Artists

Edna Acri majored in Art at SFSU. After retiring from a career in education in 2003, she enrolled in her first watercolor class. Watercolor rekindled her love of painting and drawing. Edna loves the feel of watercolor and the effect of water and paint washing over a crisp, white surface of paper. The subjects in her paintings are depicted realistically or in abstraction and are inspired by her photography. View her artwork on her website.

Bryan Beck has been nearly a life-long photographer, as he had his first camera at about age seven.  He has been able to combine photography with many of other activities and interests over the years to gain experience with a variety of subjects, including travel photography, architecture and historical sites.  He has been working on several personal photographic projects of natural subjects, such as birds and wildlife, poppies, and redwood trees, and also involved in environmental and conservation issues to help protect the places he enjoys photographing.  Bryan has a degree in architecture, although his career was in computer programming.  He is now retired from his “day job” as a statistical programmer in the biotech industry.

Jay Bergman enjoys sharing his love affair with light and his fascination with the interplay of order and chaos using photography.  He studied visual arts through high school, but switched to electronic engineering in college, followed by a 50 year career in high tech. Jay has shown his artwork at the Triton Museum, San Mateo County Fair Fine Art Gallerias, Redwood City Spring Art Shows, Redwood City Localvision Shows, the Pacific Grove Library, South San Francisco Photography shows, the Peninsula Jewish Community Center art show, and the City of San Bruno Community Art Gallery.  He approaches photography as the art of seeing, which can reveal the extraordinary hidden within the ordinary.

Marlene Mandelartz-Cohen is a photographer whose interest in using technology to express creativity goes back 40 years when she lived in Paris. She rediscovered her passion for photography two years ago and is currently taking classes at local community colleges to make a transition to the digital environment. Photography is a wonderful tool to show others the beauty which surrounds us in this part of the world. She won 1st and 3rd place ribbons at the 2016 Redwood City Spring Art Show. View her artwork on her website.

Catherine Streets Delfs was born and raised in Arizona and has been painting for over 50 years. She is from a family of artists and is primarily self-taught in watercolor and pastel. Her favorite subjects include California and Arizona missions, Sierra landscapes, floral subjects, children, and pets. More recently she has also painted eight murals. She has attended painting workshops by Tom Hill, Sonja Hamilton and Kim Lordier Fancher. This civic-minded artist has been active in Redwood City’s annual Spring Art Show for over 40 years as its Director/Coordinator. In 2009, she won a Juror’s Award at the San Mateo County Arts Commission women artist’s exhibit. Catherine is a Signature Member of the Society of West Coast Artists and her work can frequently be seen in group exhibits at the Society of West Coast Artists, 527 San Mateo Avenue, San Bruno, CA.

Graciela Eulate. Creativity and imagination have always been a part of Graciela’s life. She started her art career in college as a graphic designer and then moved into the world of high-tech publishing “start-ups” in San Francisco. She left the precarious business of high-tech to pursue a teaching career in visual art. Graciela’s work incorporates her experience with many art forms including calligraphy, ceramics, collage, drawing, jewelry-making, painting, photography and printmaking. She experiments with a wide-range of resources and skills and uses color and texture in many of her works. She is heavily influenced by ancient Mexican culture. Graciela lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and promotes and encourages high school students to access and develop their creative spirits. View her artwork on her website.

Anne Foster has been enjoying watercolor painting off and on for over 30 years. Her focus is the natural environment although she also enjoys creating portraits of people and animals. Her art shows her love of the loose edges and flowing colors only possible in watercolor balanced with a love of details from her years of training in scientific research.

Ann Marie Gahagen enjoys working with various arts and crafts, digital artwork, calligraphy, photography, and painting. She graduated with a degree in Art with an Option in Multimedia from California State University-East Bay, and studied watercolor painting from Joyce Faulknor and Guy Magallanes.

Sonja Hamilton is an award winning watercolor artist and teacher. She has paintings in corporate and private collections throughout the world.  Her fluid style and wit have made her a popular instructor, juror and lecturer. San Francisco born artist, teacher, calligrapher, and now author, Sonja is noted for her fluid, concise watercolors, whether landscapes, seascapes or flowers. She graduated from San Jose State University with a BA in Art and holds a Lifetime Special Teaching Credential in Art, has exhibited widely and has paintings in private collections in the USA, Australia, Canada, Mexico, England, France, Japan, and China. Sonja has taught in adult education since 1967, has conducted several workshops in Hawaii, California, Arizona, Nevada, and was an instructor on a tour of Italy and Greece, the Canadian Rockies, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Spain and Tuscany, Italy. Amongst her numerous awards are several Best of Show First Awards, and the Grumbacher Gold Medallion. Sonja’s new watercolor book “Watercolor, It’s Only a Piece of Paper” was published in 2015 with photos of her many paintings and charts. View her artwork on her website.

Bob Hills was originally from New Jersey and moved to Northern California in the late 1960s. His career was in various Sales and Marketing positions for companies that supplied manufacturing equipment to semiconductor device manufacturers domestically, in Europe and in Asia. Bob’s Mechanical Engineering and Metallurgy degrees from Stevens Institute of Technology were a great asset in his being able to follow the fast-paced development of the technologies as they occurred. During his career he travelled extensively throughout the United States, Europe and Asia including China. He retired in 2015. In 2009 Bob became interested in photography as a hobby and obtained his Associate in Arts degrees in Photography and Art History from Foothill College in Los Altos, California. Attending Foothill College enabled him to spend 10 weeks living and studying in Florence, Italy, and facilitated his six trips to Cuba. The Cuba trips were generally two weeks in length and the visas were obtained on a cultural exchange basis. While he enjoyed travelling to the major cities of Havana, Trinidad and Santiago and photographing the sites, his main pleasure came from meeting the Cuban people and spending time with them and seeing how they live. Photography has also taken him to Iceland in springtime and Yellowstone Park in the winter. He enjoys visiting his son Bobby and his family in Idaho and photographing the flora and fauna of the area as well as travelling and photographing with his son John. He has been vacationing in mid-coast Maine for the last 20 plus years and generally spends a month at the end of the summer fishing, reading, doing photography and eating too much food with four berry pies being his favorite.

Karen Hart is a Redwood City artist who developed a passion for painting after studying interior design and operating a business promoting local artists from 2009 to 2012.  Her inspiration is derived from her love of nature and the desire to create art that is unique, colorful and fun. While new to her art journey, she has received honorable mentions two years in a row at the San Mateo County Fair.  You can find more of her work at Bay Home and Linens in San Mateo, on instragram under khartfineart. View her artwork on her website.

Nicole Joshi is an artist who has been drawing since childhood and recently learned to paint using watercolor. Nicole is mostly self-taught with some college drawing classes and beginning watercolor. Her favorite subjects to paint are florals, animals (especially cats and dogs), portraits and still life.  Nicole continues to evolve with watercolor and will begin learning oil painting soon.  She has studied under Guy Magallanes and is mentored by Catherine Delfs.

Marla Lehr is both a photographer and an oil painter, often using her photos of people as inspiration for a painting. She tries to show the humanity in each face that she presents. Marla attended the San Francisco Art Institute and, more recently, Bay Area community colleges and workshops to keep her work fresh. Marla is serving as the 2012 President of the Sequoia Art Group, and won one of three Jurors’ Awards at the Women Artist Exhibit sponsored by the San Mateo Arts Commission in 2012 with her black and white photograph entitled “Bus Dispatcher.”

David B. McClure has been a member of the Sequoia Art Group since 1976, and has served as President and Vice-President. He has also served as the Chairman for the Spring Art Shows, Art in the Park shows, and as Commissioner on the Redwood City Civic Cultural Commission. A self-taught artist in oil and pencil mediums, his art education includes studying under Craig Nelson, and Harry Engleman, taking figure drawing and others courses at USF, and local community colleges. He has several commissioned paintings and shows his work at many of the local libraries, restaurants and businesses. David also enjoys making homebrew beer and designing his own beer bottle labels. Other memberships include the Society of Western Artists and American Homebrewers Association.

La Vey Norquist is a self-taught photographer now specializing in wildlife photography. Her love of nature and wildlife photography has evolved over many years of travel with her husband, Bud, who is an accomplished videographer. You can imagine the fun they have searching for their “subjects.” Most of their travel is by boat, thus the majority of her photographs have been taken either from the boat or the dinghy. She calls her collection “From the dinghy and beyond.”

Anne Inger Oseberg was born in a small village on the western coast of Norway which is surrounded by spectacular scenery consisting of mountains, waterfalls, fjords and woodlands — all an inspiration for her art. Anne expresses herself with colors, catching moods of special places and moments. Her art has been exhibited in many places, including a recent exhibition at the Norwegian Seamen’s Church in San Francisco; and her work is found in private collections in both the US and Norway.

Terry Rico, in memoriam. He retired after a career in medical marketing and sales. He rekindled a life-long interest in painting and spent much of his life pursuing athletic activities that included sailing and scuba diving. After many hours on and below the ocean waves, he was compelled to artistically capture the spirit of the sea, especially the movement of wind and water and the varying colors of sea and sky.

Camilla Roos started art training at Cañada College with courses in Form and Composition, Color Theory, and History of Furniture.  She started painting first in oil and later in acrylic.  In the last few years she has been painting in watercolor, taking several classes and sometimes workshops from San Francisco Bay Area instructors.  She likes watercolor as her main medium, but sometimes incorporates other water base mediums.  Currently she is enjoying a course in Art History at Cañada College.  Her favorite subjects to paint include landscapes, florals, seascapes and birds.  She is a member of the Sequoia Art Group in Redwood City and SWA in San Bruno.

Deborah Shea was born into a family of artists and grew up in San Francisco.  She received a Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art and Design at the University of California, Davis, where she studied with Wayne Thiebaud and Roland Peterson.  She had a career for over 20 years as a creative director, designer, and illustrator before becoming a full-time fine artist in 2017.  She has won numerous awards in juried exhibitions and teaches pastel workshops at Filoli Historic House & Gardens.  She currently resides in Redwood City and is represented in the Main Gallery in Redwood City and the Viewpoints Gallery in Los Altos.  Commissions are available.

Constantine (Taki) Stamates is an artist who currently works with acrylic paints. In 2020 he suffered a stroke paralyzing his right side. Through months of rehabilitation, he gained sufficient mobility in his left hand to paint, although he has had no formal training as an artist. He created a Santa Claus series which was published on coffee mugs, and paints religious scenes, icons and saints, as well as other subjects.

Barbara Todd, in memoriam, was born in Wisconsin and moved to the San Francisco Bay Area after attending graduate school in New York.  After a 20 year career in finance, she returned to school and earned a degree in Multimedia Art and Technology and became a freelance web designer.  While she enjoyed web design, Barbara´s true passion was watercolor painting.  She loved the translucent properties of watercolor, and the challenge of “saving your whites.” She enjoyed painting florals that dance with light inspired by her love of gardening and of roses in particular.

Marilyn Travis has been painting for a long time, at first oils and now just watercolors.  Her artwork is very transparent with mixes of nice colors.  She has painted with several instructors, a workshop with Jan Kunz, Lorraine Scherba for many years, and now with Amy King in Chinese brush painting.  Marilyn paints from her photographs and sometimes from three-in-one painting to get a good composition.

Mary Wyckoff is an award-winning artist who has created art for many years. She is a member of the Sequoia Art Group, Pacific Art League, and Santa Clara Valley Watercolor Society. She has exhibited her work in group and one-man shows. She says of her art, “I find great joy in painting — joy in seeing the forms and patterns grow on the paper and the colors mingle and change. This process is always new and exciting, and all-absorbing.”

Bruce Wyckoff, in memoriam. Bruce had a life-long interest in photography. He was the 2012 President of the Focus Photographic Society in San Carlos, California, and was a volunteer coordinator for the Redwood City sponsored Photo Vision Group. He exhibited his photography locally.