Drawing+ Painting Alumni

James Galindo (b. 1983) is a Southern California oil painter and a graduate of Laguna College of Art & Design’s bachelors and masters programs. He is currently represented by Dawson Cole Fine Art in Palm Desert, CA, where he exhibits three dimensional paintings on glass and acrylic. Notable commissions include paintings for the Nolet Distillery in Schiedam, Netherlands, Green Valley Hospital in Tucson, AZ, and artwork featured in various shows and advertisements in the Los Angeles TV industry. James has taught at a number of art studios and colleges in Southern California, including Los Angeles Academy of Figurative Art, Brentwood Art Center, Kazone Art Academy, FT Art Academy, Rio Hondo College, Saddleback College, Orange Coast College and Laguna College of Art and Design. James has more than 15 years of teaching experience and specializes in foundation level drawing and painting.

Matt Dickson teaches Life Drawing and Intermediate/Advanced Drawing at New School for the Arts and throughout the greater Phoenix area. He holds a BFA in Fine Art from Laguna College of Art & Design and also studied at Los Angeles Academy of Figurative Arts. In addition to his collegiate studies he also spent more than two years studying privately under portrait painter Adrian Gottlieb. During that time he developed a strong passion for classical techniques and the fine arts which is reflected in his teachings as well as his own art work. He currently works in oil, charcoal and produces decorative carpentry. Matt is also an exhibiting artist who has shown his work locally as well as in New York and Los Angeles.
www.mattdickson.net

A native of southern California, Elizabeth McGhee has exhibited at the Festival of Arts in Laguna Beach since 2010.Her work has been displayed in museums and universities across the country, and she is both nationally and internationally collected. She is represented by Gallery Henoch in New York, NY.

www.elizabethmcghee.com

Sue Greenwood Fine Art, Laguna Art Museum, Terry Martin Gallery, Meyer Fine Art
Jason Kowalski was raised in the Upper Midwest and moved to Laguna Beach, CA in 2005 to study painting at Laguna College of Art and Design. Jason's professional career began with great success when in 2009 his first solo exhibition at Terrence Rogers Fine Art in Santa Monica, CA sold out in the first two weeks. He's been exhibiting in California and throughout the country ever since and continues to recieve acclaim as a tremendous talent in the representational painting world. In 2012 Jason and his wife relocated to the banks of the Mississippi River in Maiden Rock, WI. There he finds inspiration in the beauty of the river landscape, history of the towns, buildings, and locals.
"New things that have fresh coats of paint and clean lines command our visual awareness. Things that have been used and worn out are often naively labeled unattractive. My work is both a statement of the effect of time on a location, as well as a vehicle to arouse attention to things that are often forgotten. Growing up in the Midwest I was constantly surrounded by things that deteriorated over the natural course of time. Human nature dictates that we ignore or look past such blemishes. Abandoned and left in a state of neglect places and things are consumed and discarded like pieces of trash. Using different types of paint and mixed media, I hope to bring awareness to the forgotten beauty of those locations by creating a body of work that stimulates memories one has about the places I paint. Ultimately, my goal is to create contemporary paintings that somehow brings this unique and quickly departing beauty back to social awareness."
www.jasonkowalski.com

Sullivan Goss Gallery / Women Painting Women Founder
Alia E. El-Bermani was raised in a small town just south of Boston, where she spent most of her childhood enjoying the outdoors and discovering the natural history of the south shore of Massachusetts.
Alia El-Bermani started her art training as a young child at the North River Arts Society, which is a small community run association for people, of all ages, interested in the visual arts. She showed early promise earning a Silver Key in the national Scholastic Art competition held at the World Trade Center in Boston. In 1994, she briefly attended Roger Williams University in Bristol Rhode Island a large liberal arts college which didn't quite have the clear focus that Ms. El-Bermani was seeking. In 1996 she transferred to Laguna College of Art and Design in Laguna Beach California which is known for its strong emphasis on classical figurative training.
While studying at Laguna College of Art and Design Alia El-Bermani received the Plotkin Award for Excellence in Fine Arts. Then, in 2000 she received her BFA from LCAD, summa com laude. Ever since, she has enjoyed continued success as a fine artist. She is currently represented by two premier galleries, Sullivan Goss Gallery in Santa Barbara California, and The Loft Galeria in Puerto Vallarta Mexico. This talented young painter has had five Solo Exhibitions. Her figurative and still life paintings and drawings have been included in several group shows across the country as well as showcased in Museums such as the Palm Springs Desert Museum in California, the Anchorage Museum of History and Art in Alaska, the West Valley Art Museum in Arizona and most recently, the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art in Toronto. Several articles have been written on her work in such prestigious periodicals as Art Week, The Independent and LA Weekly. She currently lives and works in Cary, NC with her husband and two young, talented children.
www.alia-fineart.com

California Art Club, Art Renewal Center, Southwest Art, The Artist's Magazine
Candice Bohannon is an American contemporary representational artist. She was born in Sacramento, CA in 1982. Raised in the rural forested landscape of the foothills of the sierra nevada mountains, her naturalistic aesthetic in art was honed from an early age. After high school, Bohannon enrolled in art college, and after intense studies in painting, drawing, sculpting, art history, philosophy and aesthetics, she graduated from the Laguna College of Art and Design in 2005 with a BFA in painting/drawing and a minor in sculpture. It was there at LCAD that Candice met her future husband, fellow artist and best friend, Julio Reyes. After nearly 10 years in southern California, they moved back to rural northern California where they currently reside.
Bohannon's artwork, an often-brooding combination of emotive figurative pieces and intensely studied works from life and nature, has already garnered the attention of many fine art connoisseurs, trade publications and artists. Her body of work expresses immense waves of controlled power and emotional sensitivity as she looks out at the world and attempts to share through art the touchingly sincere philosophical search for truth and meaning in our human existence. The artist describes much of her work's content as: the invisible yet perceptible quality of awareness, emotions, experiences, memories and expectations, the ethereal nature of the human soul and a searching for comfort and familiarity in the sublime unknown. Here is a refreshing example of a contemporary figurative artist who is not a cynical postmodern artist or a clinical academic realist. Bohannon's soulful work is firmly planted the inexplicably complex nature of human existence.
www.candicebohannon.com

Andrew Myers Studio
Andrew Myers was born in Braunshweig, Germany, and raised in Ciudad Real, Spain. He now resides in Laguna Beach, California, where he has lived since attending the Laguna College of Art and Design (formerly the Art Institute of Southern California). The first time he set foot in the classroom, he was amazed to see students depicting live nude models in clay; a seemingly archaic art form he had only seen in books.
Distinct. Expressive. Tactile.
These are perhaps the three most fitting words to describe Andrew's unique brand of contemporary artwork. But linguistic descriptions fail to adequately capture the progressive mixed media works he creates with screws, oil paint, charcoal, bronze, cement, and found objects. To truly experience Andrew's art, it must be seen and even touched.
One of the artist's favorite memories was watching a blind man experience his work for the first time. As the man ran his hands over a large three-dimensional portrait tediously constructed with tens of thousands of screws over hundreds of man hours, his blank expression suddenly transformed into a warm smile. He could feel what others could only see.
www.andrewmyersart.com

Stefan Cummings was born in Washington, the fourth of seven children. Possessed of an avid interest in psychology and history, Stefan has always had a deep love of portraiture, one that lead him to the Atelier of Mark Kang-O'Higgins, in Seattle, where he was immersed in the study of the figure and the old masters. He was then able to obtain a full tuition scholarship at Laguna College of Art and Design (LCAD), continuing his study of traditional drawing and painting while obtaining his Bachelor of Fine Arts.
Like the Impressionists and Call to Order artists at the turn of the 20th century, Stefan reconciles traditional art forms with the realities of the present era. His landscapes and portraits make use of light, texture and gesture to convey the ethereal isolation of the suburbs, incorporating elements of realism and abstraction to bridge the past to the present.
Stefan is currently the youngest exhibitor at the Laguna Beach Festival of the Arts and his drawings can be found in collections throughout the United States. He will graduate with honors from LCAD in 2015.
www.stefancummings.com

South Coast Art Center
Brianna Lee is a native California artist with a love of beauty and the human form. Born into an artistic family in Visalia, CA, her passion for art was encouraged and nurtured at a young age. Her work is a continuous search for the intrinsic beauty of all life around her. She gleans inspiration from the people she meets, the abundance of nature and Dutch masters such as Vermeer, Rembrandt and Rubens.
She studied Fine Art, Education and Western Art History at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Ms. Lee later moved to Los Angeles to study contemporary and traditional painting techniques under artists such as Ignat Ignatov, Aaron Westerberg and Adrian Gottlieb. Ms. Lee opened her studio doors to students in 2009 and has since taught for Glendale Community College and Kline Academy of Art.
In addition to building a successful teaching career, Ms. Lee is advancing her degree at Laguna College of Art and Design while accepting commissions and showing her work in select exhibitions throughout Los Angeles and Laguna Beach, CA.
www.briannaleefineart.com

Grand Central Atelier's Water Street Atelier New York
Angela (b. 1977) grew up in the Bay Area of California. She received her BFA from Laguna College of Art and Design and, after teaching for a few years, pursued classical training under the mentorship of Jacob Collins at the Grand Central Atelier's Water Street Atelier. She now teaches at her own studio, in Asheville, NC, as well as part time at the Grand Central Atelier, the Beaux-Arts Atelier in New York City and many workshops nation wide. Angela is a recipient of various awards including the Morris and Alma Schapiro Achievement Award, the ARC Scholarship First Prize Award, and the Alfred Ross Achievement Award.
www.angelacunninghamfineart.com