2024 Competition Judges

The art competition judging occurs Thursday, September 26, 10 Am – noon.

A selection of the judges’ artwork will be on display (and for sale) in the Escalante Town Park Exhibit Tent.

 

Bill Cramer is best known for his striking oil paintings of the American West. Growing up in the west, Bill always had an interest in exploring nature and creating art. As a longtime rock climber, he spent much of his youth enjoying the more vertical aspects of the landscape. After receiving a fine arts degree from CSU Long Beach, he moved to Arizona with his wife Michelle to be closer to the scenery they both enjoyed. It was there that he discovered the delight and challenges of plein air painting, his outdoor experiences providing much of the insight and inspiration for his landscape paintings. Bill works in a style best described as Impressionistic Realism, where strong brushwork and colors are used to express the vitality and beauty of the natural world. You can see his work at https://www.billcramerstudio.com/.

 

Helga Watkins has had a wide-ranging career in graphic, environmental and experiential design, as well as higher education. She recently retired from her professorship at the University of Las Vegas Nevada where she founded the graphic design Graphic Design  and Media degree program and taught in the Entertainment Engineering and Design  program. Helga works and paints from her fabrication shop and studio in Kanab, Utah. You can see more of her work here.

 

 

 

Lonny Granston has been selected for the 2024 Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument Artist in Residence – Plein Air Program.

A critic once described Lonny Granston’s work as something that the love child of Vincent Van Gough and Georgia O’Keefe would produce. After high school, he took almost 30 years away from painting, and as a result, his use of pastels is not what would be described as traditional. He uses these ‘expensive crayons’ to create vivid and unique landscapes that are full of color and non-conformity and has won a number ‘best of’ awards in plein air festivals in Utah and Colorado. In addition to his artistic endeavors, he is an acceptable family physician, pretty okay husband and father and an accomplished tall tale teller.