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