3rd Place (Traditional)
Chelsey Rogers

A self taught artist and art teacher in Frisco, TX. I own a painting class business that I run on the side of being a full time high school art teacher. I love to paint and have different styles I really enjoy. Realism, more whimsical realism and use of texture in a piece are all things I really enjoy while using acrylic paint. I’m very busy with my jobs so painting for fun is a rare occurrence but I’m slowly incorporating it back into my life. I’ve realized that when your passion becomes your work you need to always remember why you fell in love with it in the first place.

To see more of Chelsey’s work please visit her Facebook page.

4th Place (Traditional)
Kathy M Paulus

Kathy Paulus resides in Southern California. She considers herself a self-taught artist specializing in pastel work. She specializes in pet/wild animal portraits and still life subjects. She accepts commissions for pet and animal portraits and enjoys the joy it brings to a devoted pet owner. She enjoys realism and the challenge to capture the real beauty in animals. She has a special love for horses and all wild cats. She also enjoys painting still life subjects. She also loves to explore other mediums such as colored pencil, watercolor and scratch art. She became a member of International Society of Scratchboard Artist in 2018. She is an active member of the Redlands Art Association in Redlands, California and Yucaipa VisionQuest Art Association in Yucaipa, California. She is involved in the international group of artist and photographers, Paint My Photo. She is also involved in many online groups as well. She enjoys teaching in workshops and sharing the knowledge she has obtained through the years in the area of pastels and scratch art.

To see more of Kathy’s work, please visit her Facebook page.

4th Place
(Digital & Photography)
Sheri Emerson

Sheri has been a photographer her entire life, from a child snapping pictures with her 110 camera, to her first SLR, and finally into the digital world. She also has been an artist her entire life, winning her first art competition at the grand old age of five. In the past few years, she has intensively studied both Photoshop and Lightroom to learn how to enhance her photography and turn it into digital art. She has been published in “Living the Photo Artistic Life” magazine, “Photoshop Creative UK” magazine, “Conceptual Images” magazine, “A5 Magazine”, “MagazineGSPDigital”, and “Fine Eye Magazine” for fine art photography. She was recently named a finalist in the Photographer’s Forum 38th Annual Spring Photography Competition and was one of 40 artists selected to participate in a year-long exhibition celebrating ACLU of Arizona’s 60th Anniversary. She has placed in the top ten in seven Light, Space and Time competitions, has received several “Best in Show” awards, placed second in the SINWP “Creatures Great and Small” competition and earned a Gold Award in their member competitions, has earned a Best in Show and won a Solo Artist Showcase on FusionArt, and has been exhibited at galleries in Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona and Greece. Sheri splits her time between Arizona and Labrador, Canada, and is dedicating herself to pushing her photography and digital art even further. Her work is currently being sold on the curated ArtBoja website, and can be seen at www.sheriemersonphotography.com.

For additional information about Sherry’s work, please visit her regular website.

4th Place
(3-Dimensional)
Kurt Palmquist

Originally from Helena, Montana, I grew up in a creative home surrounded by architects, teachers, entrepreneurs, skiers and airplane pilots. I believe this upbringing fostered my ‘out of the box’ thinking…after all, developing a skateboard and surfer culture in the 80’s, in Montana, took some big thinking! This was the foundation that led me to explore Architecture as a career and then propelled me towards Graphic Design and Fine Art. Starting my corporate design career in Seattle, my wife and I returned to Montana in the 90s to raise our family and began an entrepreneurial journey of Graphic Design and Marketing businesses. As rewarding as my career has been, there was always something missing… I began filling my world with ‘soul’ pursuits. My passion projects are my art exploration and pursuing this love of art that has been bottled up for so many years in the corporate marketing world. My artwork explores my fascination with three-dimensional geometric form inspired by my lifelong passion for architecture and light. Through a constant evolution of space defined by simple shapes, color and composition, architectural interior environments provide space and light where compositions add depth and interest. The viewer can experience and define them on their own terms to complement their experience of an environment. I strive to find harmony, through the forms I create, how they combine with each other and the color palettes used. I see as a whole or zoom in on an area and find a composition within it. I develop a visual language, that extends beyond any one piece and translate that language into a variety of mediums; sculpture, mono prints, paintings and digital prints. Each application is unique and says something different each time I use it. It gets clearer, more developed. Sometimes it sings, sometimes it mumbles. Sometimes I discover a different dialect as I work through a piece, opening up new possibilities. These shapes and forms combine to create spaces. For me I can imagine walking through them as if they were actual structures. Combined with light and shadow they make the spaces mini environments that change depending on the time and space.

To see more of Kurt’s work, please visit his website.

5th Place (Traditional)
Doug Puller

Doug Puller was born in 1974 in Baltimore, Maryland (USA). In 2004, at the age of 30, he moved to Red Lion, Pennsylvania (USA) which is in rural York County. A common material theme found throughout Doug Puller’s work is old book pages. Old books, antiques, and relics have always been of fascination to him and contain such a feeling of character and history with their visually interesting textures and patina. He mostly employs mixed-media, although he is not limited by any medium or method. From very early on, others told him that he was ‘talented’ in art and soon he became very interested in it. Through middle school, high school and junior college, it was his focus. Later, Doug was accepted into a prestigious art school only to find no practical way to pay for it. He made several attempts to finish an art degree at a more affordable college but could not finish. Doug considers himself an art school dropout so in a lot of ways he also considers himself partially ‘self-taught’. In his early career, he focused mainly on ‘commercial art’ as he is also an award-winning graphic designer, art director, and illustrator. By his early 30’s, Doug began to work more on personal art again, but unfortunately also began experimenting with alcohol and later other substances. For a few years, alcohol gave him the courage required to tackle the many creative ideas he had. But it became harder and harder to filter his creativity through this chemical dependency. Doug’s substance-use disorder would soon consume him and choke all the creativity out of him. Now, having recovered through intensive and extensive means, art is back in his life. Doug now often includes themes in his work that allow him to communicate some of these serious issues that we face, but often don’t talk about, like substance-use disorders, mental illness, etc. Today, he tries to use his experience and the knowledge he’s developed through his recovery to help others with substance-use disorders, and to raise awareness in the community through his art.

To see more of Doug’s work, please visit his website.

5th Place
(Digital & Photography)
Athalie Taylor

“Abstract art uses a visual language of shape, form, colour and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world.” Rudolf Arnheim, Visual Thinking Athalie Taylor is a visual artist who lives in Launceston, Tasmania, Australia. Her work encompasses photography and digital artistry. Her initial training was in the art/textile area but more recently she has embraced photography leading to her passion, digital art. Athalie has had work in exhibitions in Northern Tasmania including her first solo exhibition in 2015 and in 2017 another solo exhibition this time at the Brunswick Street Gallery, Melbourne, Victoria. She was also selected for an online solo exhibition through Light, Space and Time in April 2017. Athalie ‘s work has been shown in the Living the Photo Artistic Life magazine and Artists Down Under – Australia and New Zealand, a magazine she started but unfortunately had to pass over to anther editor when ill health intervened. Athalie has artworks in private collections across Australia. Athalie Taylor’s exploration into abstract art began when she was very young, she always drew. As she grew up doodles appeared on every scrap of paper left unattended… envelopes, her school books and later college notes, magazines, the phone book, nothing was left unadorned. As an adult she was excited and motivated by art that included simple lines, (straight, curved, and those that meandered through the piece) geometric shapes, circles, any patterned works, especially textured pieces. She was drawn by strong colours, simple compositions, unusual ideas and aspects. Many artists inspired her like Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Hans Hoffman and others, they still do today. She uses her camera in unexpected non-conventional ways. She is constantly forcing it to do what she wants, to get the starting point she needs for an artwork. The subject can be out of focus or taken pin sharp, it all depends on what she is trying to achieve at the time. Often there are different versions of the same subject which are later melded together to make the piece. Ideas develop and grow within the creation of the piece, she often gets lost in the process and when she’s done wonders how she finally reached that point. Some effects are achieved in the camera while others are developed and created in post processing. She is fascinated by shadows, sometimes her own, and reflections, and they regularly feature in her work. She draws, photographs, designs, creates, just for the love of it; the pure joy it gives her every day.

To see more of Athalie’s work, please visit her website.

5th Place
(3-Dimensional)
Minh Ta

Minh is a self-taught artist. He has been composing driftwood sculptures since 2014. Beginning as a hobby, he saw the natural formations of the driftwood pieces and began to compose into art pieces. Over the years, his works have been evolved from techniques to scales, and from abstract to more concrete art forms. Some of his early works had been shown at the library art and local galleries in Guerneville, CA in 2015 and 2016. Minh got several awards for his works: The Merit Award for “The A Rising Phoenix” from the Connections Exhibit from the Occidental Center For the Art – 2018 The Honorable Mention Award in the 3-D category for his “The Peacock” from the first annual Into the Wild International Art Exhibition from Fusion Art Palm Springs – 2018 The 4th Place in 3-D category for “The Bald Eagle” from the “Nature” Art Exhibition from Light Space and Time Online Gallery – 2018 The Finalist in 3-D category for “The Retire” from the 4th Annual Figures and Face International online art exhibition from Fusion Art – 2018 The Finalist in 3-D category for “Peace” from the 4th Leaves and Petals International online art exhibition from Fusion Art – 2018.

To see more of Minh’s work, please visit his website.