Art Santa Fe 2023 Artists to Watch
Taking place at the beautiful Santa Fe Community Convention Center in the heart of the city, Art Santa Fe welcomes its esteemed exhibitors and attendees to a beautiful gallery-style venue. Artists from around the world will be exhibiting at Redwood Art Group’s Art Santa Fe fair this July during Santa Fe Art Week.
Here are nine artists to watch during this year’s fair! Get to know the talented group below.
Anita Lewis
“Most artists of the day are known for their repertoire of paintings that look very similar to one another. Having come from diverse backgrounds and philosophies, having lived in many places in this world, I see different worlds. At a very early age I was taught to just paint what I see.”
Q: WHAT IS YOUR WORK PHILOSOPHY AND HOW DOES THAT IMPACT YOUR WORK?
A: In my work, I am a traditional -modernist. I revere the traditional aspects of painting, such as using traditional mediums such as oil and canvas and palette knife. However, my work stretches from figurative to absolute abstracts and everything in between, using trowels and rags and painting knives to achieve technique. Motion is a key theme in my work, whether it be palm trees, racecars, or abstract themes.
Q: WHAT ARTISTS INSPIRE YOU?
A: I would like to begin with the masters, such as Monet, Rothko, Pollack, Richter, and Diebenkorn. But let me continue with my contemporaries such as Luc Leestemaker, James C Leonard, Michael Kessler, Angela Gebhardt, Bill Patterson, and many others.
Q: WHAT IS THE BEST ADVICE YOU’VE RECEIVED?
A: Paint what you see. And then I take my own advice of always moving forward to evolve and grow, and then I tell myself “Use the down days to paint your edges”
Q: WHAT DOES EXHIBITING AT ART SANTA FE 23 MEAN TO YOU?
A: After 3 years of drought due to a worldwide suppressive event, and then a spontaneous intrastate move, huge renovations, and 2 bone-break injuries later, I’m back in the saddle again. Such a hiatus is both humbling and mind-bending, as one never knows what will happen next. Grateful for the opportunity to exhibit again.
Lauren Deyo
Lauren’s first creative expression occurred when she was left in her in her uncle’s hands. He fell asleep and she finger-painted all the porcelain in the bathroom. Since retiring as a teacher her focus is on art, her “new career”. She has been prompted to take oriental brush painting classes, mixed media workshops and studio work with Janet Bothne at Studio J in Los Ranchos de Albuquerque. Contemporary painting in acrylic and mixed media is her love along with collage. Recently she has added encaustic to her mixed media menu which is a perfect marriage with her collages.
Q: WHAT IS YOUR WORK PHILOSOPHY AND HOW DOES THAT IMPACT YOUR WORK?
A: The work philosophy that I follow is simple, get in the studio and work every day on something creative that adds value to my art. This practice is more like an attitude. It keeps me exploring and experimenting with new materials, using different tools, and adding shapes and marks to my work. This process opens me up no matter the results.
Q: WHAT ARTISTS INSPIRE YOU?
A: Current artists who’s work I admire Peter Vahlefeld for his bold mixed media art with graphics I love. His work is contemporary with a dash of “street art” feel.
Q: WHAT IS THE BEST ADVICE YOU’VE RECEIVED?
A: There is lots of advise for artists out there. The best: work every day, believe you will improve and the work will evolve. Also, don’t rely on other’s opinions of your work.
Q: WHAT DOES EXHIBITING AT ART SANTA FE 23 MEAN TO YOU?
A: This is a first for me, exhibiting at Art Santa Fe. My goal is to find additional gallery representation. I work quickly. My inventory grows and needs to be shared with others in galleries seeking a passionate, energetic artist.
Barbara McCullouch
“I was born on the edge of a Montana prairie that was silent except for the song of the meadowlark carried on the wind. Looking under wet stones taught me about life. Then it happened – I picked up a stick and drew marks in the mud.
I dreamed of being an artist someday. But I didn’t understand creativity and I set that mystery aside for a successful life working in art. First as a technical illustrator, then a potter, then teaching and painting landscapes around Glacier Park. I really loved bringing people joy with my paintings, but I knew there were creative depths I needed to explore.”
Q: WHAT IS YOUR WORK PHILOSOPHY AND HOW DOES THAT IMPACT YOUR WORK?
A: Although I approach my work to make art, I have long since realized is that creative time spent focused on my own personal artistic growth and creativity permits the act of artistic creation to etch deeper meaning into my work. Simply, I like to say that “while artists may be making art, art is actually making the artist”. We artists as humans, beyond our work, become more observant, sensitive, curious, and intuitive.
Q: WHAT ARTISTS INSPIRE YOU?
A: My work begins with time immersed in nature, quietly allowing my senses to absorb the experience as fully as possible. These are moments of sublime transcendence and also moments that surprise me with a powerful jolt of awareness of beauty and connectedness. I allow these moments in time and place to rest inside me until I feel my hands needing to express my heart with field notes of collected colors and movement of natural lines. The inspiration that I receive from life, whether fauna or flora, is the awareness that all life is intrinsically connected. This feeling of awe runs through me and into my painting, regardless of materials or technique, and is usually expressed as interpretive abstraction. Modulated color applied with a lyrical brush becomes my favorite way to express my appreciation for the beauty of nature.
Wassily Kandinsky, 1866-1904, became my hero for his passion to be independent of the traditional salon painters, devoting himself to exploring the inner depth of abstract art. Reading Concerning the Spiritual in Art gave me an awareness of the power of abstract art to be a transcendent vehicle in my own spiritual life. Kandinsky’s comparisons between art and music remain with me as I choose interpretive colors for my own compositions. He wrote: ”Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand which plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul”.
Q: WHAT IS THE BEST ADVICE YOU’VE RECEIVED?
A: “It’s not all about you.” When I remember that my work is a conduit between my inspiring experience and my viewer’s curiosity, it humbles me into taking responsibility to offer the deepest expression of that moment possible. Practically speaking, that advice helps me let go and work with joyful passion and separate the process from the results of the viewers’ opinion.
Q: WHAT DOES EXHIBITING AT ART SANTA FE 23 MEAN TO YOU?
A: I am thrilled to offer my series “Southwest Visions” for exposure to regional as well as national and international galleries. In addition to showcasing my paintings, I will be delighted to sign my new ‘award-winning’ art workbook, The Unstoppable Artist.
Bette Yozell
Bette Yozell grew up on the north shore of Boston. She attended the Tyler School of Art in Rome, Italy, the Boston Museum School and has a BS in art education from Tufts University. While in Boston in the early 1970’s, Ms. Yozell maintained a stained glass, painting and printmaking studio. In 1976, she moved to Copenhagen, Denmark where she established a similar studio. She exhibited extensively in Europe during her seven years there.
Q: WHAT IS YOUR WORK PHILOSOPHY AND HOW DOES THAT IMPACT YOUR WORK?
A: Each of us has a unique way of interpreting our visual experiences. For me, noticing and recording the world around me, has always been imperative.
Q: WHAT ARTISTS INSPIRE YOU?
A: Moe Brooker, Rembrandt (especially his etchings), Klimt, Mucha.
Q: WHAT IS THE BEST ADVICE YOU’VE RECEIVED?
A: “Kill the artist before he kills the painting”
Q: WHAT DOES EXHIBITING AT ART SANTA FE 23 MEAN TO YOU?
A: I am pleased to have this venue for showing my most recent work to a larger audience.
Carol Tippit Woolworth
Carol is a mid-century Southern California Girl, growing up on the beaches of Santa Barbara, while developing a love for the sand, the surf, and the sun. She spent her art school days at UCSB, before leaving for New York City in 1984. There she continued to study painting at various East Coast schools—creating a design business along the way—before diving back into art in the early 2000s. After a move to Delaware, her graphic design career continued, as she added a stint at DCAD (Delaware College of Art and Design) as an instructor of both graphic design and painting to her accomplishments. In Delaware, Carol acquired a bevy of private art students, and developed—and lead—art workshops to the South of France, before moving here, to Santa Fe, in 2016.
Q: WHAT IS YOUR WORK PHILOSOPHY AND HOW DOES THAT IMPACT YOUR WORK?
A: Making art is hard work. It takes dedication, a rich imagination, and an obsessive personality. This trio of elements has serviced me well over the course of the 40+ years I’ve spent painting and creating 3D sculptures. What has also been of service is the realization that none of it comes easily. Each piece is a battle of self and skill, continuously fought through to an end, in order to achieve something profound, beautiful; something which taps into my inner most being and spits out a work worthy of spectators, of collectors, of myself. The struggle is the appeal, it’s something deeply sensed within each piece, playing with ones emotions and ones understanding of the world and how it works.
Q: WHAT ARTISTS INSPIRE YOU?
A: My go-to artists are the Bay Area Abstract Figurative painters: Diebenkorn, David Park, Elmore Bishoff. Lately, I’ve been branching out as I seek to find a way through portraiture, so Marlene Dumas and Alice Neel have joined the gang, and their books are opened up in my studio for inspiration. The freshness of these artists, and the spontaneous way they capture people, landscapes, and city scenes has remained an important resource to my education as a painter, as has their honing away at detail and opulent use of color. Their boldness in painting is my journey.
Q: WHAT IS THE BEST ADVICE YOU’VE RECEIVED?
A: Paint for myself and don’t edit.
Q: WHAT DOES EXHIBITING AT ART SANTA FE 23 MEAN TO YOU?
A: 2022 was the first year I exhibited here at Art Santa Fe. It pushed me into another realm of showcasing my work in a beautiful, well organized setting, where I can be in control of mywork. Being at ASF I became part of a wonderful world of talented artists from across the country and beyond, along with the art patrons who roamed the exhibition space throughout the weekend, enjoying the endless variety of work represented. I look forward to a repeat this year!
Conrad Bobiwash
Conrad Bobiwash is innovative and brings new insights to creativity. He holds degrees in Science and Education. Trained and observed some of the most important Indigenous colorists, he drew inspiration from Bruce King and Earl Biss. It was these experiences plus his background in Graphic Design that brought him to the forefront of Indigenous art in the Americas and abroad.
Q: WHAT IS YOUR WORK PHILOSOPHY AND HOW DOES THAT IMPACT YOUR WORK?
A: My thinking on Art is that there is an endless well of inspiration in the natural environment. My creativity arises from the shapes and forms in nature and when joined with the practice of the elements of design, creates a unique universality of feelings, colors, lines, and shapes that invoke emotional responses or remembrances of the past or present.
Being raised on the land really helped develop the spirit of movement and color, the land is my anchor and I will return to the land one day.
Q: WHAT ARTISTS INSPIRE YOU?
A: Artists that inspired me are Monet for color patterns and Lloyd Kiva New for creativity. Finally, Chagall for his spirit to create.
Q: WHAT IS THE BEST ADVICE YOU’VE RECEIVED?
A: Work every day, doing drawing and sketching, these are the sources of everything we develop.
Q: WHAT DOES EXHIBITING AT ART SANTA FE 23 MEAN TO YOU?
A: The exposure to new creativity in materials and images as well as meeting with some great artists.
The hosts of Art Santa Fe are professional and exact in the look of the show. Meeting like-minded people is the reward for my attendance. Visitors and collectors are on a mission and collect images that are significant to their being as people. Art inspires and awakens their spirit. This is a great show for new collectors and seasoned treasure hunters.
Elaine Duncan
“As an art student in New York City and after several trips to Africa and Asia, I was fascinated with peeling paint, sidewalks, and adobe walls. I revisit this today by throwing sand and mixed media into my work. I want to allow the textures and colors to resonate with one another without my interference as well. The irony and contradiction that I discovered in this process are deeply gratifying. I started painting in 2015 after a decades-long hiatus focused on family and careers as a book cover designer, gallery assistant, and art teacher. I have now returned full circle to my fascination with the creative expression of painting and dance.
Painting is like a dance for me. I feel that I am a partner with the paint and the canvas. It is a physical act of rhythm, texture, surface, and subsurface, always moving, always in flux. I am deeply influenced by the spontaneous creativity of moving through space with my body. Essentially, I want the paint itself to direct the work with as little interference from my cognitive, rational self as possible. This act of spontaneous “selflessness” is deeply gratifying and always a revelation. My process lately is to distill the action on the canvas to as few brushstrokes as possible. This intention is to capture the moment, the movement, the flow.
My influences include Helen Frankenthaler, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, Howard Hodgkin, and Cy Twombly to name just a few.
At the age of 60, I felt the need to embark on a new chapter in my life and that is when I started painting and dancing. I have been blessed with a life of experience, both tragic, beautiful and uplifting. I have seen the world and it’s challenges, mainly in Africa and at home, and my desire is to remain active for the decades I have left. I am enormously grateful for my good health and this amazing life I have led. It doesn’t stop here. The doors are flung wide open to new possibilities.”
Jillian Gamble
Jillian Gamble has been creating art since she was a small child. Her father was a wood craftsman that would make beautifully detailed jewelry boxes and scenes carved out of wood. Growing up around this inspired her to pursue her own interests in art. Her passion for art is rooted in her obsession with color and nature.
Q: WHAT IS YOUR WORK PHILOSOPHY AND HOW DOES THAT IMPACT YOUR WORK?
A: To create as much as you can because I have found that the more I can produce the more my work grows and develops. Plus, I am going to get good pieces and terrible pieces, so the more I can make, the more likely I am to create work I like.
Q: WHAT ARTISTS INSPIRE YOU?
A: Abstract expressionist and impressionist artists, mostly. Claude Monet for his thick brushy marks to interpret nature. Helen Frankenthaluer for pushing the boundaries of abstract expressionism and not letting the men in the field overshadow her. Betty Franks for her vibrant interpretations of nature.
Q: WHAT IS THE BEST ADVICE YOU’VE RECEIVED?
A: “Make the art that truly expresses you, and no what you think people will want from you. Believe me, you will know because suddenly people will see the work and all the joy you put into it will come pouring out and they too will be connected with the work.” – College professor
Q: WHAT DOES EXHIBITING AT ART SANTA FE 23 MEAN TO YOU?
A: It means exposure, connections with artists and art lovers, and being a part of something I have hoped for my whole life.
Jewell Edward Cundiff
“My Art…is a voluntary effort to satisfy an involuntary urge. Whether two-dimensional, three-dimensional, or ethereal the desired intent of the artistic expression is to disconnect the observer from the reality arrived with…to capture to entertain to supersede one’s conscious presence with new information in a total departure from one’s accustomed rhythms to provide an escape from the overwhelming, totally encompassing now into a free-falling state of uninhibited, limitless experience where artistic expression induces calculated, spontaneous excursions beyond memorable experience without the burden of consequence.”
Q: WHAT IS YOUR WORK PHILOSOPHY AND HOW DOES THAT IMPACT YOUR WORK?
A: I am on the edge of creation. It is a voluntary effort in response to an involuntary urge to create.
Q: WHAT ARTISTS INSPIRE YOU?
A: Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, Jeff Beck, Jackson Pollock, Jewell Cundiff, Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe.
Q: WHAT IS THE BEST ADVICE YOU’VE RECEIVED?
A: “Go to your Studio every day.” – Douglass Freed
Q: WHAT DOES EXHIBITING AT ART SANTA FE 23 MEAN TO YOU?
A: Standing tall beside and engaging with talented artists, art lovers, critics, collectors, and works of art.
For tickets to Art Santa Fe 2023 click here.
