Bio:

Russell Black was born in Northridge, CA, and grew up in the San Fernando Valley. After attending UCLA and a brief tour of duty in the USAF, Russell was employed by General Telephone of Southern California where, in 1984, he was the drafting project leader for GTE's involvement in the summer Olympic games.  

After leaving the phone company in 1990, Russell opened up his own creative design firm specializing in product design and his clients included Nike, Reebok, McDonalds, and many individual entrepreneurs. At this time he also taught college accredited courses in art and design at the Learning Tree University in both Thousand Oaks and Reseda, CA.  

Russell moved north to the East Bay area of San Francisco in 1996, and taught art for the city of Pleasanton for six years.  

In my landscape paintings I paint the harmony I sense in nature. I want my paintings to give the viewer a feeling of spiritual elevation; the same way nature gives man this feeling of oneness, of wholeness, of belonging. The color shape relationships I have chosen express this feeling in the painting. Sometimes I work directly from nature, but most of the time I work from memory and imagination. 

When that wonderful moment of "experience with nature" that spiritual space shows up ... the painting is completed. It's been said, "My paintings possess a highly sophisticated sense of the poetic and spiritual".

Janet Tenneson-McCarty lives in St. George, UT and summers in Door County, Wisconsin. Her Wisconsin/barn landscapes come from her intense love of nature and especially barns in the landscape. She says, "Barns are an American icon and an intrinsic part of our Wisconsin Landscape. I try to capture their stillness, their essence...that spiritual quality which is universal and timeless. Her Provence landscapes express her love of the French countryside, especially the intense light in Provence, France, which gives the landscape such rich pure colors.

Her latest desert landscapes express her newfound love of the Utah landscape. "My palette changed after hiking and absorbing the desert colors. My paintings are sometimes bolder or more muted as I try to capture the magnificent stillness around me."