12.04.23 05:34 AM

In the mid-1990’s, Kathleen Dunphy started her art career by displaying colored-pencil dog portraits in coffee shops and veterinary clinics in Eagle River, Alaska. Little did she know that less than a dozen years later, she would be a highly acclaimed oil painter, exhibiting her work in galleries across the United States and garnering awards from some of the top art competitions in the country. Kathleen’s rapid success in the competitive art world was predicted when American Artist Magazine recognized her as one of the Top Ten Emerging Artists in 1998. She is one of those rare people who have true passion, dedication, and a gift for transposing nature’s beauty to the canvas.

Kathleen’s early art education included workshops by Kevin MacPherson and Dan Gerhartz. In 2000, Kathleen was awarded a full scholarship at the prestigious Academy of Art College in San Francisco, where she was mentored by artists such as Craig Nelson and Brian Blood. She maintains strong ties to the Academy, where she has been offered a faculty appointment and participates in the annual Alumni Auction. Further study with Scott Christensen and T. Allen Lawson helped hone her skills and refine her own unique style of painting.

In 2003, Kathleen designed and built her own studio in the Sierra Nevada foothills of northern California, where the pristine setting of her new home provides endless inspiration for her work. Kathleen’s landscape paintings can now be found in galleries from coast to coast, and in 2009, she exhibited her 10th solo show. Her honors and considerable and include important juried shows in California, Texas, Georgia, Arizona, and Maine; Best of Show from The American Impressionist Society; an Award of Excellence from the Oil Painters of America; five California Art Club Gold Medal Shows; six magazine articles, including being featured in Southwest Art's Plein Air issue in 2009; the Federal Duck Stamp Competition; Birds in Art; Arts for the Parks; Grand Prize at the Acadia Invitational Exhibition in Bar Harbor, Maine; and many others. In just twelve years, she has earned an impressive and growing reputation with galleries, private collectors, and art magazines across the United States.

In the spirit of passing on the gifts of her artistic abilities, Kathleen began teaching in 2005 and is a much sought-after workshop instructor. Her engaging style of teaching and one-on-one instruction garners high accolades from her student artists. She has also served as a judge for several art competitions. While her current passion is still to paint nature every day and produce a limited number of high quality paintings, she is now working on a book about her process of developing a work of art from field study to finished studio painting