John Defeo

Abiquiu Sunset

2024

Through the unique usage of color, light and spirit, K.L. McKenna's style captures the landscape in a most unexpected way. Her paintings are not just paintings of landscapes but color harmonies of a very high and unusual order. Her inspiration for the west comes from childhood summers spent prospecting for fossils in Wyoming with her paleontologist father and family. K.L. McKenna's scenes of Colorado, Arizona, Wyoming and Montana reflect her enthusiasm and spiritual connection to the geology of the west, where she paints on site throughout the year. K.L. McKenna, a resident of Woodstock, NY and Ward, CO, has had extensive experience working for museums and top exhibition design firms in New York, such as Ralph Appelbaum Associates and Albert Woods Design. She worked throughout the United States and Canada as a graphical user interface designer for major banking firms such as Citibank, First Boston and Lehman Brothers. K.L. McKenna was awarded a U.S. Patent for "The Geozoo," an educational toy design. She studied painting first with Mary Buckley at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY and later with Nicholas Buhalis at the Kingston School of Art, Kingston, NY. In 2005, K.L. McKenna exhibited 24 of her paintings in the Borderlands Gallery at the Booth Western Art Museum, Cartersville, GA. She has participated in the annual auctions "Expanded Horizons," Yellowstone Art Museum, Billings, MT, and the "Annual Buffalo Bill Cody...

"My work is about Place. There has always existed within me an urgency to define myself through place that stems from an upbringing full of uprooting and re homing. In the absence o...

"Evening Mesa and Rim" is an oil on panel work by Duncan Martin. The framed size is 21 x 25 1/4 x 1 inch. Provenance: Private Collection

Martha Mans 7 x 7 image size and 16 x 16 matted and shrink-wrapped The painting process has been an evolving experience for me from the time I was very young and first started painting in oil until now. Each stage had to be experienced and has led to a deeper understanding of what my expression in paint is all about. Painting traditional realism with good design as an important element was where I began. Now, the evolution of my painting process has brought me to a point in which the subject, the texture of the oil medium and the physical application of the brushstrokes have become profoundly intertwined. All are so necessary to the finished work that if one were to be taken away the work would be left incomplete. My hope is that the synthesis of the subject, design, expressive brush strokes and the texture of the paint come together to create a work of art in which the viewer experiences all of these elements at once in a powerful statement on canvas. “New Mexico is a land of earthy colors and textures. Rocks, dirt, twiggy plants, reds and ochres against blue grays, dry, wet, cold, hot, mostly hard and rough create a movement in visual and tactile rhythms that surround me. There are times when I am standing in the New Mexico landscape on a warm day when I want to lay down and embrace it. I can’t help but be madly in love with the textures of everything around me. I am drawn to the irresistible forces that seem to bring me closer to the earth. The more I experience these textural qualities of the land, the more I am compelled to use them to express what I want to say. “ Martha was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where she attended Carlow University and received a degree in art and art education. Later she studied art at the Maryland Institute College of Art and the University of Southern California. At the beginning of her career she worked as an art teacher and art department head in Maryland and California. After becoming a full-time artist she taught watercolor and oil painting workshops in the United States and abroad. After moving to Colorado she became a master instructor for a branch of the Art Students League in Colorado Springs and then set up her own classes in her studio where she presently teaches on a weekly basis. She was director for many years of large adventure workshops combining painting and exploring. Some of these adventures include Ghost Ranch...