2012 Phyllis Kapp "Soft Summer Days"
2012 Phyllis Kapp Poster
It was 25 years ago that Kapp opened her studio on Canyon Road in Santa Fe. The studio eventually evolved into Waxlander Gallery, where over time she nurtured and represented countless other artists.
Kapp, who was born in Chicago in 1930, has often said she is inspired by nature, specifically the landscapes of northern New Mexico. But she is quick to point out that her work stays fresh and is always changing in spite of her long-standing attraction to this rugged region as subject matter.
“Nature,” she once said, “doesn’t do things in the same way all the time. Why should I?”
2009 Andre Kohn "Good Times Great Wine"
2009 Andre Kohn Poster
Born and raised in southern Russia near the Caspian Sea, Kohn grew up in a highly creative environment, encouraged by his parents to draw, paint, and sculpt freely. At the age of 15, he apprenticed in the studios of several noted Russian Impressionist and realist painters, and by age 16 knew beyond any doubt that he wanted to become a professional artist and so enrolled at the University of Moscow, where he earned a coveted spot in the school’s prestigious and highly competitive fine-arts program
However, in his third year of university, Kohn experienced a major geographic and cultural-paradigm shift. His father, then a high-ranking member of the Russian army, was invited to participate in the first international post-Cold War officer-exchange program, which consisted of a yearlong stint at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama. In 1992, while Kohn was visiting his parents in the United States, his father announced their intention to remain in the country, thereby setting the family on a new course. Kohn wasted no time embracing his vastly changed life. He enrolled in the art program at Auburn University at Montgomery after becoming the first recipient of the International Peace Scholarship there. He went on to earn his bachelor of fine arts degree three years later.
After moving to the United States, Kohn held a variety of jobs to make ends meet—including house cleaner, picture framer, and car salesman—all while building his portfolio. He moved to Arizona in 2000, intrigued by the geography, climate, and ethos of the American West, especially its vast landscapes, horse and ranch operations, and Native American sites. He painted those themes for a while but eventually found that he had taken the subject matter as far as he could. At that point Kohn fully embraced his current brand of figurative work, which ultimately would provide him with a broader, more challenging set of creative possibilities.
Kohn refers to his painting style as “contemporary figurative expressionism.”
1998 Ramona Sakiestewa
1998 Ramona Sakiestewa Poster & Signed Lithographs
Sakiestewa, born in 1948, is a contemporary Native American artist renowned for her tapestries, works-on-paper, and for her public art/architectural installations. In the late 1960s, she traveled to New York City to study at the School of Visual Arts, then returned to the Southwest, where she took a job as an arts administrator at Santa Fe’s Museum of New Mexico.
Largely self-taught as a weaver, Sakiestewa uses prehistoric Pueblo techniques from the American Southwest. In 1994 she was invited to join the architectural design team for the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Mall Museum, Washington, D.C. In 2009 she closed her Santa Fe weaving studio to further develop her works-on-paper and painting and architectural projects.
1999 Ted Rose "Big Hats no Cattle"
1999 Ted Rose Poster & Signed Lithographs
Ted Rose (1940–2002) specialized in watercolors, in particular, watercolors centering around 20th-century American railroad art. (In 1999, the U.S. Postal Service selected him to paint five locomotives for the “All Aboard” stamp series, and Amtrak picked him as the artist for its 1997, 1998, and 1999 calendars.)
Although he painted plenty in his younger years and majored in art in college, financial necessity more or less forced him to give up painting until 1983. That year, he started painting again, and from then on produced over 1,000 works over the next 20 years, most of which centered on realistic depictions of trains and the railroad.
2003 Elias Rivera "SFWCF 2003"
2003 Elias Rivera Poster
Rivera was born in 1937 in New York City and in 1982, moved to Santa Fe, where he soon established himself as an internationally acclaimed painter. He attended the Art Students League (under the tutelage of Frank Mason), and painted somewhat disturbing canvases of New York’s raw street life.
In his paintings, Rivera explores the colorful costumes and street life of the native populations of Santa Fe, New Mexico; Guatemala, Mexico and Peru.
