As part of our effort to continue to help artists and art galleries thrive, we’re proud to bring you this week’s “Virtual Gallery Walk.” Browse the artwork below and click the image itself to learn more about it, including how to contact the gallery.
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Want to see your gallery featured in an upcoming Virtual Gallery Walk? Contact us at [email protected] to advertise today. Don’t delay, as spaces are first come, first served, and availability is limited.
How did you develop your unique style?
Chelsie Murfee: I’ve always been drawn to dry media, especially graphite, for its balance of precision and softness. My mixed media drawing style developed from my desire to expand the graphite range and deepen dark tones in my drawings. I spend a lot of time exploring dark scales — noticing which marks feel warm or cool, how some reflect light while others absorb it completely leaving a rich, buttery finish. Through careful blending, I weave together warm and cool dark tones into a unified surface.
What is the best thing about being an artist?
Chelsie Murfee: For me, the best part is having the freedom to follow what inspires me. I get to stay curious, keep exploring, and see where the work takes me. I also really value the connections that come from a creative lifestyle — the conversations, shared experiences, and relationships that build around the art or through the creation of the work.
To see more of Chelsie’s work, visit:
website
As part of our effort to continue to help artists and art galleries thrive, we’re proud to bring you this week’s “Virtual Gallery Walk.” Browse the artwork below and click the image itself to learn more about it, including how to contact the gallery.
***
***
***
Want to see your gallery featured in an upcoming Virtual Gallery Walk? Contact us at [email protected] to advertise today. Don’t delay, as spaces are first come, first served, and availability is limited.
This year the Farnsworth Art Museum (Rockland, Maine) has mounted three exhibitions devoted to gifted female artists of different generations.
Coming first chronologically is “Capturing Her Environment: Women Artists, 1870–1930,” a survey of nine women who worked in Maine yet were typically dismissed as hobby painters or overshadowed by their male artist relatives. On view through July 20, 2025, this display features works drawn primarily from the museum’s collection, including miniatures, still lifes, landscapes, and botanical illustrations.
A summer resident of Maine, Ann Craven (b. 1967) is the focus of “Ann Craven: Painted Time (2020–2024),” on view through January 4, 2026. The show moves beyond the motifs for which she is best known — the moon, flowers, and birds — to explore the mechanics of painting itself. Here seriality, repetition, and shifts in scale function as both meditative and formal devices, connecting viewers to the recurring rhythms of nature.
Finally, painter Anne Buckwalter (b. 1987) may be based in Durham, Maine, but she is deeply inspired by the folk traditions of her Pennsylvania Dutch heritage. She arranges disparate objects in mysterious domestic interiors, and this show of new paintings and two site-specific murals offers what she calls a “mash-up of objects and patterns from iconic New England spinster homes (the Farnsworth homestead, Sarah Orne Jewett House, Emily Dickinson house… maybe others?) and some of my own personal/domestic objects.” It closes September 21, just as summer draws to a close in Maine.
For more information, visit farnsworthmuseum.org.
View more art museum announcements here at FineArtConnoisseur.com.
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) is presenting the exhibition “Picturing Nature: The Stuart Collection of 18th- and 19th-Century British Landscapes and Beyond.” On view are more than 70 watercolors, drawings, prints, and oil sketches created by such talents as John Constable, J.M.W. Turner, Paul Sandby, Thomas Gainsborough, Richard Wilson, John Robert Cozens, Samuel Palmer, and John Sell Cotman.
The museum has acquired all of them since 2015, when Francita Stuart Koelsch Ulmer established the Stuart Collection in memory of her parents, Robert Cummins Stuart and Frances Wells Stuart. The family has long been engaged with both the MFAH and British art: Ulmer’s great-grandmother helped found the museum in the 1920s, and Ulmer inherited a Constable oil sketch from her grandmother.
The collection highlights Britain’s “golden age of watercolor” and artists’ shift in attention from topographical and descriptive landscape scenes toward intensely personal treatments of nature. They were responding not only to such Romantic poets as William Wordsworth, but also to their era’s rapid industrialization, which produced an urban middle class who increasingly sought refuge in rural settings. From the late 18th century onward, British artists earned global acclaim for their innovative techniques in watercolor, raising its status from a preparatory medium to a prestigious artform in its own right.
The Stuart Collection’s guiding hand, MFAH curator Dena M. Woodall, notes that the museum owned only a handful of British drawings before this initiative began. She has sought to obtain multiple examples by key artists, as well as pairs of works created by a teacher and his student, such as Francis Towne and John White Abbott. The collection’s cornerstone is the oil sketch illustrated here, which showcases Constable’s mastery of fleeting atmospheric effects.
On View: “Picturing Nature”
Museum of Fine Arts Houston
mfah.org
through July 6, 2025
View more art museum announcements here at FineArtConnoisseur.com.
What is the best thing about being an artist?
Karen Ann Hitt: Becoming known for painting the effects of the sky, I’m blessed that I may keep my head in the clouds! Seriously though, continually seeking studying opportunities for my profession is an awesome thing about being an artist and sharing with others how to always look up too. I have had many say I have taught them to see the ‘light bulbs’ in life.
How did you develop your unique style?
Karen Ann Hitt: From my first year of college to today, by learning from the ‘Master’s.’ In my very first college painting class at Parsons School of Design in NY, my instructor assigned me to paint a Sargent of choice. Went to the library to research, and found what I thought the best portrait subject. Taking it to class with me, I shared with my instructor;” it’s a lot easier to find reference of Generals than Sergeants’” Yes, my instructor fell out of her chair! Coming from a military family straight from High School, at eighteen, I had never learned of Sargent. That utter embarrassment added to my style. I have NEVER stopped studying the Master Artist to this day. Two beloved quotes: “Ancora Imparo – I am still learning.” Michelangelo said it when he was 87 years old and working on St. Peter’s Basilica. And “Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.”—Leonardo da Vinci
These too define my unique style.
To see more of Karen’s work visit:
website
JEFF BYE: FRAYED EDGES
Cove Street Gallery
Portland, Maine
covestreetarts.com
Through July 12, 2025
Cove Street Gallery is exhibiting the recent paintings of Jeff Bye (b. 1971), who is fascinated by gritty urban, industrial, and waterfront scenes. Blending soft-focus and abstracted passages with others that are sharp and detailed, he conjures a powerful sense of place that might even evoke, for some viewers, the sounds and smells he experienced on site. Particularly impressive are the patinas and textures Bye conveys by scraping away areas of paint and then reworking them.
Bye is especially fascinated by run-down or graffiti-covered buildings — from motels and mom-and-pop storefronts to abandoned theaters and factories. Some of the sites depicted are under threat of demolition, making Bye’s artistry a valuable form of documentation. Many are located in New York City, though this show also includes a group of works illustrating Portland’s waterfront.
Trained at the Rhode Island School of Design and New York Academy of Art, Bye resides in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
The 34th annual Colorado Governor’s Art Show & Sale, one of the largest juried fine art shows to exclusively feature Colorado artists, has named its 2025 award winners.
The 2025 Best in Show was awarded to Crystal DeSpain, who also earned 2024 Award of Merit, 2023 Artist’s Choice, and 2023 Award of Merit honors. An additional 10 artists from across the state took home Awards of Merit.
Awards of Merit presented by Good Samaritan Loveland Village:
● Carol Dallas, “Striving for Balance” (Aurora)
● Denise Dambrackas, “Cruising Altitude” (Denver)
● Sheri Farabaugh, “Where the Lilies Grow” (Thornton)
● Daniel Glanz, “Courtship” (Loveland)
● Tammie Lane, “Cairn” (Aspen)
● Cristian Mora, “What the Swallow Saw” (Denver)
● Desmond O’Hagan, “Near Mount Evans” (Denver)
● Adam Schultz, “Life Skating” (Loveland)
● Jen Starling, “Imperfect Angel” (Arvada)
● Tanner Steed, “Flaming June” (Denver)
The artwork was juried by professional artists and judged on creativity, originality, technique, the quality of artistic composition, and overall appearance.
The Colorado Governor’s Art Show & Sale opened Saturday, May 3, for a six-week-long exhibit at the Loveland Museum with both in-person and online fine art sales. In 2025, 61 Colorado-based artists were selected to participate in the show and Loveland sculptor Rosetta was named the Legacy Artist.
The Governor’s Art Show is presented by Loveland and Thompson Valley Rotary Clubs, in conjunction with the Loveland Museum and endorsed by the Governor of Colorado. The Show is truly Art with Heart as 100% of the net show proceeds supporting community nonprofit programs through the Loveland and Thompson Valley Rotary Clubs.
To learn more and purchase art from the show, visit governorsartshow.org.
Degas Gallery in New Orleans is presenting painter Marcia Holmes’s latest solo exhibition, which she has titled “Sojourn.” She lives and works in Mandeville, Louisiana, just 100 yards from the Tchefuncte River, which makes sense given, in her words, “the magnetic connectivity I have to life around water.”
On view are impressionist and abstract scenes that convey “the power of gestural strokes, organic forms, neutrals, and my love of color,” Holmes says. “I’ve allowed myself a new freedom — improvisation that resonates from within.”
Housed in a historic building, Degas Gallery was named for the French impressionist Edgar Degas, who visited members of his family in New Orleans in 1872–73.
The exhibition runs through June 30, 2025. For more information, please visit thedegasgallery.com.
Join us for an exclusive solo art exhibit featuring the stunning new artwork of renowned artist John Cosby. Each piece reflects his deep connection to the vibrant scenes of the Western states and a little further.
More from the organizers:
Whether you’re an art enthusiast, collector, or simply appreciate the splendor of the natural world, this exhibit is not to be missed. Rogers Gardens is a business in the business of celebrating the beauty of the natural world. This makes for a wonderful environment to have a show that honors the land and seascape of western America. For this show, Cosby has curated a group of 17 works from time recently spent painting the west, from the inland landscapes to coastal and island seascapes.
Cosby currently resides and maintains a studio in San Clemente, California. He works on location around the world and is represented by some of the finest galleries in the country. Cosby is a founding board member of the prestigious Laguna Plein Air Painters Association, an Signature member of California Art Club. Cosby is founder of the Laguna Beach Plein Air Painting Invitational held at the Laguna Art Museum.
From years of painting on location around the world, Cosby has developed his ability to work quickly to capture the essence of the scene. Cosby has been teaching for many years and has guided many of todays artists to a professional level. His work can be found in many private, public and corporate collections around the world.
For more information, visit the Rogers Gardens website.
Attention Art Collectors!
May 20-22, 2025: Visit the Plein Air Convention & Expo’s robust pop-up art gallery at the Nugget Casino Resort in Reno, Nevada, where hundreds of artists, including our master faculty, will have studio and plein air works on display and ready to purchase. Register for the full event at PleinAirConvention.com now.
