JANE CULP

Working in harsh weather conditions that force her to strap her easel to her knees, Culp explores wilderness terrain along the spine of the Sierra Nevada, transporting viewers from her home base north of the Anza-Borrego Desert, through Joshua Tree and Death Valley national parks, up to Tioga Pass, and into Yosemite Valley.

Jane Culp's journey as an artist began in St. Louis, Missouri, and segued through Yale University when the reign of abstract expressionism yielded to pop art. By the mid-1980s she was dividing her time between New York, San Francisco, and Southern California. Married to New York painter and critic Louis Finkelstein, Culp lived most of the year in Manhattan and summered near the Delaware Water Gap, where they both painted the surrounding landscape. In 2009, after Finkelstein died, Culp moved full-time to an off-grid cabin and studio she built on sixty acres of California high desert that she has transformed into a sanctuary for birds and animals.

Stanley Lewis is a painter living in Leeds, Massachusetts, and a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. He has taught for more than forty years, including at Kansas City Art Institute, Smith College, American University, and New York Studio School, and he summers at Chautauqua.