5th Leaves & Petals Art Exhibition Monthly Winners

Best in Show (Traditional)
John Guiseppi

John is a self-taught colored pencil artist and photographer. John’s specialty is photographing wildlife, nature, architecture, industrial and automotive subjects. He strives to capture activity, poses, situations and scenes that are considered outside the norm and familiar. In wildlife, it’s those unusual positions during grooming, mating ritual, breeding display, or just being silly. John waits patiently for just the right moment, one that is different but unique to his subject. He strives to capture the moment that others miss, don’t see or notice. He then uses his photography as reference to create, produce and share an art piece that allows others a glimpse into that secret world of wildlife, nature and the world that he sees.

If you are interested in seeing more of John’s work, please email him directly.

Best in Show
(Digital & Photography)
John Diephouse

What I seek to share through my photography are images with which I have a strong and instinctive personal connection. Images may be simply documentary, invoke a sense of time and place, or resonate as an abstract blend of color, shape or form. Others provoke an indefinable question that does not readily yield answers without further study and reflection.

Self-taught, my creative process follows an intuitive yet patterned path, from capturing a digital image through the process of interacting with and refining the image, searching for the combination of adjustments that produces the kind of instinctive connection I seek. Most often the images with which I have the strongest connection are those that do not produce an immediate reaction but provoke a response through repeated contact and consideration over time.

Please email John directly if you are interested in seeing more of his work.

Best in Show
(3 Dimensional)
Evelyn Gottschall Baker

Evelyn Gottschall Baker works and resides in beautiful Buena Vista, Colorado. With over twenty years of professional experience in the arts, more than six of which has been dedicated to the field of glass fusing, she strives to capture the intricacies of nature through keen observation and attention to detail.

“I primarily experiment with techniques that add texture and dimension to paintings and sculptural work. My most recent work focuses on using Pate de Verre in non-traditional ways to produce three dimensional glass sculptures. My professional career began as a Graphic Artist and Illustrator. As Advertising Manager and Senior Illustrator for the Department of the Army, I created highly detailed, exacting paintings and drawings. After receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree I became a Test Engineer for a large U.S. defense contractor. During this time, I studied watercolor and oil painting, and took classes in stained glass, which allowed me to pursue a part-time career as a stained glass artist. I chose to work in stained glass, as I wanted to explore a style different from my painting style, which was detailed and realistic. I took my first fused glass class in 2011, primarily to create components to incorporate into stained glass pieces. My interest in fused glass grew into a passion, which I eagerly pursued by taking a number of classes, many of which were through D&L Art Glass in Denver. Now that I have retired, I am able to dedicate my time to following my passion.”

“Living in Colorado, I find it natural to try to capture the beauty of our local landscape into works of art using glass. My initial desire to simplify my style was well suited for stained glass, but as soon as I discovered glass fusing, I began re-introducing detail and realism into my art. During the several past years, I have embraced this realistic style, and have begun to use both traditional and non-traditional casting and mold techniques to create sculptures that depict the beauty around me.

“Recently, I began experimenting extensively with glass powders, developing a method of sculpting glass paste into dimensional forms that are fired without the use of molds. My experience as a Test Engineer has proved invaluable in shaping the discipline necessary for the methodical, detailed testing required to create the complex firing schedules for this method, which must account for shrinkage, varying thicknesses, and the way in which heat affects individual components. It is my pleasure to share this technique through teaching other artists, as well as through the display and sale of the resulting sculptures.”

In 2018, Evelyn began teaching her techniques in workshops in various studios throughout the US, Canada, and Scotland. Her work is currently displayed in the Emerge/Evolve 2018 exhibit at the Bellevue Art Museum.

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

2nd Place (Traditional)
Laurie Snow Hein

Laurie Snow Hein has been painting all her life. Like many young artists, she was doubtful that she could make a career of her passion. Laurie’s parents had convinced her that it was impossible to make a living as an artist. It was in her DNA…both parents, a grandmother and a brother were artistic. At age 12, Laurie started studying with Graham Ingels, a retired illustrator and portrait painter in Lantana, Florida. In her senior year of high school, Mr. Ennis, her art teacher, encouraged Laurie to apply for art scholarships. She received a full scholarship from Columbus College of Art & Design.

Working 30 years as a professional artist, teaching, licensing, illustrator and doing art festivals around the country, Laurie now shows primarily in Florida concentrating her time on images of the state of Florida’s majestic skies, enchanting landscapes, and magnificent beaches.

To wee more of Laurie’s work, please visit her website.

2nd Place
(Digital & Photography)
Shelley Benjamin

Shelley Benjamin, a resident of southeast Florida, is an award winning digital artist.

She received a BS in Textile Design from Cornell University. After a career as a textile designer and weaver, she became interested in mixed media, and ultimately, photography.

Ms. Benjamin’s experimentation and involvement with digital photography began after she purchased her first DSLR camera. During the learning process, she joined an international group of digital artists. With the advanced training she was able to develop her skills, which has allowed her to transform her images to reflect her vision. The inspiration from the group opened up the possibilities of taking photos into a new realm.

She is motivated by the art she sees in museums and galleries. From the time she was young she has always been an avid museum visitor. Her background in weaving exposed her to the art of fine crafts and the masters in those fields.

Shelley uses her photos as the foundation for a digital painterly approach, utilizing modern technology to enhance and transform the original image. Drawing upon her textile design background, she imparts a tactile feeling to her work.

She is challenged and inspired by color, reflections, light, the changing seasons, nature and architectural elements. Shelley is always searching for the extraordinary visual imagery in very ordinary environments. Ms. Benjamin states that her goal is to share the beauty around her and impart the uplifting feelings to the viewer that are the source of her inspiration. Shelley Benjamin’s work has been exhibited in local and international competitions and in online galleries as well as being featured in national digital photo and print magazines.

For more information on Shelley and her work, please visit her website.

2nd Place
(3 Dimensional)
Karen Ford

Born and raised in Indiana, Karen has grown up with a love of art. She studied ballet, piano and flute as a child. Her grandmother taught her to knit and crochet. Her parents loved music and singing was a part of her life. With all this artistic influence, she has found her inspiration in the natural beauty surrounding her and taking the words of Dorothy to heart: “There’s no place like home.”

Karen is a wife and mother of two children and grandmother of three boys. She has worked a variety of jobs: part-time while her children were young and later full-time in secretarial roles in higher education. Since her retirement she has enjoyed having time to pursue her love of nature. She is a self-taught crafter: drying flowers, making wreaths and finding creative ways to preserve the natural beauty around her.

The common thread woven through all these creations is Karen’s love of nature and her desire to depict its beauty in creative ways. Karen hopes that her pieces leave you with a deeper appreciation of the simple natural beauty surrounding you.

For more information about Karen’s work, please email her directly.

3rd Place (Traditional)
Phillip Zubiate III

Although he has used colored pencils throughout his 40-year art career, it’s only in the past five years that Zubiate has been producing fine art with colored pencils.

Since joining the Colored Pencil Society of America in 2014 he has won awards, the Prismacolor Award at the CPSA international show, first place at CPSA L.A. chapter show in 2014, Director’s award at the Ventura County Fair 2014-2015-2018, a first place at the AAIE 50th and 51st Annual Fine Arts Show 2014 and 2015, and Best of Show at the Camarillo Art Center 2018.

His creativity began as a child in the early 1960’s, watching Jon Gnagy’s “Learn to Draw” program on television. “Jon taught perspective, composition, light and dark, using charcoal, and graphite,” Zubiate said. He also sketched characters from Marvel and DC comics to learn human figures in action.

His senior year in high school he won the prestigious Bank of America Award for upcoming artist in 1972. He was invited to attend classes at the Art Center of Design, studying life drawing and introduction to design and advertising which he focused in that direction. Zubiate took classes at Ventura College and excelled, then transferred to CSU Northridge where he also excelled.

In 1980 he married his wife Kelly and started his career as an artist working for various companies, the Navy Astronautics Group, IBM, Nortel, MICOM, Girls & Boy Scouts, Dux Dental, American Tooth Industries, the Navy Seabee Museum among others.

In 2012 Zubiate was laid off and found he had free time to build his portfolio with new art. It was during that time he finished a colored pencil painting of a succulent plant.

In 2014 his wife saw an ad for a members-only contest sponsored by the Colored Pencil Society of America, he decided to join. That first show he entered his painting “Malibu Succulents” which won the Prismacolor Award.

He was recognized as one of five Artists-In-Residence exhibiting and demonstrating his artistic style with the Icarus Board at the Arts Collective, sponsored by the Ventura County Arts Council.

He has started to teach colored pencil classes using the Icarus Board, the mission is to inspire, educate, and connect with fellow colored pencil enthusiasts!

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

3rd Place
(Digital & Photography)
Anatoliy Anshin

Anatoliy Anshin is a fine art photographer who excels in the use of camera for depicting the beauty of Nature in a deeply symbolic way. Born in Russia, he lives permanently in Japan and his main work sites are old Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines where he can wander around for days in search for the picturesque blend of traditional culture with natural environment of perfectly maintained Japanese gardens. Some of the peculiar features of his works are breathtaking perspectives, extremely vibrant colors, non-standard techniques such as blurring or shifting photographic subjects from the frame center that make his pictures all the more enigmatic and mesmerizing.

Anatoliy’s distinctive personal style is based on the belief that post-processing in photography is unnecessary – Nature has enough to offer us for appreciation and a beautiful photograph can be taken right in the moment the photographer triggers the shutter. His creativity is inspired by his profound scholarly background and physical training.

A former university researcher, Anatoliy holds a Ph.D. in pre-modern Japanese history, is an author of a book and a number of academic articles, and is a teacher of Japanese swordsmanship, Kendo. A solo exhibition of Anatoliy’s photographs is scheduled to take place February 7-13 of 2020 in the Fuji Photo Gallery Ginza in Tokyo. His permanent solo gallery is planned to open by the end of December 2019 in Moscow, Russia.

To see more of Anitoliy’s work, please visit his Instagram.

3rd Place
(3-Dimensional)
Ann Nall

Ann started painting in 1985 to escape the pressure of work. Today art is her work, her joy, a source of enthusiasm and a marvelous way to spend a day, a week, a lifetime. Ann’s art is in peoples’ homes has graced gallery walls and she has shared her knowledge with those wanting to do what she does. She says that it is a very satisfying life.

At the beginning of this year she shifted from a paint brush to decoupaging glass. It makes her smile and work for hours without seeing the time. It is messy. Scraps of paper waft into any room she walks through. Glue sticks to her apron and the floor. Dried poly acrylic drops in shards on work surfaces. She loves it. It combines the art of the brush, the messiness of childhood play and the sophistication of balance and color.

On the technical side for this piece, she cut approximately 200 leaf shapes, each coated with Japanese rice glue and pressed into place with varying burnishers. 15 to 20 coats of poly acrylic, sanded regularly, ensured a smooth and sealed surface.

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

4th Place (Traditional)
Pauline Clay

Pauline Clay is a colored pencil artist who lives in a rural area of Virginia, which gives her unlimited opportunities to experience the subtle, quiet beauty in nature. From early morning fog on an open field as the sun’s rays shimmer through the trees to brilliantly colored fall leaves drifting on the surface of a meandering creek, it’s all inspiration. This natural beauty, and her intense love of flowers, have become the focus of much of her artwork. She has an extensive flower garden and loves to travel Both are passions that fuel her creativity in the studio and frequently provide the next idea for artwork. She loves working with colored pencils because she is able to re-create the realistic detail that she loves.

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

4th Place
(Digital & Photography)
Rosemary Miklitsch

I’m an amateur photographer, searching for the marvelous in the mundane. As an introvert, photography is my language of choice. Early on, my photography focused on postcard images of my travels or snapshots of family gatherings. Now, my desire is to create evocative, compelling images that depict the world as I experience it – with joy, awe, surprise and humility. I’m particularly drawn to landscape and nature photography. To capture the essence of a place, I cannot merely see a landscape, I must feel it. So, I visit locales repeatedly at various times of day and during different seasons as the changing light reflects new aspects of each scene. I still like “postcard snaps” but, more often, I patiently wait for the moment to be illuminated. I love to wander, searching for sights that speak to me. From vast landscapes to intimate details, I embrace the wonder of this world.

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

4th Place
(3-Dimensional)
Irene Sirko

Irene’s sculpture plays a very important part in her life. She always needed to express her artistic feelings. For many years, she had searched to find the right medium for 3-dimensional work. From the very first time she placed her hands-on stone to sculpt, she was captivated. The freedom that comes with creating what she feels is enlightening and a perfect outlet for her creativity. Though Irene sculpted exclusively by hand for many years, she now includes the use of power tools. This enables her to expand how she sculpts and thereby create more interesting sculptures. Her art training includes Toronto School of Art, Wilfrid Laurier University, Haliburton School of Arts and private studies. She continuously experiences other media to expand her basis for creativity. Irene experiences an indescribable freedom when she sculpts. It is this freedom that provides her motivation. Focusing on the abstract also ensures that the freedom continues. When sculpting, Irene takes into account the visual impact of the stone, the planes that exist and the potential movement that can be created. She is constantly feeling the curves and lines of the sculpture. The continuous flow of the work is critical. Her style is to create sculptures that are simple, diverse and organic in nature. Overall, Irene would like others to appreciate stone as a medium, sculpture as an art form and abstract as an open-ended way of having new perspectives, whatever that may be.

To learn more about Irene’s work, please visit her website.

5th Place (Traditional)
Nathalie Beck

I started drawing when I was three years old, and there has been no looking back. It was my grandmother who introduced me to drawing and , as I have been told, discovered my artistic talents, and only a few weeks after that, she passed away. If she had not given me pencils, colored pencils, and paper at the time that she did, I’m not sure art had become as important part of me as it did, because my parents put me in other activities, such as figure skating and ballet the following year, and I also started playing the piano around the age of five. However, art became who I was then and who I am today. Both of my parents were teachers and they have been (my mom still is, she is still alive) my number one cheerleaders. However, it is not because of them or anyone else I decided to pursue art as a career, it was because of a deep rooted eagerness to constantly improve as an artist. Nature, such as florals have always inspired me- especially in my 2- dimensional work.

My first great love of an art medium was sculpture – making figures in clay. However, since I was born with Juvenile Arthritis, that was something that had to be left behind when I was about 14. Through all the years, I drew, and I early on developed my own colored pencil technique. I am a classically trained oil painter, and I have studied with some well known painters in various states in the US. I hold a Bachelor of Fine Art’s Degree in Illustration from the Laguna College of Art and Design in Laguna Beach, CA. As an artist I was primarily a portrait artist for many years, and I was one of the portrait sketchers at Venice Beach, CA in the mid 1990s. For the last approximately 20 years I have lived in Las Vegas, NV, and colored pencil and Mixed Media including colored pencil have been what I do a lot of now. What I really love to draw is flowers and other elements of nature. Flowers have this mysterious beauty about them. Not one is the same and the colors enforces the joy of art making for me.

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

5th Place
(Digital & Photography)
Emily Weber

Emily Weber is a Chicago based artist with an interdisciplinary background in two dimensional and three dimensional media. She is a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a degree in Fine Arts. She has worked as a studio assistant to prominent Chicago painter Margot Bergman. Working with Mrs. Bergman gave Emily a strong studio foundation that she now uses in her own practice. She is currently a full time conceptual artist. She is working on expanding her diverse portfolio which includes drawings, paintings, ceramics, fibers, photography, sculpture, and metalwork.

Emily Weber’s conceptual focus is on the human impact on our natural environment. She questions mankind’s current path and seeks to show the destruction that is created by our choices. She sees a new landscape influenced by our past and shaped by our future decisions. With our continual lack of water, soil, and land the future landscape could be made of desolation and metal. Nature is the unfortunate casualty in mankind’s progression. She believes her pieces will show the resourcefulness flora and fauna have in a human environment, and how our intrusiveness doesn’t stop natural instinct and the will to survive. She also sees the natural beauty the world has to offer. The world is not just chaos and devastation but peace and splendor. She captures the small, unseen moments that deserve an audience.

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

5th Place
(3-Dimensional)
Todd McAneeley

The wood art I create comes from my deep love of wood and nature. They both have textures, colors and aromas and are beautiful natural elements in my day to day life on Vancouver Island.

My artwork is a creation of salvaged woods that inspires my creativity to design unique and intriguing art pieces from abstract to representative art along with artistic live edge mirrors. My medium is the same wood that many people chop up and turn into ashes.

Nature is filled with wonderous organic landscapes and I will never run out of inspiration turning salvaged woods into works of art.

To learn more about Todd and his work, please visit his website.