Artist Information (Limited)

On this site you will see the works of many talented artists. We don't have professional information and background on on all of them, but we would like to share with you the information we do have. If there is an artist that you would like to know more about, or if you would like to see their art on our site, contact us and we'll see what we can do.

Cedric Smith

Cedric Smith is an artist whose images suggest a child-like playfulness. "I've always painted for the fun of it," he says. "I try to paint like a kid, no rules, and no boundaries." Smith, a self-taught artist, was born in Philadelphia in 1970. He never thought he could make a career of his work until he met artist William Tolliver, who invited him to visit his studio. "I was blown away," says Smith, "he had his own gallery and was self-taught." It gave Smith the motivation he needed. Unfocused at first, Smith found inspiration in the lyrics of a song that proclaimed, "Most of our heroes don't appear on no stamps." Not wanting to paint people, he began placing photographic images in the context of his paintings. Smith sees this as "a way to make some ordinary person look famous." In his richly textured paintings, children and adults peer from colorful rural landscapes or from the faces of antique advertisements. He uses the black and white photographs in his paintings as a way to merge past and present, normal and fabulous. Cedric Smith has been exhibiting his work both in groups and solo exhibitions since 1997. His paintings are collected at The Tubman Museum in Macon, GA, and in The Francis Walker Museum in Thomaston, GA. The artist currently resides in Atlanta.

Ingrid Russell

Born in California, Ingrid Russell has made her artistic education a lifelong pursuit. Her college art professors taught her not just drawing technique but life lessons as well, such as the value of diversity and the meaning of beauty. She brings this perspective to her art, finding it a focused and meditative activity. Her themes tend to be universal, including the power and energy of nature. Some of these works reflect vistas of sky and water with vivid color and luminous light. Russell often embellishes her paintings with borders and panels that have the flavor of Renaissance architecture or Moorish patterns.

Jacob Lawrence

Jacob Lawrence was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey. At thirteen, he moved to Harlem in New York City, where he participated in a number of community art programs and obtained a two-year scholarship to the American Artists School. By his late teens, Lawrence was already producing art with the political and cultural themes that would resonate throughout his career: his earliest surviving works depict Harlem residents struggling with poverty, inadequate health care and racism. In 1941, at the age of twenty-four, Lawrence completed a series of sixty paintings called the Migration of the Negro. Depicting the migration of millions of African-Americans from the rural South to Northern cities, this remarkable series brought him to the attention of the art world and launched his career. Soon Lawrence was exhibiting frequently in museums and galleries, the first African-American to receive sustained recognition from the American cultural mainstream. Lawrence was a tenured professor at the University of Washington in Seattle from 1971 until his retirement in 1986. His work is included in almost 200 museum collections and has been the subject of four major retrospectives. Lawrence was the recipient of

James Denmark

Denmark has a natural affinity for the challenging and largely improvisational medium of collage. Using brightly hand-colored and found papers, fabric and objects, Denmark creates compositions that go beyond the superficial and transitory, and focus instead on what is eternal and universal. Born in Winter Haven, Florida, Denmark was introduced to color and form by the artists in his family: his grandmother, a wire sculptor and quilt artist; his grandfather, a bricklayer noted for his unique, custom-designed molds; and his mother, who had a strong, intuitive feeling for design and detail. While pursuing a BFA degree at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, where he studied under Dr. Samella Lewis, Denmark was exposed to the traditions and accomplishments of the African-American art movement. He earned his MFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York in 1976. At Pratt, he was greatly influenced by the Abstract Expressionists, and by African-American masters Norman Lewis, Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence and Ernest Crichlow. Denmark has had over 60 one-man exhibitions and has participated in many group shows. His works are represented in numerous private, corporate and museum collections, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Joseph Holston

Joseph Holston's distinctive abstractionist style has evolved over a fine arts career spanning thirty years. He has worked in multiple media, believing that each has its own distinctive characteristics and unique capacity to give voice to his work. He sees his career as having had two distinct phases. During the first, he says, he learned to represent, to copy from nature. During this second period, he has been delving deeply into his spiritual self, searching for his own voice. Holston is a critically acclaimed artist who has exhibited at numerous museums and institutions, including the Smithsonian Institution's Anacostia Museum in Washington, D.C., and the Fort Worth Museum of Fine Art in Texas. His work is included in the permanent collections of museums including the Rhode Island School of Design Museum in Providence, Rhode Island, and the Banneker-Douglass Museum in Annapolis, Maryland, and in the private collections of Jesse Jackson, Vernon Jordan, Cicely Tyson and Wynton Marsalis. Holston's work has been commissioned by the AFL-CIO, the National Urban Coalition and the National Medical Association, among others. He was the official artist of the Chicago Jazz Festival in 1996 and 1997.

Leslie Clark

Artist Leslie Clark travels widely and paints constantly, searching for new perspective and old wisdom. Lured by exotic cultures around the globe, she paints with the urgency of knowing they may soon be transformed by the intrusion of the modern world. Her subjects are alive and moving -- a Tuareg nomad astride his camel in the Sahara, a Bushman in a healing trance dance in the Kalahari, a Bhils tribal girl at a colorful marriage festival in India. As Clark travels, watercolors and sketches are done on site providing inspiration for the works she creates back home in her studio. She uses various media--oil, watercolor, collage, acrylic, graphite, pastel, gold leaf, stenciling--whatever she feels will best convey the spirit of her subject. The painterly realism is evident in the drips and splashes on every canvas. A fourth-generation Californian, she has always loved freedom and is driven by a sense of adventure. In her 30s, Clark returned to school and obtained a Master of Fine Arts degree from George Washington University. A twelve-month sojourn in the south of France, frequenting the cafes, beaches and hill villages of the Mediterranean, provided the inspiration for her first show -- in Monte Carlo. Since then, travel has been the inspiration for all her work. On a sailing trip near Greece someone invited her to Africa and she never completely returned. Since that first trip she has spent half of each year from one end of the continent to the other, dodging tribal wars and political unrest; looking for nomads and painting. The success of her works on display worldwide and the desire to share her passion for these intriguing cultures is the impetus for opening her own gallery in Ojai, California, where her own paintings are shown alongside traditional arts of Africa. The cultures she has visited have so enriched her life, she hopes to repay some of this gift through the Nomad Foundation, a non profit organization dedicated to the preservation of cultural and artistic traditions in Africa. Clark is not an impartial observer. She does not visit exotic cultures to document patterns of behavior or dress, but to make a human connection and interpret this in paint. "I want to experience a little of what they feel, the love of their environment and pride in their way of life. I have come to realize that, although I was initally drawn to them by our vast differences, I continue to be drawn to them because we are very much alike."

Liz Jardine

Liz Jardine was born in Topeka, Kansas. She attended college in Albany and Buffalo, New York. At an early age, Jardine toured the galleries and museums of New York City. Every Sunday she was taken to see a different collection and quickly learned to appreciate color, composition and the technique of painters from John Singer Sargent to Georges Braque. This keen observation is reflected in her figurative designs and Cubist-inspired still lifes. Traditional subjects are abstracted into geometric patterns and rich textures, conveying a sophistication and sense of style that is reminiscent of Picasso and Matisse.

Maurice Evans

The musicians in Maurice Evans' paintings dance, twist, and sway to the beat of the artist's brush. "I'm a musician and I can feel what they're doing," says Evans, who plays the guitar. "I can put that into my art." Born in Smyrna, Tennessee, Evans' art career began early. "My mom says I started doodling as soon as I could pick up a pen," he says, "she would have to follow me around and wipe off the walls." At the age of fourteen Evans landed his first professional job as a freelance artist for a commercial art firm. This led to a scholarship at the Art Institute of Atlanta, where he studied fashion illustration. The exaggerated, elongated human figure emphasized in fashion illustration became a major element of Evans' style. After stints in commercial art and medical illustration, Evans need for self-expression remained unfulfilled. Encouraged by a former classmate to explore the field of fine art, Evans asked himself "what do I have to offer as an artist that is unique?" His fusion of painting techniques, new and traditional, with his background in fashion provided an answer. Following a commission for the official 1994 Atlanta Jazz Festival Poster, Evans debuted at the National Black Arts Festival with his "Colour of Jazz" series. Since then, his paintings have been featured in many group and solo exhibitions, and collected throughout the southern U.S.

Monica Stewart

Stewart's preferred medium is pastels, as she explains, "I love the brilliance of the colors and the way you can manipulate them." Of her work, and the predominance of women in her paintings, she says, "I have a good understanding of myself as a woman, so I do tend to paint a lot of women. I have a lot of girlfriends, and we talk a lot. So in my work you'll see a lot of women interchanging, talking, doing whatever."

Rosalind McGary

Rosalind McGary is an artist who paints from a spiritual perspective. She views herself as a witness to "the deepest truth about us, that which transcends time and space-that is what I'm looking to translate through my work." A prominent thread in her paintings, figures adorned with dots of raised acrylic paint, formed as tribute to the style and beauty of South African women, but became part of her images of cloaked and wrapped figures. Continually evolving, McGary's work remains consistent in its attention to detail, and in the strength and grace of her figures. After earning a degree in History of Art at the University of California at Berkeley, McGary began her career as a professional artist. She showed her work regionally, but soon grew to international status, exhibiting across the U.S. and in London. Her work has appeared at the National Black Arts Festival in Atlanta, the Art Expo in New York, and the National Artists Salute to Black History Month. Her images have also appeared on television, in films, and on the covers of the books "We Are the Young Magicians," and "Renaissance," by Ruth Forman

Marta Wiley

Marta Wiley's art is as colorful, captivating and varied as the artist herself. Born in Mexico City, Wiley is of European and Cherokee descent. As a child, she had a wild streak that her grandmother, also an artist, helped channel into the fine arts. Fifty-foot leaps into deep canals translated well for Wiley; that is quite apparent from the kinetic qualities in her art. Time and maturity have not stilled the childhood energy and verve of this artist. Wiley's passions run as deeply and soulfully as her dignified figurative creations. Wiley's spiritual quest and intense concern for the environment have led her to several avenues of expression. As well as an artist, Wiley is a gifted singer and songwriter. Her inspirations include the mystical films of Maya Daren and the writings of Carlos Casteneda, as well as the art of Sargent, Munch, and Kollwitz.

Romare Bearden

The work of Howard Romare Bearden portrays the social issues and struggles important to African-Americans in the 20th century. His large collages, which he called "projections," were assembled from newspaper and magazine photographs laid flat on Masonite boards surrounded by scraps of paper, various oils and temperas, inks, synthetic polymer paints and brushes. He presented the migration of African-Americans from the rural American South to the urban North on a grand and epic scale in a style that was colorful and powerful. Born in North Carolina but raised in New York during the Harlem Renaissance, Bearden grew up in a household regularly visited by jazz greats such as Duke Ellington and Fats Waller. He went on to make his name in the art world, exhibiting his works with Robert Motherwell, William Baziotes and Carl Holty in the 1940's. In the 1950's he turned to songwriting, but rose to prominence in the 1960's with his inspirational collages. A graduate of New York University, he was the recipient of many honorary degrees and was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1987.

Tim Ashkar

Tim Ashkar is renowned for his portrayal of African American figurative themes. Throughout his early life he always had artistic inclinations, yet he did not pursue formal art instruction until he was eighteen. At this time he decided to study oil painting and drawing under Judith Serbaroli. Ashkar's work can be viewed in both public and private collections. He has had a number of one-man shows, and has worked on scenery for television and motion pictures.

Susan Gillette

Susan Gillette was born in Youngstown, Ohio, and grew up in New York State, where she lived until she moved to the Southwest in 1991. Gillette received a B.F.A in printmaking from SUNY at Purchase, New York, and a master's degree from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Working for seven years with accomplished woodcut artist Antonio Frasconi of South America, monoprint maker Mauricio Lansanski, lithographer Murray Zimiles and master etcher Rimer Cardillo did much to extend her vision and influence her work. Her family has been a powerful, supportive force that has nurtured her creativity. She credits much of her imagery to the influence of her parents. Her father is a sculptor and her mother is a poet. Her siblings are also accomplished artists: her brother John is a cartoonist and brother Robert is a potter. Gillette currently resides in the Southwest and enjoys extensive travel to Europe as well as sailing, mountain climbing, rappelling, biking and skiing.