May 20, 2025
Jun 17, 2025
Rhonda Sloan is a passionate watercolor artist who draws inspiration from her travels—especially to Europe—and the character of her local community. Her work often features atmospheric scenes where light and mood take center stage, with only the main subject rendered in greater detail. She especially enjoys painting old barns, charming streetscapes, and architectural forms that tell a story. Rhonda’s loose, expressive approach allows viewers to feel the essence of a place rather than see every detail. She is an active member of the regional art community and a proud recipient of the Enid Williams People’s Choice Award from the Western Ohio Watercolor Society.
2025
Lana Mayhew
Programs
Bonnie Kuntz
Dan Knepper
Dan was inspired from an early age. His mom painted pastoral murals on his bedroom walls and Disney scenes on his window shades. He grew up exploring the woods at the edge of his yard, and the impressions of those moments of sunlight illuminating the trees and rippling on water can still be felt in his work.
Dan went to college to study glassblowing, and that, too, had a profound effect on his painting. Hot glass has a light of its own. It glows from within, and passes through dramatic changes of transparent color as it cools. He views the world through that lens of transparent colors and sparkling chips of colored glass, and tries to reflect that in his work as he elegantly tells the story of quiet, timeless places.
Trips to Glacier and Western Montana, as well as the Tetons, Yellowstone, and the Colorado Rockies made a transcendent change in his life and work. The experience helped define his work in general. He realized he wanted to capture those undisturbed wild places, to stop a moment in time, hold a note, a breath, a transcendence above the ordinary, held in the light through the leaves or its dance on the water, to welcome the hikers, explorers and the curious who can’t help but wander off the beaten path. The work captures the color of crisp morning light filled with promise, or the softening light of evening’s approach, or the last light of the gloaming where colors of the day shift almost imperceptibly.
Janealla Killibrew, board chair of the Findlay Art League describes Knepper's work,".. large landscapes of the American West, reminiscent of German American painter Albert Bierstadt... Dan's realistic depictions, selected and perfected from images observed while visiting mountains, lakes, woodlands and creatures that inhabit them, are carefully modeled and intricate."
Dan's work has been in International Artist magazine, Fine Art Connoisseur, American Art Collector, Western Art Collector, Western Art and Architecture, Watercolor Magazine, The Artist's Magazine, Southwest Art Magazine, Plein Air Magazine, Airstream Life Magazine, on the cover of Of Rust and Glass Magazine, etc. He is represented by galleries coast to coast and his work hangs in collections across the country. See his website here for examples of his work,
Mar 18, 2025
Rhonda Sloan
Apr 15, 2025
Lana Mayhew is a registered and Board-Certified Art Therapist and graduated in 1991 with a BA in Psychology from University of Missouri with minor in art and graduated in 1993 with a Master of Art Therapy (MAT) from Wright State University.
She was born in Kingsport TN. and realized at a young age she wanted to become an artist, not only an artist, but an art therapist.
Lana has helped hundreds of clients with mental health issues using paint, collage, drawings, sewing and clay. For several years she belonged to Town & Country Fine Art Gallery in Kettering.
Over the years, Bonnie studied different types of art, both formally and informally at the Dayton Art Institute and the Rosewood Art Center. She has studied with nationally known artists in their workshops and teaches her own workshops. She continues to win prizes in juried art shows. Currently, she is teaching watercolor classes at Rosewood Art Center and Sinclair Community College.
A spiritual person and a Registered Nurse now retired, Bonnie is a certified Tai Chi Chuan and Chi Lel Qigong instructor, with a Brown Belt in Kempo Karate. She is a Healing Touch Practitioner and has completed a 3-year Shaman apprenticeship program.
Bonnie is an active member of The Contemporary, the Women's Tri Art Society, the Fairborn Art Association, Western Ohio Watercolor Society, the Dayton Society of Artists and an associate member of the Miamisburg Art Gallery, NOAPS and OWS. Online, her work can be viewed at essential arts Dayton, and Front Street Galleries. She is currently showing her work at Art Encounters located at Front St. in downtown Dayton.
Bonnie primarily paints with watercolors, acrylics and mixed water media, and occasionally pastels. She owned horses for 25 years and loves to paint horses, flowers, animals and landscapes. She enjoys trying new mediums and new subjects. Her delight in art is the adventurous uncertainty of it. What's beyond her control makes an endless variety of techniques interesting, because of the unpredictable results. Much like life itself.
Join Rhonda Sloan for a watercolor demo focused on capturing the rustic beauty of barns, farm scenes, and cows. With an emphasis on creating atmosphere, Rhonda will demonstrate how to use soft washes, muted color, and selective detail to bring mood and storytelling into rural landscapes. Learn how to suggest weathered wood, open fields, and the gentle presence of grazing cows—all without overworking the scene. Rhonda’s loose, expressive technique allows the subject to breathe, inviting the viewer into a peaceful, familiar setting full of charm and character.