Navigating Economic Change in Your Creative Career

Cameron Schmitz is a professional fine art painter based in Massachusetts. She received her Master’s of Fine Arts in Painting from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in Painting & Drawing from the University of New Hampshire, in addition to completing studies at Studio Arts Centers International in Florence, Italy.

In addition to her full-time painting practice, Cameron teaches painting workshops that range from Exploring Abstraction, Creative Mark-Making, Abstracting the Landscape and Painting Techniques for both representational and abstract painters. Formerly also in the commercial art gallery business, Cameron’s breadth and depth of professional art experience provides her an expansive understanding of both art and the business of being an artist.

Cameron’s work has been featured at institutions that include Kyoto Seika University, Emory University, Fitchburg Art Museum, Northern Arizona University Art Museum, Green Mountain College, and The National Arts Club. Her paintings are included in permanent collections that include New York-Presbyterian Hospitals, UVM Medical Center, Lahey Medical Centers, Wells Fargo and the Almoosa Specialist Hospital in Saudi Arabia. Notable press includes spotlight features in Fresh Paint Magazine and the featured guest on a two-part series on the popular podcast, Savvy Painter. Her work is represented by galleries and art consultants that include Mitchell-Giddings Fine Arts, Carrie Coleman Fine Art, Boston Art Inc., Art Partnership Inc., and Libby Silvia Fine Art Consulting.

Samantha Williams-Chapelsky completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from the University of Alberta in 2009, with distinction, majoring in painting and art history.

Samantha has been exhibiting her art extensively for the past 15 years worldwide. Her paintings are included in numerous corporate and private collections and are represented in select commercial art galleries.

Samantha is the Golden Working Artist for the province of Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan. She also works as an art instructor and lecturer, hosting workshops and sessions across Canada.

Samantha’s work primarily focuses on the depiction of the Canadian landscape. The landscape of Canada and specifically that of Western Canada is in a constant state of change. From weather to the effect of human presence to the pastoral landscape, idyllic in the minds of prairie dwellers, there are never ending conversations of patterns, lights, and landscape horizons. She aims to capture the relationship between the sky and ground. This stark divisional line suggests a disconnect and yet neither sky nor ground would exist without the other.

This balance of space defined by the horizon line is the simple definition of the Canadian landscape. By sketching and painting the views of Alberta and British Columbia from life, and transferring these ideas to larger scale canvas’ and boards, she documents the shifting movement of the clouds and weather patterns with gestural brushwork, thick uses of both oil and acrylic paint and vivid color. Samantha aims to capture the landscape not as a mimetic depiction, but as a gestural interpretation of the movement of the land itself, and its ever fluctuating subtleties of the natural, urban, growth, desolation, and regrowth.