Meet the Artists
John Horejs
For people with complicated and busy lives, having peaceful interior spaces is crucial. Collectors across the United States, including former Idaho Governor Dirk Kempthorne, Microsoft’s Paul Allen, and Las Vegas developer Steve Wynn, have found a touch of elegant and peaceful simplicity in John Horejs’ warm, rich oil paintings.
Horejs has been a full-time artist since 1986. His work has been included in exhibitions at the Springville, Utah, Museum of Art, the Boise Art Museum, and the Museum at the College of Southern Idaho. His work is also included in the permanent collections of the University of Montana Museum of Art and Idaho State University, as well as the permanent collection of the State of Idaho in the reception area of the Governor’s Office. He has also been featured in American Art Collector Magazine and in numerous one-man and group exhibitions in galleries across the country.
One of the key elements of Horejs’ work is its peaceful simplicity. “I paint exclusively in oils, using two brushes and seven colors plus white,” he says. “My paintings are done on hand-made custom contemporary box canvases with no frames, which have become a trademark.”
Horejs draws the inspiration for his paintings from the breathtaking landscapes of the Western United States. Most of his work is done in-studio using his own photographs of lush landscapes, gardens, clouds, and deserts. Along with his regular studio work, he also loves the challenge of creating commissioned pieces for private and corporate collectors.
When he is not painting, Horejs enjoys hiking and photography. He and his wife Elaine have been married since 1973, and they love spending time with their nine children and spouses, and their 21 grandchildren.
In a world that seems increasingly complex and unsettled, Horejs strives through his paintings “to bring peace, grace, elegance, and beauty into the lives and interiors of my collectors."
Exhibits
- The Finer Arts Gallery in Cave Creek
- On the Edge Gallery in Scottsdale
- Sky Harbor Airport (2015 and 2019)
- Gallery at El Pedregal
- Sonoran Arts League Center for the Arts
- Arizona Designers and Craftsmen various exhibits
- Arizona Art Alliance various exhibits
Patricia Isaacson
Pat Isaacson was a programmer and systems analyst for many years, working for IBM in Salt Lake City and Honeywell in Chicago and finally starting her own business. “There was always something new to learn when working with computers. It was a creative and rewarding vocation for me.”
In the early 90's Pat developed a love of glass art and started collecting glass pieces. In 2009 she decided to try her hand at creating glass and purchased a small kiln. Little did she know how it was going to take over her life! She has now added a second kiln and any available funds are spent on classes, glass and tools. (and her electric bill!)
“I enjoy selecting the color schemes and combinations for my glass pieces, and strive to create patterns and shapes that please my eye based on years of experience in making and appreciating art, and influenced by my love of architecture and mathematics.”
Pat is a Juried member of the Sonoran Arts League and Arizona Designers and Craftsmen.
Glass Education
- Pittsburgh Glass Center
- Phoenix Center for the Arts
- Milkweed Arts Studio
Houston Llew — Spiritiles
Every Spiritile represents the story of our indefatigable inner spirit and the enduring bonds we hold with the people we love. From the beginning, Houston Llew sought to epitomize this inspiration through a very specific art form — vitreous enamel. A medium as ancient as Mesopotamia, with glorious historical artworks in royal jewelry, imperial goblets, and emperors’ treasures, enamel is an illustrious medium that Houston cast in a new, radiant form.
With its metallic base as canvas and its myriad glass colors as “paint,” what makes this work unique is the story wrapped around the sides of each piece. Some Spiritiles quote authors and poets, others philosophers and fellow artists, but every piece is designed to connect to a motivation of the self.
Each Spiritile is crafted first by laying powdered glass, or “frit,” onto a perfectly cut copper canvas, using a series of stencils for each layer of color, playing cards, and hand sifters to carve out the design. Once delicately aligned and layered, the glass and metal is carefully placed in the red-hot kiln to keep the glass from shifting, and timing is of utmost importance. Once fired, the enameled piece is removed from the kiln and cooled under a planchet.
The natural “crazing marks” (small cracks in the fired glass) that occur in enamel increase the luminescence of the glass. By rolling a pin over the surface of each piece after cooling, the light refraction in the glass increases and the enamel becomes malleable enough to frame.
Discovering how to wrap enamel in three dimensions around a frame was one of Houston’s most significant design achievements. By using a thin sheet of copper and precisely aligning the glass edges, each Spiritile is molded and affixed to a solid wooden frame, wrapping the story, author, and Houston’s signature around the sides.
Spiritiles may be displayed by hanging on a wall or by placing on a shelf or a table.
Kim Walker Art
Kim Walker is an internationally recognized artist, mother of four, grandmother of nine, and loving wife.
Kim's son Robby began attending community college in 1992 at age 9. While transporting him to and from college, Kim decided to attend classes herself. She became the first person in her family to receive a degree — a B.F.A. in Painting from Arizona State University — and had the unique experience of taking some classes with her son. Robby completed a PhD in Computer Science. With great pride and joy she refers to this experience as a magical part of her journey.
Since then, Kim has developed a unique style of painting that incorporates pressed flowers and natural elements. During her degree program she absorbed the many offerings of her instructors and is very grateful for that experience.
Kim always knew, however, that she wanted to find her own voice in her art. Beginning in December of 1999, in an attempt to assuage her grief over the untimely death of her mother, Kim took almost daily walks. “One day while resting on a mountain trail a breeze wrapped around me and it felt like a hug. I looked up and all around and it became crystal clear that nature reflects not just beauty but also hope and inspiration and healing as well as many metaphoric lessons that can touch all of our lives in profound and limitless ways. We are all warmed by the same sun and held by the same gravity. I knew I wanted to share these feelings as well as the actual botanicals with the world. I stopped many times on my walk home that day and picked up random botanic elements not knowing how, but still knowing these elements would become part of my art.”
Kim continues to evolve her processes of the inclusion of actual botanicals in her art, each day making new discoveries in her studios, one in Arizona and one in Baja. She also writes an original poem for each painting to further express her reverent gratitude for the gifts of nature.
Kim's art is represented in galleries and juried and invitational exhibits nationwide and is included in private, corporate, and municipal collections all over the world.
Beverly Carlson-Bradshaw
Exhibits
- 2024 Arizona Pastel Artists Assoc., Spring International Show Finalist, Phippen Museum, Prescott, AZ
- 2024 Flower Power, Camelback Gallery, Bronze Award
- 2024 Best in Medium Award, Camelback Gallery, for pastel
- 2022 Arizona Pastel Artists Assoc., Spring International Show Finalist, Phippen Museum, Prescott, AZ
- 2022 Arizona Pastel Artists Assoc., Membership Show, Finalist
- 2022 Camelback Gallery, “My Best Work of 2022”, Finalist
- 2021 Camelback Gallery, Finalist Bronze Award “Autumn”
- 2021 Arizona Pastel Artists Assoc., National Spring Show, Merit Award,
- 2021 Camelback Gallery, “Spring Forward,” Finalist 2021 Camelback Gallery, “Shades of Green,” Bronze Award
- 2020 Camelback Gallery, “Into the Wild,” Finalist
- 2020 Camelback Gallery, "Red," Finalist
- 2020 Camelback Gallery, "Happiness," Finalist,
- 2020 Camelback Gallery 2020 Featured Artist (One Year)
- 2019 Arizona Pastel Artists Assoc., Membership Show, Finalist
Beverly Carlson-Bradshaw is a gifted, natural born artist who has been creating art since childhood. She is now a full-time pastel artist who continually challenges herself to work in new ways, whether by trying a new palette or in applying new techniques, this artist remains dedicated to the process of learning.
As a young girl she would create drawings of the animals she found on the family farm in Montana. By High School she had moved on to working in oil paints. She later attended classes at Eastern Montana College, Billings, MT while working with important artists, such as Ben Steele.
With a previous career in Interior Design, Beverly has a great sense of balance and form, and she harnesses the best of that experience in her art. Her life and career took her to Seattle, WA where she continued to study art in the evenings at the University of Washington and she attended workshops with well-known artists Ned Mueller and Clark Elster. It was during this time that Beverly started focusing on pastel painting which she found was an excellent way to combine her strengths of drawing and painting. It has become her chosen medium.
Since retiring five years ago from her thriving career, Beverly now lives and works in Cave Creek, AZ. She is a full-time artist working in the medium of pastels. Her love of the landscape has only increased since moving to the desert and she fills her day by observing nature and creating masterful, pastel artworks based on her impressions of the beauty that surrounds her.
Gallery Representation
- The Finer Arts Gallery, Cave Creek, AZ
- Pinetop Gallery, Pinetop, AZ
Beverly has attended workshops and received a number of achievements and accolades.
Workshops
- Jude Tolar (2019 - Scottsdale Artists School)
- Liz Kenyon (2019 - Scottsdale Artists School)
- Christine Debrosky (2020 - Scottsdale Artists School)
- Tony Allain (2020 - Online Workshop with Redrock Pastel Society of Nevada)
- Nancie King Mertz (2020 - Online Workshop)
- Albert Handel (2020 - Plein Air Workshop Sedona, AZ)
- Margaret Dyer (2022 – Figures in its Environment Scottsdale Artists School)
- Barbara Jaenicke (2023 – Painting the Poetic Landscape Scottsdale Artists School)
- Tony Allain (2024 – Arizona Pastel Artists Assoc., Workshop)
Memberships
- Arizona Pastel Artists Association
- West Coast Pastel Society
- Plein Air Artists of Arizona
- Red Rock Pastel Assoc.
Natalia
My name is Natalia and I’m a former Architect living in Ukraine 🇺🇦. I’ve always loved working with my hands creating mixed media art and crafts.
When I retired from my formal career, I started my own craft business. I design and make beautiful dolls and ornaments in the Ukrainian tradition.
My daughter and grandson live close by and help with the delivery process. It’s such a delight to create whimsical felt toys 🧸 for all to enjoy.
Lucy Dickens
The elements in the environment—every leaf, animal, cloud—they, without question bend gently toward the light. So do I. It’s with this notion that I collaborate with my environment to bring these spectacular scenes in nature to canvas. I am so much a part of my paintings, that the paintbrush is more or less an extension of my heart and mind. And this collaboration of the elements, me included, combines to transform a simple piece of canvas into an experience to share.
This is my intention; to take in phenomenal scenes and express my gratitude for being part of it by painting landscapes, botanicals, and wildlife from around the world. I am merely a part of it. All this is the expression of love and beauty given to us by our creator and I’m honored to be able to recreate His masterful work in my paintings.
When I began to explore my talents, I was, well, a blank canvas ready to be transformed. To develop my work, the steps I took began before I knew I was taking them. First, I learned the possibilities of capturing the beauty of nature through the work of my parents—one a photographer and the other a watercolorist. As my gift of painting unfolded over the years, I studied great masters, especially the Hudson River Valley painters, such as Thomas Cole and Frederic Edwin Church. The way they handled the atmosphere and light, a sense of the divine, draws me deeply and influences my work today. The classes and instruction at the Scottsdale Artists’ School, and other one on one instruction, including the guidance of Jason Horejs, of Xanadu Gallery, brought my work that much further, including embracing the fundamentals of the art business.
Another component that feeds into my work is the experience I share with each painting. Whether I’ve traveled halfway across the world or just outside my front door, I’m not only looking at every scene as a potential painting, but I’m stepping into the adventure and bringing back with me the thoughts, feelings, adventures, and experiences to share with others. They say ‘every picture tells a story,’ and I’m sharing this journey hoping to bring viewers along with me. I want them to become engaged and find the same joy in the moment I did when I first experienced it. I want to bring light, hope, beauty, and a sense of grace through my work and words.
All these elements are intentional and it’s how and why I create. It’s all a part of my daily life, of every moment. It is experiencing, capturing, and sharing these moments wherever they may be. Being able to gaze into a scene and renew and recharge from it, and then bring it to someone else is a gift from God I don’t take for granted. It’s one of the reasons I spend time in that gaze as I know it’s fleeting. The opportunity to experience and capture it will not last so I intentionally take it all in and then reach for my brushes to recreate the magic!
The enjoyment of painting, sharing, and storytelling is endless! Whether through art shows, representation, events, or publishings; to know that my work can land in front of so many eyes and engage the spirit of viewers means my work is not just for me. Each brushstroke is for someone else. Each story is me sharing the experience with them. It has been shared with me by God and the work I do is simply paying it forward.
Marjie Risk
Born and raised in Arizona, Marjie has an appreciation for the environmental diversity of the area in terms of habitat, elevation, plant life, etc. With over twenty-four years in natural resource management, she has found that her art is inspired by the beauty of nature and some of the precious natural resources of Arizona: water, copper, and turquoise.
Her studio name, Same Moon Creations, was derived from the connections we have with each other and the world around us. No matter where we are or where we go, we all look upon the same moon. She strives to create environmental and natural resource based artwork using various types of metal and handcrafted, hand-fired ceramics. Her work varies from ceramic creations with supporting metal structures to stand-alone metal sculptures. Most recently, she has developed a series of whimsical steel creatures that are unique and made largely from salvaged metal. She really enjoys creating different visual effects with steel and copper patinas on her metalwork and exploring the varied possibilities of the unique blend of glazes on her ceramic pieces.
Marjie has exhibited her work at various locations in the Phoenix and Tucson areas as well as in Vail and Breckenridge, Colorado, and various locations in Northern California.
Jan Downey
My inclination for creativity began at my childhood kitchen table. I was fortunate to have parents who supported experimentation with many kinds of traditional media and encouraged me to love discovery.
Art has always been an important component of my identity. It connects me to a place of calm. After beginning my career as a Cultural Anthropologist, the ability to escape into creative pursuits became even more important, as my full schedule included travel, teaching, living with, and studying people far from home. Producing artwork is always fulfilling, but it also provides a respite from the rigors of daily obligations and life demands.
Discovery and documentation are central to anthropology fieldwork. There are so many ways of being human! This kind of discovery is as exciting to me now as it was when I first started learning about how humans got where we are now, and speculating on where we are heading.
The time spent in my studio is precious time rejuvenating my sense of self, place, connection to others, and to the larger world. Time spent preparing and teaching anthropology is fulfilling work because it reminds us all that every culture sees themselves as important, special, unique, correct, and worthy of living as they want to live.
Steven Nesheim
First born in Freeborn County, Minnesota, distinguished me on January 1,1949. My dad got a hand painted silk tie.
My formative years were spent in Minnesota, Iowa, and the Dakotas, until graduation from high school in 1967. Six letters in my first name, seven in my last. I received a scholarship to the San Francisco Art Institute, where Bruce Nauman taught me to think visually. Later I discovered he influenced me through phenomenology. Nauman was phenomenal.
The culture of art within a culture became the focus for my master's degree. I became an art educator. Belief systems inspired me to design curricula around visual thinking, which I taught during the next 35 years, seven of those in Hong Kong.
During my tenure in Hong Kong, I was awarded a fellowship to Yale Divinity School to study Chinese and Christian symbols. Returning to Hong Kong I founded an organization of Chinese Christian artists. We organized the first exhibit of Christian artists at the Hong Kong Art Centre, combined with a commemoration of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. I returned to the States after we developed a program to bring resources into Hong Kong’s Vietnamese refugee camps, culminating in an exhibit and a concert.
Teaching taught me many things. I learned that my teaching residencies in Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Maryland and Hong Kong had informed my visual thinking. As an artist who took up residence with the Chippewa or Chinese, I’ve learned more than I taught. Bruce Nauman taught me that. And now I find myself in Arizona, where he lives just across the border. My wife and I might go to visit him. I could wear my dad’s hand painted silk tie.