaceship illustrations helped influence Star Wars, as he was commissioned by director George Lucas to do pre-production designs for the first movie in the series.

Spaceships were often depicted as long rocket-powered tubes in Buck Rogers comics and movies, but Berkey envisioned them as large floating barges. That vision, and its influence on science fiction, is probably what Berkey will be best remembered for, according to Wilcock.

Berkey has many other credits to his name, however, including landscapes, streetscapes, nudes, illustrations for magazines such as Reader's Digest and TV Guide, postage stamps and portraits. Perhaps his most famous portrait may be one that lost a popularity contest.

Berkey was commissioned to paint one of two images the United States Postal Service considered in honoring Elvis Presley with a 29-cent stamp. In April 1992 the Postal Service let customers vote on which image of Elvis they preferred to see on a postage stamp: the young crooner or the older, jumpsuit-wearing lounge singer. Berkey was commissioned to paint the older version of Elvis, but the voting public preferred the younger version by a margin of about 3-to-1. The younger version of Elvis, singing into a microphone in front of a pink background, made its debut in January 1993.

In 2004, John Berkey was named to the 104-year-old Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame, which includes Norman Rockwell, N.C. Wyeth, Frederick Remington and John James Audubon. ArtOrg wishes to thank John Berkey and his family for the wonderful opportunity of holding these gallery shows and representing this art to the public.



See more paintings by John Berkey.

Artist Profile: Sergei Bongart

20th Century Russian painter Sergei Bongart (1918-1985) was born in Kiev in the Ukraine. He studied art in Kiev, Prague, Vienna and Munich, before emigrating to the United States in 1948. While living in California during the 1960s and 70s, he taught a number of aspiring young painters who later became well-known, nationally collected American artists—among them, Susan Greaves and James Dudley Slay. Bongart lived, painted and taught in Idaho and then in California, where he established the Sergei Bongart School of Art and administered it for many years.

Bongart is admired for his richly colored and emotionally expressive landscapes, still lifes and portraits. He was best known as a colorist, working in exaggerated color, using dynamic but carefully controlled color relationships and extolling the virtues of approaching painting as “color first, subject last." His work is featured in prominent museums, and has received many awards, including a 1982 Gold Medal from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame for his oil painting entitled "Spring Evening."

The only book written to date about Bongart is entitled simply, Sergei Bongart. The book was written by Mary Balcomb and was designed by your host, Norman Nason.

Artist Profile: Clyde Aspevig

Clyde Aspevig's personal and artistic horizons have unfolded expansively since his childhood on a Montana farm near the Canadian border. That period of geographical and cultural isolation was in retrospect a blessing for the artist he recalls. "Because I grew up in a vacuum in Montana, I wasn't taught the cliches."

He sees such naivete as allowing him to be more open to everything around him, which is especially evident in his latest works. His peripatetic field easel now ranges across the wild mountains and prairies of Montana, Death Valley, Adirondacks, rocky North Atlantic coast, Scandinavian fjords and the well-tended hillside estates of Tuscany.

Growing up, he witnessed the alternatingly painful and joyful cycles of agricultural life. He was unusually fortunate to be encouraged by his family in the pursuits of art and appreciation of music. Clyde learned early on to work hard and persevere against obstacles natural and manmade. Rather than scoffing at or demeaning Clyde's interests, Clyde's father, the practical but open-minded farmer, bought his twelve-year-old son's first painting.

He considers his paintings as old friends and visual souvenirs of places experienced in his life. The viewer, too, shares in Clyde's magical evocations of the landscapes that touched him.

While his early efforts attracted awards and critical praise from the regional or "Western" sector of the art community, Clyde's work has since emerged to be highly sought after by world class collectors. In a culture notorious for nourishing illustration of stereotypical, iconic subject matter, Clyde fearlessly departed whenever he felt the call, and resisted early attempts by Western art dealers to label him and restrict him to the saleable panoramic scenics.

To Clyde Aspevig, painting expresses human emotion better than any other medium. The divine nature of light reveals to the receptive eye the timeless interaction of land forms and sky, water, flora, soil and rock. If he has any "mission" beyond the canvas in his creative endeavors, it is simply a wish to call attention to the timeless, intrinsic worth of our natural environment. The image resolves from a deliberative yet intuitive process of the artist, seeing. Nature, undistorted by the filters of acculturation.

Visit Clyde's website.

Artist Profile: Jeffrey Jones

Jeffrey Catherine Jones (born January 10, 1944 in Atlanta, GA) was a very popular science fiction and fantasy illustrator during the 1960's and early '70s. Among the books he did covers for were the Ace paperback editions of Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series and Andre Norton's Postmarked the Stars. At the time he was competing with Roy G. Krenkel who had a tight almost J. Allen St. John-ish style and Frank Frazetta. There were strong similarities and differences between Frazetta and Jones. Both tended to stage their scenes in stylized spaces, both showed a strong color sense which made both artists' work memorable. Frazetta's men were burlier, his women more buxom than Jones's. They are both very excellent draftsmen.
For a period during the early 1970's he also contributed illustrations to Ted White's Fantastic.



In the early 1970's when National Lampoon began publication, he had a strip in it for a while called Idyl. Despite the credibility this gave him with comic strip fans, and the fact that in the late seventies and early eighties, he shared a studio with Bernie Wrightson, Barry Windsor-Smith, Michael Kaluta and other cartoonists his popularity began to fade as his work evolved; his figures became less ethereal and his colors and textures more intense. Cartoonists Walter Simonson and J. D. King said at the time this was because of his growing interest in Expressionists.

As noted on Sequential Tart, in the late 1990s, Jones confronted some personal problems and, after considerable medical tests and consultations, had a sex change operation. In 2001, she experienced a nervous breakdown, and lost her home and workspace. Since 2004, she has her own apartment, and is again producing work.

Visit Jeffrey's website.

Artist Profile: Matt Smith

Matthew Read Smith was born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1960, and at the age of three moved with his family to Scottsdale, Arizona. Later, they moved to Europe where they lived two years in France and one in Switzerland. In subsequent years, Matt painted in Germany, Austria, and Italy. He has lived most of his life in Arizona, where he developed a deep attachment to and respect for the Sonoran Desert.

Matt graduated from Arizona State University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting. Somewhat disappointed with the school’s abstract-oriented art program, he spent significant personal time studying the traditional styles of such landscape masters as Maynard Dixon, William Herbert Dunton, and Edgar Payne.

Most of the time, Matt can be found painting en plein air from southern Arizona to the Canadian Rockies or from the California coast to the mountains of Colorado. He comments: "I respect the tradition behind classical landscape painting, and I’m particularly inspired by pristine locations. I enjoy working in areas where one can travel for miles without seeing the influence of man. When I paint, I feel I’ve hit the mark when I’ve captured a balance between mood, look, and feel. You know you’ve succeeded when viewers sense the desert heat, or the chill of a mountain snowfall, or the mist hanging over a lake. No one can improve on nature’s landscapes."



Visit Matt's website website.

Artist Profile: Jan Op De Beeck

Jan Op De Beeck is arguably the world's greatest caricaturist.

Born in Congo in 1958, Jan moved to Belgium in 1960, where he obtained mastership in 1979 at Sint-Thomas in Brussels. He began teaching the arts in 1979 at the Coloma Institute in Mechelen. Jan married his wife Chris in 1979, and they have three children: Lieven (1980), Katrijn (1982) and Pieter (1985).

Jan Graduated in model drawing at the Royal Academy in Mechelen, made caricatures for several publications in Belgian press, and won several awards in Belgium, France, Poland, Portugal, and Iran (2002). He was elected in 2003 as 'World's Best Caricaturist' by the Professional cartoonists in Iran, and was invited in Saint-Just-Le-Martel, Saint-Estève and Samer (France) several times. He taught a masterclass with Sebastian Krueger in Seixal (Portugal) in June 2001, and was guest of honour in Ourense (Spain) and Dubai (UAE) in March 2002.

Jan has continued to lecture and travel (and draw) extensively, and he has won numerous awards for his caricatures. His latest book, Famous Corpses, was published in 2006.

Visit Jan's website.

Artist Profile: Richard Schmid

Richard Schmid was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1934. His earliest artistic influence came from his maternal grandfather, Julian Oates, an architectural sculptor. Richard’s initial studies in landscape painting, figure drawing, and anatomy began at the age of twelve and continued into classical techniques under William H. Mosby at the American Academy of Art in Chicago.

Mosby, a graduate of the Belgian Royal Academy in Brussels and the Superior Institute in Antwerp, was a technical expert on European and American realism. Studies with him involved working exclusively from life, at first using the conceptual and technical methods of the Flemish, Dutch, and Spanish masters, and eventually all of the late 19th century European and American painters. The emphasis in each period was on Alla Prima, or Direct Painting systems of the various periods. However, Richard’s individual style and the content of his work developed along personal lines.

In 2005, Richard Schmid was presented with the Gold Medal award from the Portrait Society of America during their annual portrait conference held in Washington DC. Richard is also the receipient of an honorary doctorate degree from the Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts in Old Lyme, CT.

At ceremonies hosted by the American Society of Portrait Artists in the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2000, Richard Schmid received the John Singer Sargent Medal for Lifetime Achievement. Richard Ormond, Sargent’s grandnephew, presented the award. In May 2005, Schmid received the prestigious gold-medal award from The Portrait Society of America at their annual conference held in Washington, DC.



Throughout his career, Richard Schmid has promoted art education through his books, articles, workshops, seminars, and television presentations. He travels widely in the Western Hemisphere for his subjects, and currently lives in Vermont with his wife, the painter Nancy Guzik. Richard Schmid’s work is represented by WestWind Fine Art. For more information contact: Kristen Theis, Co-owner of WestWindFineArt.

Visit Richard's website.

Artist Profile: Morgan Weistling

Morgan studied art at an early age with his father, a former art student. His parents both met at art school. His father, Howard, a POW in Germany, entertained his fellow American prisoners in Stalag 1 with a daily comic strip that he created and drew to keep morale up. Drawn on scraps of paper found on the prison grounds, he crafted a humorous world of characters that managed to bring a smile to imprisoned soldiers. In the last days of the war and feeling the Russians would be coming, his talents with painting saved his life. Using some paints supplied by the Geneva Convention, he painted a American Flag on the shoulder of his prisoner uniform so that the Russians invading Germany would identify him and not shoot him. It worked.

Weistling's father came back from the war with dreams of being an artist. With the G.I. Bill, he took classes at Woodbury Art College in Los Angeles where he met Morgan's mom. After marrying and starting a family, Morgan's father had to abandon his artistic dreams and support his new family by becoming a gardener. But, he saved all his art books....

Morgan, much younger than his brother and sister, began his artistic training as early as 19 months old. His father would sit with him on his lap at night and teach him how to draw and use his imagination. " My dad and I bonded together with drawing and spoke to each other with pictures". Weistling's father had a real talent for telling a story in comic strip form and so it began in Morgan, a natural sense of the narrative."It was here that art became a language for me."

That led to his studying the art books his father had acquired years earlier. Authors such as Andrew Loomis, Vanderpole, and Bridgeman. The most important books, though, were the volume set from the Famous Artist School.

At the age of 12, Weistling was determined to go through the entire course on his own since the school was no longer in existence. By the age of 15, his study of anatomy, drawing, and painting needed a mentor's direction.

That direction came through a retired illustrator named Fred Fixler. Fred's school, then called the Brandes Art Institute, was dedicated to one thing: learning how to draw from life. "The minute I saw his life drawings I knew this was the guy to study with, there was no doubt," says Morgan. Working part-time as a janitor for the school to pay his tuition, Weistling studied there for 3 years.

While still a student and working at an art store, one day a prominent illustrator came in for supplies. Weistling showed him his student work. The next day he found himself employed at one of the top movie poster agencies in Hollywood. "At that time, all I wanted to be was an illustrator," Weistling says, "but that was amazingly fast." For the next 14 years he illustrated for every movie studio in Hollywood as well as many other fields of illustration.

After being art-directed for years, Morgan needed to paint something for himself. He took time out to produce a painting of two children and brought it to Scottsdale Arizona on the advice of long time friend, Julio Pro .

The first gallery he walked into signed him on the spot, Trailside Galleries. Co-owner Maryvonne Leshe was quick to spot new talent. She was soon proven right. "He would send his paintings to us un-framed and before we could get them hung, they would be sold," quips Maryvonne. Soon a "draw" system for Weistling's paintings became necessary. His first one-man show had 26 paintings and all were sold opening night. Since then, Morgan has had four more one-man shows and they sold -out opening night as well.

Also interested in depicting his Christian faith, Morgan has portrayed the life of Christ in many of his paintings. Those images can be found in the best selling book, The Image of Christ, with paintings and text by Morgan.

Greenwich Workshop publishes his paintings as giclee canvases.

Morgan and his wife, JoAnn, have been married 14 years and also met in art school. JoAnn is a painter too. She paints under the name, J.Peralta, to honor her grandmother. Their 9 year old daughter, Brittany, is often a model in Weistling' paintings.

Visit Morgan's website