Rick Wilson was born in 1955 in Edinburgh, Indiana and discovered very early he had an interest in art. After high school, Wilson entered the work force, working 29 years in the architectural aluminum industry and pursuing art at a hobby level. Upon retirement in 2003, Wilson finally made fine art his vocation and has honed his skills through workshops and many years of practice. He enters his works in juried competitions and has won numerous awards including “Best of Show”. His works are included in many private and corporate collections across the country.

Kirk Larsen has been passionate about drawing and painting since early childhood and he says he has never met a medium he didn’t like. His work ranges from oil painting “en plein air” to all genres of studio work, LIVE music and event paintings and all forms of sculpture. Recognized with over 165 awards for painting in oils, acrylic, watercolors, gouache, drawing, colored pencil, mixed media, pen & ink, photography and sculpture – for portraits, still life, landscapes and abstraction, Kirk is one of the premier artists painting in major Plein Air competition events. He has had over 63 solo shows and a multitude of juried art shows.

Ann is an award winning artist living in upstate New York's Adirondack Mountains. Born in Louisville, Kentucky, Ann began traveling and living throughout the United States at the age of 18. After completing a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Central Oklahoma, she and her family moved to Denver, CO where Ann began to focus on her painting and fell in love with the western landscape. Even though she lives in a beautiful part of the country, where plein air painting is a challenge almost any time of year, Ann also spends time painting on the coast of Maine and throughout the Southwest.

Ann's approach to the landscape is to simplify as much as possible in order to create the strongest paintings. "I want my viewers to know how I felt about a place when I painted it. I'm not trying to copy what I see nor am I interested in lots of detail. I want to suggest a subject with the buildup of paint and exciting brushstrokes."

George Van Hook was born and raised in Abington, Pennsylvania, a northern suburb of Philadelphia.  He began painting very early and was able to participate in the vibrant artistic culture of the region.  The family owned a farm in Bucks County, home of the Pennsylvania impressionists, and he became heavily influenced by their fine academic training coupled with a love of the prosaic landscape.  Another early local influence was the “Brandywine Tradition”, the illustrative work of Howard Pyle and the generations of Wyeths.  This was further enhanced by a close association with coastal Maine.  George has spent many summers painting in the mid-coast area of Rockland and Rockport Harbor, and on North Haven Island where his wife’s family owned property adjacent to the famous Boston artist Frank Benson.

Van Hook’s love of the European tradition also began early.  He spent two summers during high school filmmaking throughout France and England.  This allowed him to visit many of the great museums, and further increased his commitment to become a professional artist.  Following college, he left for Paris and spent nearly a year copying at the Louvre and travelling through France, Italy and Holland making numerous paintings “en plein air”.  He returned to California, where he continued painting the landscape and figure out of doors.  After marriage and the start of a family, George returned to the East Coast, eventually settling in Cambridge, NY, a beautiful nineteenth century village in the Hudson Valley.  His wife is a Mycological Consultant for Ecovative.  Their three daughters were often models for his paintings when younger, and are now grown and successfully independent.

Van Hook thinks of his paintings as primarily a visual response to the selected environment, be it landscape, figure or still life.  “I want the color to be beautiful and the drawing firm and secure”, he says.  The paintings are a marriage of external and internal forces – what emerges on the canvas should be a reflection of both the beauty of the world and the artist’s most inner response.

Kevin Mizner has been painting Maine and her people for over forty years. Painting full-time at his studio in Pittston, Maine, Mizner works from his own experience, observations, and emotion. Seeking that level of authenticity, Mizner has worked on a lobster boat to better portray the sea, hiked countless miles in the woods to observe the colors in all seasons, and sought out old barns and open fields to gain a sense of Maine's history. His technique is based on traditional oil painting practices, and utilizes photographs, sketches, and studies, both on site and in the studio.

Thomas Adkins is a Southbury, Connecticut and Maine resident. A graduate of Paier College of Art of New Haven, he also completed graduate classes at the School of Visual Arts of New York. He has worked as art director and creative director for some of Connecticut’s and New York’s most prestigious advertising agencies. Adkins is a seasoned veteran of plein air painting. Most works begin with on location studies 16 x 20 or smaller. He then composes his larger works in his studio compiling sketches, additional studies and from memory. His most recent works have been in Northwestern Connecticut area along with views of the Mid Coast of Maine.

Lon Brauer is an American artist known for his work in figure and plein air landscape. He has a BFA from Washington University and an MFA from Fontbonne University – both in St. Louis, Missouri.

 Born in 1955 and coming of age in the early seventies, Brauer has roots in the abstract expressionist movement. Influences from Jasper Johns, Willem deKooning, Cy Twombly, and Anselm Kiefer still play through his work. Wash U at the time had a faculty that was heavy on the abstract and conceptual but the experience was firmly rooted in foundational representation.  That roundness of study has given Lon flexibility in his art making. 

Brauer’s work is firmly rooted in figurative themes with a strong emphasis on drawing. His subject matter ranges from the conceptual to the concrete. In his work he develops a strong foundation composition on which to hang the paint. He feels that painting should be primarily about the paint itself as it describe subject. The subject of a painting is only a part of the story. The way the paint is applied and manipulated speaks to the making of an image and drives the narrative - the emotional narrative.

An impressionistic oil painter based near Richmond, Virginia, Andre Lucero was trained in a traditional academic setting but in recent years has combined his love for the outdoors with his art. Completing more than 100 plein air paintings a year, his work includes landscapes, figures, and still life painted from life. Lucero's works can be found in several galleries along the East Coast, and has been featured in numerous magazines. After earning his BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University, Lucero worked for more than a decade as a free-lance illustrator where he earned several awards, before deciding to leave the field of illustration and devote his full attention to his first love, painting.

Hello, my name is Ken Wilson and I am an artist living and working in Saratoga Springs, New York I think of my work as a dichotomy of dynamic, contrasting styles. The heart-pounding power, athleticism and grace captured in my thoroughbreds compliments the sedate, peaceful and sublime feelings evoked by my landscapes. A client recently gave the ultimate compliment: She stated that she could almost "hear the bits rattling in the horses' mouths and their hooves thundering toward the finish line." My mission? Accomplished!

Marianne Thompson is a unique and dynamic artist, highly skilled in her use of the palette knife and her facility with mixing and matching color. She has work hanging across Canada and the U.S. and has won awards both for her painting and carving.  Thompson's work has been featured in publications in the US and Canada.  She has studied under and taught alongside the renowned Gloucester Plein Air painter David. P. Curtis, and her work expresses her love of the Canadian landscape with an empathy that is all her own.

To learn more about Marianne and see more of her work, visit her website.