Kevin Red Star
Kevin Red Star was born on the Crow Indian Reservation in Lodge Grass, Montana. He was raised in a family that values art and culture, where he developed an early love of drawing and music. This exposure and encouragement sustained him during his years in grade school during the time when Crow students were denied association with their language and cultural heritage.
Later, when he was one of 150 students chosen to attend the newly established Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, he was encouraged to explore his history and culture through modern art techniques. Upon graduation, Red Star and several other Native students received scholarships to the San Francisco Art Institute. Here he was exposed to the avant garde and political and social concerns of post-modern art.
Later, when he was one of 150 students chosen to attend the newly established Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, he was encouraged to explore his history and culture through modern art techniques. Upon graduation, Red Star and several other Native students received scholarships to the San Francisco Art Institute. Here he was exposed to the avant garde and political and social concerns of post-modern art.
Bob Canning
My work is both old and new…I try to reflect an honest “Spirit”…which is lean and hard yet heartfelt at the same time…but even in their colorful form, I hope the soul of the subject is easily recognized.”
Bob was born in a small town in Ontario, Canada to inspiring parents whose families were rich in the tradition of farming and horse breeding.
He started drawing and painting at a very young age, and after finishing high school, Bob earned a scholarship to Art College in Toronto. After three years studying with famed life-drawing artist, Dr. Robert Ross, Bob found employment as an illustrator and art director in advertising. This path led him into the film business as a Director for the next 25 years. This fruitful career earned Bob accolades and awards from around the world.
In 1995, Bob started to pursue another road…his first love….drawing and painting…specifically, Cowboys and the American Indian.
Bob and his wife Pat, their cat, Princess and a Sheltie named Paco, now live in St. Petersburg, Florida. Bob and Pat previously lived in Durango, Colorado for 15 years where his career grew to make him one of the premier western painters in America. This is where he added the bold and bright colors and found a new and exciting edge to his paintings.
Bob was born in a small town in Ontario, Canada to inspiring parents whose families were rich in the tradition of farming and horse breeding.
He started drawing and painting at a very young age, and after finishing high school, Bob earned a scholarship to Art College in Toronto. After three years studying with famed life-drawing artist, Dr. Robert Ross, Bob found employment as an illustrator and art director in advertising. This path led him into the film business as a Director for the next 25 years. This fruitful career earned Bob accolades and awards from around the world.
In 1995, Bob started to pursue another road…his first love….drawing and painting…specifically, Cowboys and the American Indian.
Bob and his wife Pat, their cat, Princess and a Sheltie named Paco, now live in St. Petersburg, Florida. Bob and Pat previously lived in Durango, Colorado for 15 years where his career grew to make him one of the premier western painters in America. This is where he added the bold and bright colors and found a new and exciting edge to his paintings.
Suann Davin
I was adopted at infancy and grew up in a small town outside Tampa, Florida. I first became interested in art at a very early age, mostly for therapeutic value. and so my parents encouraged my artistic pursuit. After graduating from High School, I applied to the Fine arts program at The Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota Florida. After my first year I switched to Graphic Design and graduated with a B.A. in Fine Arts.
I applied to the Institute of American Indian Art in Santa Fe, NM and received a Associates Degree in Two Dimensional art. I have been very fortunate to meet established artists, apprenticing with a metal sculptor and assisting some others in their work.
My inspiration in art has mostly been focused on my self beliefs and truths revealed to me about the outside world and my spiritual understanding that I am not alone.
I applied to the Institute of American Indian Art in Santa Fe, NM and received a Associates Degree in Two Dimensional art. I have been very fortunate to meet established artists, apprenticing with a metal sculptor and assisting some others in their work.
My inspiration in art has mostly been focused on my self beliefs and truths revealed to me about the outside world and my spiritual understanding that I am not alone.
D YaeL Kelley
D YaeL Kelley - Artist Statement & Bio
My work explores the Organic through an Expressionist lens. After years of working in a traditional manner, I have intentionally abandoned those methods to search for what is beyond.
I find my inspiration all around me, in stones, shells, the movement of the air, and in the shadows as they play across the ground. I explore transcendence, inner journeys and earth connections. Working in oil, my method involves layer upon layer of thin glazes, incorporating powdered pigments, gold and silver leaf. I open myself to the painting allowing it to guide me, like having a conversation. My work is deeply personal, coming from my own journey, but it is the experience that you as the viewer have with the work, what you see, what you feel, that is most important to me as an artist.
Listening to inner voices, searching for that perfect pure color, that exact line, the precise curve, stroke, movement of the brush. What do I want from my work? I want to stand across the room and see truth looking back from the canvas.
YaeL Kelley lives and works at her studio in the Artist Enclave of Historic Kenwood in St. Petersburg Florida. Selling her first works at age 14, her eclectic heritage: a colonial family with Cherokee, Scots Irish and German ancestry strongly influence her current explorations. Born in the Ohio river valley, growing up in Florida, she has lived in England, Arizona and Texas. While in England she attended Suffolk College of Art and Design. Working in the visual arts, museums and in the theatre, her career in the arts spans more than 40 years as a professional painter, arts advocate and certified instructor/ demonstration artist for several major arts manufactures, which include Crayola Crayons, Winsor and Newton, and Daler Rowney. She is a past president and artist in residence of the Center for Contemporary Arts of Abilene, past vice-president of the Texas Visual Arts Association, served the city of St. Petersburg on the Arts Advisory Committee, the Mayor’s Transition Team for Arts and Culture and just completed 6 years on the board of the St. Petersburg Arts Alliance. YaeL has enjoyed many solo shows and group exhibitions throughout her career and is represented in St. Petersburg by Red Cloud Indian Arts Gallery. Her paintings are in collections internationally.
ELVIS LUNA
Born on November 4, 1970, in Pucallpa, Peru, the very heart of the Amazon. At an early age, his mother surrounded him with music, flowers and poetry in the hope that he would develop an interest in the arts. His given name reflects her love of music and the indomitable spirit she imparted in him.
When Elvis was seven, he was sent to live with his uncle, a well-known curandero, or medicine man. For the next eight years, the young Elvis would endure the rigors of an apprenticeship into shamanism. It was then that he was introduced to the traditional belief system of the Amazonian spirit world, which describes an energetic substrate just beneath the visible world. Elvis explains that most Peruvians, and foreigners, are not prepared to understand or make contact with the plant and animal spirit world. "They look at the jungle and ask what they can get from it. The shaman sees the plants, as they really are, energetic beings with the same spirit and intelligence that we have. Once a person truly realizes this, he will never be the same again. He will no longer needlessly destroy or harm any living thing".
When he turned fifteen, Elvis returned home and began painting in watercolors. His tender renderings of native flora quickly gained him a local reputation and the attention of the world-renowned Peruvian painter Pablo Amaringo. An accomplished curandero himself, Sr. Amaringo furthered the young artists' spiritual insights. "The world that we see," Amaringo would say, "Is only a costume covering the souls of living things, it is the job of the artist to reveal this to others."
Elvis' landscapes look as if they were done Plein-Air, painted directly from life. With a delicate sense of the sublime, he gently leads us past the surface and into the heart of the Amazon. His intuitive understanding of light, and its manifold effects on the darker reflections of the jungle, offer us scenes that burn and glow in the imagination. In 1992, Elvis began exhibiting his works in museums and galleries in Columbia, Mexico, Brazil, England, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Germany and Italy. His paintings are part of numerous private collections in those countries. In 2003, he began his first representation here in the United States.
Following his vision beyond his own artistic career, Elvis founded the Green World Children's Amazon Art School, in Peru. His students, approximately 175 local children from outlying villages, are taught free of charge, in simple open-air classrooms. "It is not only painting that I teach the children, but, more importantly, I share the knowledge of the plant spirit-world and the idea that everything we see is the flesh of the world. When this happens, it transforms their lives. They naturally begin to show more self-respect, to share with each other, and respect their environment. This is the way that environmental work needs to be done, not from some NGO, (Non-Governmental Organization), sending money and telling us how to manage our land. It must begin in the hearts of the people that live here."
When Elvis was seven, he was sent to live with his uncle, a well-known curandero, or medicine man. For the next eight years, the young Elvis would endure the rigors of an apprenticeship into shamanism. It was then that he was introduced to the traditional belief system of the Amazonian spirit world, which describes an energetic substrate just beneath the visible world. Elvis explains that most Peruvians, and foreigners, are not prepared to understand or make contact with the plant and animal spirit world. "They look at the jungle and ask what they can get from it. The shaman sees the plants, as they really are, energetic beings with the same spirit and intelligence that we have. Once a person truly realizes this, he will never be the same again. He will no longer needlessly destroy or harm any living thing".
When he turned fifteen, Elvis returned home and began painting in watercolors. His tender renderings of native flora quickly gained him a local reputation and the attention of the world-renowned Peruvian painter Pablo Amaringo. An accomplished curandero himself, Sr. Amaringo furthered the young artists' spiritual insights. "The world that we see," Amaringo would say, "Is only a costume covering the souls of living things, it is the job of the artist to reveal this to others."
Elvis' landscapes look as if they were done Plein-Air, painted directly from life. With a delicate sense of the sublime, he gently leads us past the surface and into the heart of the Amazon. His intuitive understanding of light, and its manifold effects on the darker reflections of the jungle, offer us scenes that burn and glow in the imagination. In 1992, Elvis began exhibiting his works in museums and galleries in Columbia, Mexico, Brazil, England, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Germany and Italy. His paintings are part of numerous private collections in those countries. In 2003, he began his first representation here in the United States.
Following his vision beyond his own artistic career, Elvis founded the Green World Children's Amazon Art School, in Peru. His students, approximately 175 local children from outlying villages, are taught free of charge, in simple open-air classrooms. "It is not only painting that I teach the children, but, more importantly, I share the knowledge of the plant spirit-world and the idea that everything we see is the flesh of the world. When this happens, it transforms their lives. They naturally begin to show more self-respect, to share with each other, and respect their environment. This is the way that environmental work needs to be done, not from some NGO, (Non-Governmental Organization), sending money and telling us how to manage our land. It must begin in the hearts of the people that live here."
