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I am originally from British Columbia Canada but have called Davenport home for the last 35 years. I received my BA from the University of Northern Iowa in Art Education, where I was awarded a free tuition art scholarship for my last two years and completed my MA from Western Illinois. I taught art in the Davenport School District from 1980-2013.

Our natural environment is a powerful focus of my artwork. Macro and micro environments fill my paintings, engaging the viewer in their detail. Even while painting tranquil scenes, I achieve active color sensations by layering color over complementary underpaintings. The tall grass prairie is an irreplaceable tapestry of plant and animal life. I paint dynamic compositions of Midwest prairie remnants so that the viewer can appreciate and see the need for their maintenance before they are lost forever.

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I took my first watercolor class in high school and through the years it has become a passion. I like the freshness that can be achieved with washes of color on paper. The body of my work represents my life’s experiences in trying to fulfill my passion.

In my studies I learned to value design and color. I approach each idea I have for an art piece looking how I can best express my thoughts and subjects. In my work I want to capture some of what fills my life today and save it
for tomorrow.

The concept of Twisted is a product of my daydream ideas. One day I was doodling in my little black sketch book, and the twisting and tangling of the lines and compositional sketches creatively inspired me and excited my imagination.. After many hours of planning, sketching, and painting, I created Twisted.

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I find value in order.

I create work that is austere, precise, concerned with process.

The result: calm, subtle detail and design.

Matthew Mikulice was born in 1984 in Richland Center, Wisconsin. He attended Clarke University in Dubuque where he graduated in 2006 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in studio art, emphasis drawing. He has exhibited throughout the Midwest.

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Kevin McCusker is an emerging Iowa artist. After service in the Marine Corps, Kevin studied studio art at Cornell College and graduated in 2015. After Graduation, Kevin self-published his first photography book, “Greater Cedar Rapids,” depicting the built environment in and around Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Most recently, Kevin and his wife Kristin opened a photography and art studio in downtown Manchester.

The reality of the landscape is Kevin’s starting point. With his left eye pressed to the viewfinder, Kevin creates a visual index of our rural and urban world, devoid of extraneous visual elements. The images seek to present the world in a clear, precise, and unadorned manner.

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Kassandra Mattia was born in Fairfield, California and raised in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Before pursuing formal education as an artist, she graduated summa cum laude with a degree in physics from Santa Clara University. As a student at Santa Clara, Kassandra worked in an optics lab as a researcher of ferromagnetic semiconductors. Although that research experience is what ultimately turned her away from a career in physics, her current studio practice remains largely modeled after what it feels like to work in a lab.

Through the use of varied materials including wood, graphite, oil paint, string, wax, and clay, Kassandra has developed a practice that requires her to balance intuition with logic and blind optimism with doubt. Kassandra is currently a graduate student in painting and drawing at the University of Iowa.

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I am a smallish, curly-haired, ageing insomniac as well as an artist, writer, vegetarian, activist, and animal lover. I live on a farm in the Driftless region of Southwest Wisconsin with my husband, a cat, a dog, and a horse. We have lost five members of our elderly animal family in the past year and a half, so life seems a bit empty these days.

At least I have more time to paint, when not at my part-time day job. I have always done narrative paintings, mostly of animals. For the past few years I have been working on a series called “Night Vision.” The paintings in this series are based on photos taken at night by my infra-red digital trail camera, which I have been placing strategically around our fifty-eight acre farm. It’s great fun to see who I’ve captured with this camera trap – and no animals get scared or hurt in the process.

I have been keeping journals since I was seventeen. I am currently on Volume 133. Recently I started a blog feature on my website called “The Journal Project.”  I pick a number from a “hat” and then I pick an entry from that journal volume and post it. It feels like I am doing an accidental life review, which I find helpful at this stage. The world is so crazy right now that I think we are all struggling with the meaning of it all. How do our individual lives matter? Has it been a total waste to spend my life painting? Who cares about art when bees are almost extinct, and humans won’t be far behind?

If I had to describe myself in one sentence for a brief biography, I would say that I am a person who lies awake every night obsessively worrying about things I can’t control. If I had two sentences to describe myself, I would add that I have an excellent sense of humor. I do.

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A painter for nearly fifty years, Nancy Lindsay is best known for her impressionist landscapes. She loves to paint on location and packs her easel whenever she travels. Recently she has been inspired by her father’s photography from the 1920’s and 30’s. The painting in this exhibition is of her mother reading at a desk somewhere around 1928 in Brule, Nebraska. The Maxfield Parrish painting and brass lamp has been in her family for many years and now in her personal collection.

Nancy Lindsay’s work can be found in many corporate and private collections as well as the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art. She received her art instruction at Colorado State University and Art Students League in New York. She works from her studio near Stone City, Iowa.