More than a dozen painters join us this year, three for the first time!

Deb Baughman
Traditional representational watercolor and oil landscapes and industrial, plein air work. Midwestern scenes, vintage portraits

Sara Burrier
Sara B Illustration.com
Through referenced vintage photography or modern day models, I transform my subjects into a work of emotion and imagination. I use florals, wings, masks, and more to be symbolic of what all women desire from within. To be wise, strong, connected, worthy, and loved. I’m an award winning watercolorist specializing in fairies who display the integrity of women in our world. I personally struggle with what the world sees vs what I know within myself, and those around me. My work is a mirror reflecting what is longed to be seen on the outside from the inside. I hope to remind my viewers of how amazing we look to who first created us and the light we have to share. When I paint in watercolor I have the freedom to create textures and color quickly, while keeping my detailed drawings focused and intact. I delight in exploring the medium’s behavior by combining salt, alcohol, splatter, drip, and glazing techniques on my paper. Spending hours glazing my subject, I refine them and their story, while keeping the environment moving and dreamlike.
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Karen Cooper
Karen Cooper Paintings.com 

I am a people watcher. I do it with intensity. And then I paint it. I have seen so many amazingly interesting people out in the world, and I see no other path but to share them with viewers who need to revel in these fascinating images too. While this longing is present, the absolute necessity of the matter, and what drives me forward, is that the painting must be a thing of substance and solidity and interest and beauty. The current work is oil on canvas. All are focused on people and their daily routines, and the thought-provoking images they make. It’s the simple stuff that we all do, but when you attach it to a person, it communicates something of each one of us, to the other of us. And then there occurs that magic moment in which the story appears, and the painting becomes.

​Karen was born and raised in Nebraska, and then moved across the river to live in Iowa. From 2013 thru 2017, Karen lived in Lipetsk, Russia - long enough for the power and beauty of Russian impressionist art to make a potent impact. Study with a talented figurative artist while in Lipetsk, increased the desire/need to draw with substance and clarity, as part of the painting process. Karen has now returned to live, and paint in Grinnell, Iowa.

Lisa Cooper
Lisa Cooper Artist
Painting pet personalities - from dogs, cats to cows and donkeys. I love to capture each pet's personality on canvas.

Cheryl Gates
Shuffle Design Studio
I graduated from Ball State University with a BFA in Interior Design. Having enjoyed many different aspects of the design world from residential design to retail staging, I have also pursued watercolor painting and colored pencil drawings, with florals and vintage cars and some landscapes comprising my subject matter. Currently I am using digital art as my favorite medium. Using my iPad and my apple pencil, I hand draw or paint my florals, landscapes, and abstracts. Nothing is imported, shapes are not created on the computer. They are hand drawn/painted by me using appropriate brushes designed for the iPad. They are original works of art that are solely created by me, then printed onto archival quality fine art papers or canvas using a high resolution ink jet printer designed to print art work. Digital art is truly amazing in that the possibilities for creating are almost limitless! I would be thrilled to do a demonstration! My inspiration for my art comes from places we have traveled to, flowers that I find striking in their beauty, or color pallettes that catch my eye.
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Diane Kunzler
Kunzler Studios.com
My interest in nature as subject matter is longstanding. Maybe it is the result of growing up and living much of my life in rural Iowa’s seemingly never-ending landscape. My work encompasses more closely-cropped and intimate images of the landscape and the more panoramic and grandiose views so often represented. Diane Kunzler grew up in Lamoni, Iowa and graduated from Graceland University in Lamoni. In 2005, Diane received her MFA from the Art Institute of Boston. She taught art in the public school system for 38 years before retiring from full time teaching. Diane served as an adjunct professor at Iowa Central Community College for ten years and currently teaches at the Des Moines Art Center. She also teaches a variety of ceramic, drawing, and painting workshops across Iowa and in her family gallery, Kunzler Studios, in Valley Junction. She tries to fit a bit of her own work into her schedule also.
 

Denise Laborde
Denise Laborde moved to Perry with her husband Larry in 2016, from Santa Barbara, Ca. Has worked in the past in the area of street painting- I Madonnari, Memorial work and loving end of life Hospice pieces. A plein-air painter focusing on nocturnes, landscapes and garden scenes. Denise, who often goes by the nickname -Pearl- is falling in love with Perry, Iowa. Current series- “Charming True Love” Open your heart towards the paintings that are recording the courtship of this Painter girl setting the Iowa Sky to life on canvas for you.

Leslie Leavenworth
Leslie Leavenworth.com
Leslie is a nurse by profession and an artist by avocation. Since moving to Iowa 20 years ago, she has fallen in love with the landscape and people. Leslie is experimental in her approach, trying a variety of mediums and subject ideas. Her artwork is an eclectic mix of landscapes, portraits, and abstracts reflecting this journey of exploration.

Christine Logli
I am a mostly self taught Artist using a variety of mediums...Oil, Pastel & Charcoal.
My technique is in the traditional style with my subjects being Portrait, Still Life & Landscape.

I have won awards while exhibiting my work at various Exhibitions & Competitions, & have been blessed to be a part of a wonderful community of talented & supportive group of artists/friends!

I am grateful to have a Studio space (#428) at Mainframe Studios, Downtown Des Moines, which I moved into Mid-August 2019.

​I am looking forward to my journey & growth as an Artist!

Mark Marturello *Featured Artist*
​I was just a kid growing up on the south side of Des Moines who loved to draw.
Inspired by my father, who would sit down with me at the kitchen table, we would draw the comics we saw in The Des Moines Register. I always wanted to do drawings that would be printed in the paper and was thrilled when that dream came true in 1988. Over the next 30 years I worked on thousands of illustrations that allowed my style to develop and go in many directions.   
 
My work was not only seen in The Des Moines Register but in many other Gannett papers across the country. While at the Register, I illustrated many RAGBRAI (Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa) posters. 

I've done freelance illustration for over 30 years with numerous clients in Des Moines, including many Meredith Publishing magazines and other companies across the country.
 
I have illustrated two children’s books, “Amazon Pajamas” and “Paisley Poof” and many other book covers and inside illustrations.

Present day:
I am now semi-retired (not really) concentrating on freelance illustration full-time along with working on personal, fine art work. I’ve become an avid bicycle rider, where you can see me on the Greenbelt Trail daily.

James Navarro *Featured Artist*
https://navarrofineart.artspan.com
James Navarro is a Des Moines artist who creates paintings and drawings that focus on the landscape, both rural and urban. Navarro can often be seen painting outdoors en plein air (French for open air) either day or night. Using these “observational” field studies, he then creates larger paintings in his studio, much like other impressionist paintings did in their time. His work is representational of a traditional style that concentrates on light, shadows and bright colors.
 
He documents everything he sees as a visual library, centralizing on the importance of these field studies.  “Photography can capture the place where you’ve been but the camera never captures the actual color the eye witnesses. That’s why it’s great to go back to your field studies and notes to remember the mood in that moment, in that particular place and time.”
 
Growing up on his family farm, he has always had a love for Midwestern landscapes, inspired not only by the beauty of nature but also the creativity in every-day objects. “I have an appreciation for vintage things like bikes, car culture and all things nostalgic, things that people take care and pride in from the past. Aside from painting I put a lot of craftsmanship into other things like typography and sign painting and pin striping, too.”
 
James attended The Minneapolis College of Art and Design with a focus on painting, illustration and furniture. During his time at MCAD he was heavily influenced by his time life drawing, print making and focusing on furniture. After college he continues to use his wood working skills building custom frames and canvases.
 
James belongs to a number of Midwest-based plein air groups like the Iowa Plein Air Painters, a group out of Iowa City. These groups provide consistency, encouraging painters to meet up and socialize, get outside and paint. It’s nice to have the feedback or another’s perspective. He tries to get out at least once a week; it’s his favorite thing. He particularly likes going late at night in the city because he can be by himself and capture the energy of the lights as well as the sleepiness of back alleys and empty streets at night (delete at night).  It doesn’t really matter where or when, he just likes being outside and painting.

Louise O'Donnell
I've lived on both coasts and in America’s large cities and small towns pursuing my career as an executive of creative design and merchandising for the catalog industry. A graduate of Iowa State University, I chose to return to my home state and pursue the happy life of painting the Iowa countryside, traveling, and volunteering. I'm inspired by the big sky and the colors and drama of the flat plains and rolling hills, but most of all by the people. I’m drawn to both past and present people who in their ordinary lives inspire and evoke in me a very real connection. Each painting I do must mean something to me and I hope that it means something to those who view them.
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Shawn and Misty Palek
Shawn Palek.com
Misty Palek.com​
Shawn Palek
Shawn Palek (°1970, Uniontown, OH, United States) mainly uses the airbrush to paint things he enjoys, whether it be pop-culture to hyper-realism. By taking daily life as subject matter while commenting on the everyday aesthetic of middle class values, Palek touches various overlapping themes and strategies. Several reoccurring subject matters can be recognized, such as the relation with popular culture and media, working with repetition, provocation and the investigation of the process of expectations. His paintings often refer to pop and mass culture. Using written and drawn symbols, a world where light-heartedness rules and where rules are undermined is created. Play is a serious matter: during the game, different rules apply than in everyday life and even everyday objects undergo transubstantiation. His works are characterized by the use of everyday objects in an atmosphere of middleclass mentality in which recognition plays an important role. Shawn Palek currently lives and works in Des Moines, IA. 

Misty Palek
Misty Palek (°1976, Butte, MT, United States) is a self-taught watercolor artist, who enjoys releasing her bountiful imagination on paper. She specializes in surrealism mainly of food, including her love of fruits and vegetables. Spending time over the past five years and developing her technique in watercolor, she is quite proficient in creating one-of-a-kind paintings that appeal to all generations. Misty lives in Des Moines, Iowa. She has won many awards, in the watercolor category and she is part of several clubs, such as the Iowa Watercolor Society, Art-A-Holics Anonyms, and several others.
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Betsy Peterson
​https://www.facebook.com/BetsyPetersonDesigns
When I was young, I wanted to grow up to be an Artist.  My Mother was an Artist. It was her creativity and divergent ways of solving  problems that, in part, trained me to to think and design in novel ways.

 Courage, Joy, Whimsey, Resilience, and Grace, are all woven into my 3-dimentional Sculptures and Wooden Paintings to inspire the same in others. Wire, Clay, Wood, and Acrylic Paint are the mediums I use to bring my Heart to each Piece.

Jill Woodword
Woodward Art.com
One of my earliest memories is entering a drawing in a local art show (Stuart, Iowa), at the age of four. I have been drawing and painting ever since. I earned a degree in art education and psychology from Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, Iowa and a master’s degree in counseling from the University of South Dakota. As an adult I have lived in Nebraska and Minnesota and just recently returned to Iowa. My oil paintings typically feature children and childhood themes. In a painterly-realistic style, I capture serene and peaceful moments in time; a child engaged in his or her own world and happily absorbed in a simple endeavor. The child figures are frequently depicted in a mid-western landscape or setting. Although children are difficult subjects to paint due to their softly formed features and aversion to staying still, I am captivated by their uninhibited charm and the authentic way they present themselves to the world. They always appreciate their likeness on canvas, enthusiastically accepting how they appear to the artist. Along with their physical features, their self-perceptions are also softly formed and open to feedback. In my paintings you may see yourself as a child or you may be reminded of your children and the fleeting journey of childhood.
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