Artist Happenings

Several WFA artists have been juried into The Arvada Center's "Art Of The State 2025", a tri-annual exhibition highlighting the breadth and depth of Colorado's visual arts community. The opening reception for the exhibition is January 16, and runs through March 30th 2025.

Norman Epp

Peter Illig

Jamie Gray 

Melanie Walker

Mark Penner-Howell 

Kevin Hoth

Ellen Moershel 

Kim Ferrer

Arvada Center

This week, December 3-8 is Art Basel/Art Miami Fairs, one of the largest international art fairs in the world.  Heather Patterson will have this large painting on view at Art Miami, Booth 533 with Andrea Schwartz Gallery out of San Francisco.  She will also be attending the fairs this year.

West Shore Community College (WSCC) is pleased to host artist Allison Svoboda for a unique series of exhibitions, workshops and community events titled Earth as Our True Nature throughout the 2024-2025 academic year.  Unlike a conventional exhibition where an artist will bring finished artworks to display, this series takes on a more organic approach with the artist producing new artworks on the main campus in the Manierre Dawson Gallery. 

Bryan Leister will open his studio for the Blue Silo Studios Holiday Open House on Saturday, Dec. 7th from noon until 5 PM. He will be sharing his process, showing new works and work-in-progress along with more than 10 other artists who will open their studios as well. Blue Silo is located at 4701 National Western Drive in the stockyards area of Denver.

Get To Know:

Give me the basics.
I was born in Germany and raised as an Army kid. I moved every 1–2 years, living in places like Turkey, Virginia, and across the South. I ultimately attended Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, where I pursued a BFA in illustration instead of architecture (as encouraged by my parents), following my passion for art. Since 2007, Denver has been home.

Tell me about your art journey.
I was always drawing growing up, but art really became a focus for me in high school. I was first exposed to an art history class while attending high school in Turkey. I remember seeing Van Ike’s paintings in this course and was super impressed. Coming back to the US, we stopped in Rome at The Vatican, so those are basically the first paintings I ever saw in real life. I spent 8 hour, lost from my parents, just staring at the works. Prior visits to Greek ruins and seeing these iconic works in the Vatican really sparked a deep appreciation for the classics. Early on, I painted murals and experimented with various mediums, eventually earning a BFA in illustration from Virginia Commonwealth University. After graduating, I established myself as an oil painter for magazines and publishing companies.

Over the years, my career evolved through four distinct phases. My first, previously mentioned, as an oil painter creating illustrations known for their realism. In 1997, I transitioned into digital illustration, using 3D rendering and emerging technologies to redefine my style and expand my repertoire. In 2005, I earned an MFA in digital fine art from George Mason University, launching my third career as a professor at CU Denver, where I taught design and illustration for 16 years. Simultaneously, I explored interactive art and digital media as part of my academic research. This led me to residencies at Ucross and Redline, which is where my work was first seen by Walker Fine Art.

Now retired and honored with the title of Professor Emeritus, I’m embarking on my fourth career as a full-time artist, blending traditional techniques with cutting-edge technology. Retirement has allowed me to focus entirely on my own artistic pursuits, free from the demands of teaching and research. While my passion for technology remains, my primary goal has been to return to painting, reuniting with the medium that first defined my career.

What inspires you?
I’m inspired by the idea of randomness and chance as a starting point in my work. Whether digital or traditional, I love presenting myself with a problem and figuring out how to solve it—rolling the dice and transforming chaos into something people connect with. My recent work was inspired by a text-to-image AI generator, which created complex visuals that I’d never have the patience to draw by hand.

For example, in my current series I used the same prompt for each piece, but with a different random seed, allowing the AI to generate unique starting points. This process mirrors the structured randomness found in nature, like cloud formations. For me, the challenge lies in taking these generated patterns and translating them into meaningful, immersive works of art. It’s this interplay of chance, problem-solving, and creation that drives my passion.

What are you most proud of in your art career? 
One of my proudest moments was painting a Time magazine cover. In college, I set that as my ultimate goal, and six or seven years later, I achieved it with a parody of Grant Wood’s American Gothic in 1994.

I’m also proud of my ability to adapt and transition seamlessly through different stages of my career—from oil painting to digital illustration, teaching, and now focusing on my own art. Each phase has taught me something new and allowed me to grow as an artist.

What are you looking forward to this year?
This year, I’m excited to push my boundaries with large-scale paintings in my beautiful new studio. I’ve always loved figuring things out, and working on large canvases presents a new challenge: how to bring immersive, detailed landscapes to life while staying true to my process of starting with randomness.

I’m particularly looking forward to my 2025 show at Walker, where my next series of paintings will feature emerging mountain forms. These works won’t just repeat familiar motifs—they’ll evolve organically from chance, creating something fresh and immersive. It’s the largest I’ve ever painted, and this process is helping me rediscover and reinvent my relationship with painting.

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