I have always been an artist, painting in acrylic, watercolor, pastel and now oil with cold wax medium. I have led a long
and successful career in sculpting in stone with my pieces on show around the country. My focus is now abstract art and photography.
I picked up a camera for the first time in 2017 when I retired from my medical career as a nurse practitioner specializing in emergency pediatrics in Santa Barbara, CA. I took up photography so I could have a portable art medium rather than bring all my paints etc. on our camping trips around the country. I instantly fell in love with photography due to the many possibilities of composing a photograph as in a paintings striving for simplicity, color harmony, composition, light and contrast.
I am self-taught in photography and painting with a few workshops under my belt. I love both the painting and photography mediums and I often combine my photography with my paintings as inspiration or incorporate them together in collage.
I have come to love the complex simplicity and the light of the desert. I find inspiration for my art expression from the beautiful
sunrises, sunsets and abundance of clouds during monsoon season. I also love photographing flowers with my close-up
camera lens and try to capture a vision of a flower that a person does not usually expect to see, a new way to see a flower.
When I go to photograph at the rodeo grounds, I try to find a photo that reflects a special moment in time for either the horses, riders or the spectators.
I once photographed a bronco rider kneeling in prayer before his ride, that’s the type of photograph I love to capture.
My interest is oil on canvas and primary landscapes, rustic buildings, and domestic and wild animals.
I’m self-taught having spend considerable time with online tutorials. I live in Wickenburg and find tons of inspiration from the surrounding area.
I sign my name as Tavarozzi on honor of grandparents (Anything and Mary Tavarozzi) who Immigrated from Italy.
Thanks
Jim Tavary (Tavarozzi)
Mainly self-taught, art has been such a joy to me on and off over the past 85 years.
Oils, oil pastels, acrylic and now colored pencil and pastels have played a part of my progress.
Animals have always been my first passion with portraits coming in a close second.
In 2018, I started an adventure using feathers as my support with acrylics, after a friend gave me a print of a feather painting of a wolf.
In late 2022, another friend started me down a new path with colored pencils and pastels.
Now I spend many pleasant hours immersed in pursuing these lovely mediums along with my feathers.
It has been an added pleasure to enjoy completing commissions memorializing pets, people and events so important to all of our lives.
Please let me know if I can help you save a treasured memory for you.
After working for 20+ years as a computer programmer in the corporate world, I experienced a level of burnout
that left me longing for change.
My first foray into the art world was through the door of art-as-therapy. I studied with the late art therapist and
prolific author, Lucia Capacchione, PhD, ATR, and became a certified coach of her methods of
journaling and expressive arts.
My work with Dr. Capacchione created a profound shift from the predominantly left-brained computer geek
I had been, and awakened the more right-brained, creative artist that has been lying dormant
In me for my entire life.
As this new self emerged, I explored many mediums including acrylics, watercolor, pastels, colored pencil, mixed media
and collage.
After participating in a 3-D mosaic workshop with Debra Mater a few years ago, I immediately recognized
that I had finally found the medium my creative heart had been looking for.
I enjoy reusing old discarding jewelry, semi-precious stones, tile, glass, beads, buttons, and other
trinkets to create my mosaic pieces. I build connections through color, shape, theme and texture.
I blow the dust off thrift store cast offs and bring them back to life with new sparkle and shine.
I delight in creating playful and imaginative birds, animals and insects.
My work is sometimes whimsical, sometimes mystical and often grounded in nature and the divine feminine.
My works have a distinguishable look with many strong colors and textures. Many of my compositions are anchored with geometric shapes and lines, creating both balance and tension. In addition to painting my non-objective art pieces I also enjoy painting abstracted portraits, creating modern collages and mixed media. I enjoy creating prints with modern and old printmaking techniques.
My work has been exhibited in art galleries and organizations throughout Germany and the United States. My art was also featured in “Project 26” with Theater Arts West and the Playwrights and Artist Series II, and the See Me Gallery. I am represented at the Finer Arts Gallery In Cave Creek, AZ.
When I moved here in September 2010, I never dreamed I would become a 2-D soft pastel artist. Or a 2-D artist of any kind! I visited “the club” to find put if they recognized basketry as an art form. Because that’s what I was, a Basket weaver! I was given an unequivocal “Yes”.
The club offered all kinds of classes and I decided to do all of them. When I took a charcoal class, I found that I had permission and loved getting “dirty”! A fellow member then guided me toward pastels …. And the rest is history….
That is what the club does so well….teaches, guides, encourages, and supports creativity in the arts.
I was born and raised in Colorado. My style of rustic sculpture began with the love of drawing animals and walks in the country. In High School I was introduced to clay and have been sculpting ever since. In college I majored in art, completing course work at New Mexico Highlands University, Colorado State University and Mesa State in Grand Junction. Over the years I have taken major interest in learning more about ceramics and have attende various classes and workshops.
Art is a shared experience. A vision is captured in clay, something we can see and touch. God created wonders for us to behold and I like to show His work in abstract or primitive style, creating a moment in time. My objective is to share that and in the process to improve on shape, color and technique, to continue to experiment in an expressive medium that can be shaped, molded and given life.
Bio
Celeste Woodes Koper grew up outside of Boston Massachusetts spending most of her summers on Cape Cod.
A cross country summer long trip with her facility at the age of 12 changed her view of the world. During that trip she experienced the beauty of nature and all its diversity. Her love of nature, its beauty and moodiness is apparent in her colorful evocative paintings. Paintings depicting the American landscape.
Ms. Koper is mostly a self taught painter. She has taken occasional workshops at the Cape Cod School of the Art and Scottsdale Artists School. Her paintings are in private and corporate collections around the world including France, England, Germany and China.
Ms. Koper’s paintings have been incorporated into television and movie set designs. Along with her many other accomplishments, Ms. Koper taught art at the Gatehouse Academy in Wickenburg, Arizona during the winter season.
She own and operates her own Fine Art Gallery for the past 20 summer seasons in Wellfleet Massachusetts on Cape Code.
Ms. Koper presently decides her time between Wellfleet on Cape Cod and Wickenburg, Arizona.
Bio
I have loved art since I was a kid, and my earliest memories involved re-arranging mud in dried up puddles. This was the beginning of a journey that would lead me to try out different types of art, each offering a unique way to see and interact with the world.
My work. reflects my journey, exploring form, color and material to capture the human spirit and world around us. Each piece is a testament to the power of art and it’s ability to reveal new ways of seeing and understanding.
Bio
Angus Ross is a local resident here in Wickenburg, having moved here in 2021 from Newport RI. Prior to that he was a career naval officer (25 years) in the British Royal Navy, before coming to America and the US Naval War College as a faculty member in 1996.
He became a naturalized citizen in 2013 and continued to teach at the College until his retirement from full time work in 2021. Today, he continues to teach for the College on-line, in a part-time arrangement from his home.
Now that his family are grown and he has a little more time, he has recently re-kindled his love for painting and drawing, something that had to be put aside during a busy career.
He was last active (in sketching) in the 1980s, when he took to sketching sights seen around the world during his 25-year naval service.
Watercolors are essentially a new challenge for him, and he is thoroughly enjoying the experience. The unforgiving nature of the media, the very “natural” look of the pigments and the wonderfully “fluid” way in which contrast and color are applied, are a source of endless fascination to him.
He is currently trying all sorts of subjects, although wildlife, marine scenes and landscapes will probably end up being his favorites
Bio
I’m Lauri Harrington and I began painting in earnest about four years ago. I have always been a bit creative and when I was a young girl, my father brought home telephone wire for us to play with. I made an entire farm of horses and people out of that wire, using yarn as the horses tails. I went on to drawing horses from there.
As an adult, I enrolled in the fine arts program at a college in Traverse City, Michigan, taking drawing, design and pottery. I realized that becoming an artist was probably not the path to riches for me so I turned to getting a business degree. After moving to Colorado, the beautiful scenery inspired me to take up the arts again and I began taking pottery classes in Boulder and Golden, CO. Then after retiring in Colorado, I began sketching again and also took up making landscape quilts.
Since moving to Wickenburg, I have taken watercolor (my first love), acrylic and oil painting classes. I have been juried into the Wickenburg Art Center for mixed media and have exhibited in a number of shows there.
Now, I often find myself watching and practicing watercolor techniques on YouTube. It’s an interest rabbit hole that I throughly enjoy. I am currently working on a landscape quilt of aspen trees and preparing for upcoming shows at the Wickenburg Library and Wickenburg Art Center.
Bio
My paintings are mostly with oils, but also do watercolors and acrylics. I started oil painting at the age of 16, painting wildlife on paper plates with an oil paint set that a neighbor had given me.
Someday I’ll paint that! Now it’s time. I am inspired by a lifetime of artistic memories, experiences and want to paint the picture. Retired after 40 years of being advertising art director and graphic designer, I then began to seriously paint.
One of my favorite things to paint is photos of history. Finding old black-and-white photos and paint them in my colors. Photos that I have taken from the western history places that I’ve discovered.
In high school, I was mostly interested in the art classes and and the drama classes. My formal art education began after high school at the Central Academy of Commercial Art in Cincinnati, Ohio, plus 40 years of advertising art direction and marketing.
I like coming back to Wickenburg each winter for the art club, it’s helpful members and being able to paint outside in the AZ desert.
Some of my work is exhibited at the Platte Canyon Artist Guild’s Fall Fine Art Show in Bailey, Colorado, also at Wickenburg Art Club’s Fine Art Show and in their gallery.
