I will post a short biography and a few samples of their work from each art instructor that I have taken classes and learned from over the years as I receive their permissions and samples of their artwork.
If you would like more information on each artist please click on their last name and the link will take you to one of their websites if they have one.
John David Anderson
John is an award-winning artist painting in oils and acrylics with a contemporary impressionist approach to landscape, still life and figure work.The Haliburton campus of Flemming College features John in its summer program teaching introductory and advanced plein air painting.
He looks for elements of beauty within anything that light touches.
His work has evolved from an oil painter's perspective of brush on canvas. The use of paint tonally applied with rich colour and light is the driving force in his compositions. There is movement throughout his work created by the interplay of warm and cool colour. The fluctuating emphasis of light and shadow along with the use of lost and found edges enhances that movement.Brian Atyeo
The paintings of Brian Atyeo are well known for their bold and spiritual impressions of Jazz figures and of the Canadian landscape. His work is a constant exploration of colour and form showing remarkable confidence.
Brian was born and raised in Toronto and attended high school at Crestwood Secondary School in the Peterborough area. He worked as a freelance artist during his high school years before moving to Calgary, taking a position as an illustrator apprentice. Not long after, he set out to open his own company.
In 1980 he started painting full time and is a career artist of more than 30 years.Brian is a well respected teacher and conducts painting workshops in acrylic and watercolour across Canada.
Neil Broadfoot
Melanie Browne
Melanie is a painter who works in oils and acrylics.
She taught drawing at Trinity College School for several years and has an M.A. in fine art history and a B.A. in art history and comparative literature from the University of Toronto.
Her figure drawings bring the model to life and seem to capture their individual personality.She is known for her rich still life paintings and with her use of pure colour, her abstracts take on a life of their own as she continues to explore its potential for the expression of ideas and emotions.
Melanie's drawings and paintings have been exhibited in galleries in Bowmanville, Canton, Cobourg, Etobicoke, Northumberland County, Peterborough, Port Hope and Toronto and are found in many private collections.
Her classes will provide much enjoyment, a few challenges and make you look at art in a whole new way.
Gary Chapman
Gary seeks out the tranquil and serene areas of the Haliburton and Algonquin backwoods. His art reflects the natural beauty of these regions of Central Ontario where he often paints on location and later from memory in his rustic studio in Minden.
For this artist, mood and atmosphere are essential for all his landscape paintings whether it is the hazy, mist shrouded shores of a lake, the multitude of colours reflected on the snow in his winter landscapes, or the riot of colour in an autumn forest.
His paintings in both watercolour and oil, captures the essence of the rugged Canadian Shield region of Canada allowing the viewer to experience all the seasons portrayed by this artist which is why he is also a much sought after art instructor.
Art Cunanan
Born in the Philippines and educated at the University of Santo Tomas in Manila, Art began as a graphic artist for a leading newspaper and several advertising companies in Manila.
In 1976 he immigrated to Canada and in 1984, he was introduced to the Canadian scene by the late Zoltan Szabo, a well known artist and instructor.
His work can be be found in private and corporate collections in Canada, United States, Europe, Asia, Australia and the Philippines.
In 1989, Art decided to devote his attention to painting full-time and started teaching workshops for various art groups and art schools.
He is a popular art instructor and has been teaching workshops across North America and Europe for almost 30 years.
Art works primarily in watercolour, but also paints and teaches in oil and acrylics. He is best known for capturing light in his paintings, which makes them come alive.
Michael Dumas
Sterling Edwards
Jon Gnagy (1907 - 1981)
Jon Gnagy, was born at Varner's Forge and grew up in Kansas. He was a self-taught artist when at age eleven he started drawing and painting and by the time he was thirteen he began winning sweepstake prizes at the Kansas Sate Fair in Hutchinson and gaining attention each year for his American landscapes.
After attending art school, he moved to New York in the 1940s and he went on to become a successful freelancer and teacher, developing his system to make people comfortable drawing.
Jon became one of the North America's greatest audio-visual educators when on May 13th, 1946 he was the Host on the first television program “You Are Artist” (which continued until 1955), on the NBC network broadcast from the new WNBT channel 4 atop the Empire State Building. Since then, his name became a household word to millions of people.
He is remembered for being “Television’s Original Art Teacher”, he pioneered drawing on television with his syndicated program, “Learn to Draw” in the early 1950s until in the late 1960s they were ended.
His system made it easy for beginners to learn to draw. He broke everything down into four geometric shapes: a ball, a cone, a cube, and a cylinder, and promised that if you could draw those shapes, you could draw anything. And he would proceed to show you how.
Jon had the ability to make things look easy enough that any beginning artists could feel they could follow along and his enthusiasm for teaching others to draw with his light-hearted, down to earth approach led to a stress free and enjoyable experience.
In addition, he also sold a "Learn to Draw" Kit, which had all the pencils, erasers and other equipment needed to follow along with the show. This popular art kit and others created by him are still available today and children continue to use his methods to learn how to draw.
Jon Gnagy passed away on 07 March 1981, but his legacy in the art world lives on through his many of students.
Gail Hawkins
Gail is a native of Peterborough Ontario and has loved making art all of her life. Drawing and painting nature, domestic animals, buildings, landscapes and people are her favourite subjects.
Photography is her second love and many of her photos become resource material for future paintings.
Working on location in the Kawarthas with graphite or ink and watercolour, Gail draws areas of interest in detailed vignettes.
She has taken workshops over the years with many talented artists and studied many art books but Gail is reluctant to copy others and has developed her own style and is not afraid to experiment with something new, be it media or subject and is proud to say she is mostly self- taught.
Since the 80’s Gail has worked on some commissions, such as private cottages, century homes and tropical wedding locations in various media.
In early 2009 Gail was published in “Aquatic Plants Guide” for the Kawartha Lake Stewards Association. She produced six small watercolour paintings, illustrating ways to eradicate weeds without using herbicides.
She worked as an instructor of painting and drawing in different types of media in the early 90’s. Gail worked for the Board of Education teaching night classes and after that, for Class Connections. She also enjoyed instructing workshops and classes at the Kawartha Artist Gallery and Studio for several years.
She instructs a class at Activity Haven, regularly each week, as well as a few other small groups periodically. She finds this part of being an artist gratifying because it is enjoyable and it is always good to go over what you know.I say to anyone who wants to paint is "All the time you paint, you are learning and the more you paint the more you learn."
Valerie Kent BFA, BEd, MFA, OCT
Valerie is an international award winning artist who is the Director and an artist at the Cavan Art Gallery which she opened in the spring of 2016 in Cavan, Ontario to showcase her own work and those of selected other artists.
She is quite a versatile artist painting en plein air and in her private studio in watercolour, acrylic, oil and mixed media.
Her work has been exhibited at the Seoul Korea International Art Fair, in an exhibition at the Kyoto Art Museum Annex, 2014 Gukchang Exhibition and the Insadong 31 exhibit, in Korea.
Valerie won an award in Japan in 2013 at the 24th exhibition of the IAOCA(International Association of contemporary Artists, Kokusai-Bijutsu-Sozo. She was featured in the Asian Artists Association Exhibition, Shenzhen, China in April 2014. Her work is displayed in the Art Museum in Nanking and in Shenzhen at the Asian Artists Association Gallery.
Valerie had a solo show of her Marketplace Series at the Ella Arps Gallery in Amsterdam and recently had a solo show of The Marketplace Series at the J.M. Parrott Gallery in Belleville, Ontario.
She regularly offers workshops and courses to school boards, art societies and at art schools and colleges including Loyalist College in Belleville, Ontario.
Valerie has frequently appeared on television shows doing art demonstrations and serves as a Juror to many organizations. In 2013 Valerie became a Certified Golden Educator.
On the same site as the Gallery, she has the Cavan Art Academy, where she teaches courses and workshops both in the Studio and outdoors en plein air. The success of the Academy is due to the high quality of the courses and workshops that are offered both daytime and evening throughout the week.
Mary Lampman
Gordon MacKenzie
Lucy Manley
Edwin Matthews (1924 - 2014)
The first four years of Edwin Matthews' career began at Sampson Matthews as an apprentice to the late A. J. Casson of the famous "Group of Seven" Canadian Painters and after he left the company they remained friends until Mr. Casson's death.
He and his wife Barbara started Gallery-on-the-Lake first in their home and eventually built from the ground up the largest privately owned Gallery in Canada on the shores of Buckhorn Lake.
Edwin enjoyed teaching and literally taught thousands of students. First at Sir Sandford Fleming College in Peterborough, Ontario, then at the Buckhorn Community Centre and once the new Gallery-on-the-Lake was built, complete with a classroom began teaching in September of 1983 in watercolour and acrylic.
He portrayed the beauty of the Canadian landscape from coast to coast; but the stunning contrasts of Ontario were his favourite subject. His Georgian Bay series and the many paintings of the north shore of Lake Superior showed his enjoyment of painting the rocky landscape.
He also took a number of students to the east coast to paint the lighthouses, fishing villages and the rugged, rocky shoreline of Newfoundland.
Edwin was the founder and driving force behind the prestigious Buckhorn Wildlife Art Festival & Sale which was first held in1978 and continues to this day raising money to support the Buckhorn Community Centre.
After painting for more than 50 years Edwin passed away on 03 May 2014, but his legacy in the art world lives on.
Doug Mays
After studying through High School, where he applied his passion for art and architecture culminating in graduation in 1971 in Architectural Technology. For the next 30 years he enjoyed a successful career in the Hamilton, Ontario area until early retirement in 2002.
Throughout his business career he had the good fortune to study with several well-known Canadian and American watercolourists, which laid the groundwork for his second and current career as a watercolour artist and instructor.
His enthusiasm for the watercolour medium along with his pragmatic and light-hearted approach, all lead to a stress free and enjoyable experience.Margaret Roseman
Michel St-Jean A.O.C.A.
Michel has been painting for over 50 years in oil and watercolour mediums and carried out many field painting excursions.
In such areas as in the Alberta Rockies, the high Arctic, the Northwest Territories, the Upper Ottawa Valley, Algonquin Park, the Niagara escarpment and various locations across Canada aw well as in India, the Himalayas, Thailand, Cambodia, Mexico, the Mojave desert in Arizona, California and the Caribbean.His work is exhibited in several corporate, public and private collections in Canada, England and the United States.
Michel's current body of work demonstrates diversity of subject in representational "Classical Realism" including portraiture and figurative art as well as landscape and still life. He also gives drawing and painting workshops in Classical Realism in his studio located in Peterborough, Ontario and will accept commissions.
Brigitta Schryer
Brian Smith
Emil Varga
Emil's images portray the beauty of flowers, the tranquility of evening sunsets and visions of Ontario landscapes captured in watercolour and mixed media in a semi-realistic style.
He was born in Cornwall, Ontario and he has lived in Peterborough, Ontario since the early 1940’s where he attended several public schools, followed by high school at Kenner and PCVS (Peterborough Collegiate Vocational School).After which he was offered a drafting apprentice ship at C.G.E., later transferring into product and design engineering.
Forty two years later, when Emil retired, he decided to pursue a life long interest in the arts. He is self taught, but has taken workshops from many notable artists.
"As far as creating a piece of art is concerned, I would say that as I am working on a project (in the solitude of my workshop with my classical music playing), the mood, which is serene and peaceful, seems to be almost spiritual and when finished, I am amazed at what I have accomplished. Because I did not start my painting full time until my retirement, I recommend to all budding artists study and read as much as possible because it is never too late to start a creative journey."
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