August 31 - October 20
The 2024 Artists in Residence Show, featuring Chula Beauregard, David Bender, Jake Gaedtke, Stephanie Hartshorn, Amy Brakeman Livezey, and Jerry Salinas, will be on display in the Jacomien Mars Gallery from August 31 to October 20. This exhibition will feature a range of works from these great artist in a variety of styles and mediums.
The Brinton Museum will host an opening reception for the Artists in Residence Show on Friday, August 30th, from 5 to 7PM.
This event is FREE and open to the public.
Chula Beauregard
Chula Beauregard (b. 1974) is a sixth-generation Coloradan, passionate about painting since the age of 11. After graduating from Whitman College as an Art Major, cum laude, Chula went on to serve as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Gabon, Central Africa. At home in the Colorado mountains, she uses painting to engage with the landscape.
Beauregard is a signature member of the American Impressionist Society (AIS), and American Women Artists (AWA). She has won notable awards in each group and won the President’s Award of Excellence with the Oil Painters of America (2022). She won 1st Place awards at the Steamboat Art Museum Plein Air Event (2015, 2016, 2019), and served as Faculty at the Plein Air Convention and Expo (PACE, 2023). She has been invited to several museum shows, including the Brinton Museum (Big Horn, WY), the Western Spirit Museum (Scottsdale, AZ), the Steamboat Art Museum (Steamboat Springs, CO), Bennington Art Center (Bennington, VT), Booth Western Art Museum (Cartersville, GA), and the Tucson Desert Art Museum (Tucson, AZ).
Her work can be found in public and private collections.
Artist Statement:
“The Western experience is one of contradictions as we navigate between modern progress and pure wildness. Geographically rooted in the West, I intend to bridge the gap between traditional and contemporary. Using the classical approach, I apply the tools that have been tried and tested through the centuries: patterns of light and dark, color theories, and techniques to create illusions of space. However, I find the modern approach lends the freedom I need to express the intuitive sense of place: color fields, expressive mark layering, and textures that unite the painted surface. I honor the infinite Beauty of this land, while striving to contribute a relevant voice in these modern times.”
David Bender
After growing up in Montesano, Washington and attending The Burnley School of Art in Seattle, David bought a one-way ticket to New York, and with $200 in his pocket, set out for Madison Avenue. He spent ten years working for top agencies like Grey and DDB, then co-founded Janklow&Bender, a $50 million ad agency that launched brands like Tumi Luggage, The Walt Disney Company and Johnson & Johnson.
In 1991, David sold the agency in order to pursue his true passion: a career in the arts. Since then he has maintained his Brooklyn studio showing work at Scope Miami, The White Room Gallery, Woodward Gallery, Arcadia Contemporary and Arden Gallery, to name just a few.
His work which includes painting, sculpting, drawing and muraling can be viewed on his website at www.studiobender.com
Jake Gaedtke
Jake has been a full-time professional artist for the past 23 years. He was a Founding Member, Board Member, and President of the Rocky Mountain Plein Air Painters which disbanded in 2019. Jake had a career in graphic design for many years before becoming a professional artist. He studied extensively and was mentored under the master landscape painters Jay Moore. He also studied with Matt Smith. Jake has traveled throughout the country painting in various locations, from the coast to the desert to the mountains and also including the Grand Canyon, where he was an invited artist to the Grand Canyon Celebration of Art for two years. He also spent time painting in Italy.
Jake has participated in many plein air events winning many awards including Best of Show. His involvement with the Rocky Mountain Plein Air Painters over a span of twenty years gave him the opportunity to meet and paint with some of the best plein air painters in the country.
He was also one of twenty artists invited to participate in the first annual Plein Air for the Smokies event in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park.
“My purpose as an artist is to share my vision and experience of the natural world and its many marvels. This is accomplished in the form of painted and/or sketched field studies as my main source of reference which I then use to create larger studio paintings. In both my field studies and my studio paintings, I invite the observer to journey with me into a world of total sensory awareness of the countless wonders and manifold expressions of nature. The best way to get good at plein air painting is to do it and do it a lot. There’s nothing like experience to improve and grow.”
Jake lived and worked in Colorado for 38 years, and now lives with his wife in Bozeman, Montana.
Stephanie Hartshorn
Recognized for her architectural portraits of rural America, Stephanie Hartshorn is a signature member of the American Impressionist Society whose work has been featured in national exhibitions and publications including Cowboys & Indians, Western Art & Architecture, Southwest Art, Western Art Collector and others.
Hartshorn, a fifth generation Coloradan, depicts the quiet resonance of a life built on hard work and familial ties. From iconic barns, fields and criss-crossing power lines to motel signs and carnival rides, she captures the strength of the American West unlike any other artist working today.
“I have always loved the details of design: rhythms and complex beauty and the lines and
curves are man-made world. I consider my paint as a sculptor might her clay. Each brush stroke takes on a form of its own and, in the end, creates textures that explore and express an object or scene.”
My residency at the Brinton Museum has been an extraordinary immersion in the beauty of this area— The arms of the Big Horn Mountains and the carpet of grasslands at their feet. Inspired by the museum’s collection and Bradford’s personal photographs (daily life vs posed shots), I am profoundly moved by the complex history of the land and the native/homesteader relationships that both shape and were shaped by it.
I spent my days here, exploring as many pockets of Big Horn/Sheridan as my trusty legs and Crosstrek could venture (it was a lot!)… envisioning the landscape before the arrival of fences and property lines yet appreciating the presence of those who came, filled with vibrant dreams to make a life here.
Each day I would find a good ‘sitting spot’, eyes closed, in the quiet, patient to let the stories rise and translate what I could to canvas. Believe me, there are thousands of stories to paint.
Amy Brakeman Livezey
The rocky mountain west has provided Amy Brakeman Livezey fertile ground to blossom as an artist. Her first focused medium of expression was filmmaking, but soon after settling in Montana in 1993, Amy turned to painting. Since that time she has become known throughout the region for her depictions of historic subjects in abstract fields. Since 2017 she has been working solely in the studio and considers these years her most true-to-self. Her art is fueled by the American West and all that entails, the historic roles of women in the West, and her fascination with historic photographs. Using paint, subtraction tools, bits of ephemera, and photo transfer techniques, Livezey creates a modern bridge connecting to history.
“My work is very much about process, where paint, paper, and intuition gather for a back-and forth conversation of composition and color. Though my paintings typically do not originate with figures, my interest in historic photography weaves its way into my work so that figures from the past eventually find contemporary places to inhabit. Here, they invite viewers into fresh musings about contemporary art and personal and regional histories.”
Jerry Salinas
Jerry Salinas graduated from the American Academy of Art in Chicago with a degree in Illustration and Fine Arts where he studied with Bill Parks. He has been working as an illustrator since the mid-1990’s for many ad agencies.
He is now a full time artist working in the studio with a big smile on his face. Jerry is a member of the Palette and Chisel Academy of Fine Arts, where he has studied with Romel de la Torre, Clayton J. Beck III and various visiting painters.
Jerry Lives in Phoenix, Arizona pursuing his passion for oil paintings. Going from painting a few hours a week to several hours everyday is pushing his work to a new level. He is excited to be painting western subjects in a contemporary realist style. Jerry also teaches local classes at the prestigious Scottsdale Artists’ School.
