Marilyn Simandle | Plein air painter

Marilyn Simandle has always known that she would become an artist. Learning from her mother, a musician and painter, Marilyn started painting watercolors at age 6. She received her BA Arts Degree from San Jose State Univ. and went on to share her inspiration with the world.

A native Californian, she now resides in the Santa Ynez Valley where she explores all her passions: Painting, gardening and playing the piano. The former stewardess is an avid traveler and photographer that keep her fully stocked with subject matter for painting. Her late husband and acclaimed artist, Ted Goerschner, graduated to be with the Lord in 2012.

Sir John Lavery R.A. | Plein Air / Portrait painter

Sir John Lavery R.A. (1856-1941)* was a well-known Irish-born British painter*, associated with the Glasgow Boys*, a group of artists who followed the French "En plein air*" movement.

Sir John Lavery R.A. was born in Belfast in 1856 and educated in Glasgow, London and Paris.

For biographical notes -in english and italian- and other works by Lavery see: Sir John Lavery R.A. | The Glasgow School of Art*.

Cristina Fornarelli, 1978 | Palette knife painter

Cristina Fornarelli was born in Bari, Italy.

After art school, she attended the Institute of Industrial Design in Rome where she still lives and works.

She has taken part in many national and international art fairs.

The subjects of her paintings are always women in equilibrium, hanging on swings, dangling in the air, dancing in an indefinite space emphasizing this delicate atmosphere.

Lorenzo Lotto | High Renaissance painter

Lorenzo Lotto, (1480-1556), late Renaissance Italian painter known for his perceptive portraits and mystical paintings of religious subjects.

He represents one of the best examples of the fruitful relationship between the Venetian and Central Italian (Marche) schools.

Guy Denning, 1965 | Abstract painter

Guy Denning, born in North Somerset, has been obsessed with visual art since childhood and started painting in oils at the age of eleven after receiving a set of old paints from a relative that had grown bored with them.

Through the 1980s he was repeatedly unsuccessful in his applications to study painting at degree level but continued painting whilst studying art history with the Open University and learning painting technique from older painters he knew in the west of England.