About the Artists

Nicole Duennebier received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Maine College of Art with a major in painting. She currently lives and works in Malden, Massachusetts. Duennebier's work explores a range of interests, including the intricacies of darkness, the flora and fauna of sea and land, the aesthetic of 16th century Dutch still-life painting, and the witty and macabre throughout European art history. Earlier this year she was featured in a sold-out solo show, Floral Hex, at 13FOREST Gallery.

Stacey Durand studied printmaking and art education at Montserrat College of Art. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in printmaking in 2002 and completed the art education program in the winter of 2003. In 2008 she received her Masters of Art in Teaching Art from Salem State College. After living on the North Shore for nearly ten years, Durand returned home to the Seacoast area of New Hampshire, where she currently lives, and studies the built environments of the coastline.

Catherine Graffam is a painter and educator living in Portland, Maine. She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting and drawing from the New Hampshire Institute of Art in 2015. Her work can be found in the permanent collections of the Library of Congress, University of New Hampshire Art Museum, Phillips Exeter Academy, and the University of North Florida. In 2018, Graffam was profiled in A Big Important Art Book (Now with Women!) by Danielle Krysa, founder of the Jealous Curator. Graffam's work is almost entirely figurative, with a continuing motif of portraiture.

Lynette Haggard has maintained her art-making practice for over 20 years and lives in the greater Boston area. Haggard holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Her artistic interests lie with geometry and rigorous exploration of compositional tensions between materials, form, shape and color. Haggard was a 2018 Fellowship recipient at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. She has exhibited at the Painting Center (New York City), Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Art Complex Museum, Attleboro Arts Museum, Danforth Museum, New Hampshire Institute of Art, Saco Museum, Whistler Museum and the Copley Society.

Joe Keinberger grew up in Hingham, Massachusetts, before attending Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston. He now lives in Somerville where he paints and illustrates out of his hidden studio deep below the earth's crust. Keinberger works primarily in ink and acrylic, doing loose ink drawings on top of built-up texture of acrylic and assorted dry media.

Lindsey Kocur holds a Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. She currently lives in Swansea, Massachusetts. Kocur’s art practice centers on observing characteristics of the natural and built environments and translating them into inventive spaces through mixed media paintings, drawings and installations. The resulting images present unattainable worlds, devoid of the human figure, combined with moments inspired by meaningful places.

Bonita LeFlore is a New England artist best known for her large paintings referencing the architecture of forgotten places. She studied at the Art Students League in New York, graduated from Syracuse University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting, and attended Pratt Institute's Masters program for painting. Influenced by the color field paintings of Helen Frankenthaler and the vivid palette of Joan Mitchell, LeFlore finds working with acrylic paint on unprimed canvas a medium that lends itself to a transparency that gives her subject matter life.

C.J. Lori is a self-taught oil painter and mixed-media sculptor. She holds an undergraduate degree from Boston University and has lived and worked as an artist in Brookline, Massachusetts for over thirty years. Her work reflects her interest in literature, anthropology and psychology, as well as an abiding fascination with the natural world. Often described as "neo-surrealism" or "magic realism," Lori's paintings explore the complex relationship between humanity and the environment.

Kenji Nakayama was born in Tomokomai on the island of Hokkaido, Japan. A mechanical engineer by education, Nakayama made a significant life change in 2005 with a move to Boston, Massachusetts to study traditional sign painting. Meditation and highly-trained craftsmanship are hallmarks of Nakayama's work, which has been shown internationally and acquired by the collection of the Milwaukee Art Museum and the Four Seasons Restaurant in New York. Nakayama maintains a busy commercial sign painting business in addition to his fine art practice.

Wilhelm Neusser was born in Cologne, Germany. He studied at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Karlsruhe. Neusser's work has been widely exhibited and he has received numerous awards and fellowships. He lives and works in Somerville, Massachusetts. In 2018, his work was featured in the exhibition The Lure of the Dark at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art and in 2019 he was featured in a collaborative exhibition at the Fruitlands Museum in Harvard, Massachusetts.

Chen Peng lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts and works in Somerville. Peng received her Bachelor of Arts in philosophy from the National Taiwan University in Taipei, Taiwan, and then attended the Cleveland Institute of Art in Cleveland, Ohio where she received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting. Peng was chosen for a prestigious residency at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, and her work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions in the United States and Taiwan. She is currently a candidate for a Masters in Fine Arts in Painting at Boston University.

Heather Pilchard is a painter, photographer, bookbinder and teacher. She graduated from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. Pilchard currently lives in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, where she draws inspiration from the ecology of outer Cape Cod. Her paintings are meditations on the natural world, for which she feels deep awe and respect.

Mike Ryczek graduated from Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, Massachusetts with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in illustration. He lives and works as a painter and designer in Dedham, Massachusetts. Ryczek's work reflects his desire to deconstruct things in order to make sense of the world around him. Through this process of dismantling, he hopes to help the viewer see their own most inexplicable, intimate thoughts.

Carlos Santiago is a Puerto Rican-born painter who enjoys exploring the interchange of shape, form and texture. Santiago earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia. He subsequently worked for ten years as a design professional in New York City's fashion industry. Santiago continued his artistic education at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University and Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

Shannon Slattery received her Bachelors of Science in Studio Art from Skidmore College and a Masters of Science in Art Education from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She is currently a high school art teacher in Newton. As a painter Slattery is guided by process; she applies paint by any and all means and will just as often wipe, sand or scrape the board as paint with a brush. At the intersection of drawing and painting, color, line, and texture are the means to describe what she sees and how she connects with her environment.