Chuck Jones
Chuck Jones once stated, “The rules are simple. Take your work, but never yourself, seriously. Pour in your love and whatever skill you have, and it will come out.”
There may not be another animator or artist more on par with their oeuvre than the legendary animation director, Chuck Jones. From the rascally rabbit and the temperamental duck to the super genius and the quirky, extraterrestrial, Jones’s body of work bridges nearly a century with a renowned assemblage of characters that were brought to life on the silver screen and viewed worldwide.
As one of the most revered animators in the history of animation, Chuck Jones created over 300 films over a seven-decade career in animation. His films were nominated for 9 Academy Awards (winning 3), and he was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Oscar by the Academy in 1996.
Ben Olson
Ben Olson is a contemporary artist who lives and works in Florida. His colorful, expressive works pay homage to a multitude of characters with a nod to sports figures, film, and animation. His distinctive personal style expresses his love for the world of film, comics, and iconic characters.
Imagination and creativity flow through his veins and out the end of a brush, pen, pencil, or whatever else he can find. Using an energetic vibrant color palette, Olson's art creates a world of visual delight with a quirky and stylistic feel.
Dr. Seuss
Theodor Seuss Geisel, a.k.a. Dr. Seuss, began his career as a little-known editorial cartoonist in the 1920s. His intriguing perspective and fresh concepts ignited his career, and his work evolved quickly to deft illustrations, modeled sculpture, and sophisticated oil paintings of elaborate imagination. His artistic vision emerged as the golden thread that linked every facet of his varied career, and his artwork became the platform from which he delivered numerous children’s books, hundreds of advertisements, and countless editorials filled with wonderfully inventive animals, characters, and humor.
Geisel single-handedly forged a new genre of art that falls somewhere between the surrealist movement of the early 20th century and the inspired nonsense of a child’s classroom doodles. The Art of Dr. Seuss project offers a rare glimpse into the artistic life of this celebrated American icon and chronicles almost seven decades of work that, in every respect is uniquely, stylistically, and endearingly Seussian.
Dan Bowden
Dan Bowden is an American artist who lives and works in Sedona, Arizona. As a child, Dan Bowden’s Air Force life brought him to Southern California and eventually to Arizona where he now permanently resides.
Drawing inspiration from the beautiful red rocks of Sedona and the Verde Valley, his colorful Original and Limited Edition artworks pay homage to Chuck Jones and other iconic animation characters and films. His distinctive style emanates happiness and peace and expresses the vibrant spirit of Looney Tunes and Pop Art culture. Bowden likes to feel that his art inspires peace in a chaotic world. He faithfully hides the Dove of Peace in every “peace” of art he creates which was originally created for the Project Rising Hope Food Pantry where he has volunteered over the years.
Daniel Killen
Daniel works with the Chuck Jones Gallery bringing to canvas such inspired Warner Bros. properties as The Wizard of Oz, A Christmas Story, The Iron Giant, and the classic Looney Tunes characters Bugs Bunny, Wile E. Coyote, Daffy Duck, and the Road Runner. Greatly influenced by such artistic giants as Norman Rockwell, Edward Hopper, Frank Frazetta, and Chuck Jones, Daniel incorporates sly wit, poetic beauty, and adventurous themes into his work. He brings his whimsical sense of humor, pleasing colors, and clever layout to all his creative endeavors. In 2018, Daniel was chosen by the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta to create the poster for the 2018 Fiesta and to conceptualize and execute the designs for future posters leading up to the 50th Anniversary of the Fiesta in 2021.
Daniel lives by two inspirational quotes from French Director Robert Bresson: “Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen. “, and “Bring together things that have not yet been brought together and did not seem predisposed to be so.”
Eric Goldberg
Eric Goldberg, a veteran Director, Designer and Animator, has worked extensively in New York, London and Hollywood creating feature films, commercials, title sequences and television specials. He is equally at home with traditional hand-drawn animation and the most up-to-date computer animation, and has pioneered ground-breaking techniques in both worlds.
He is known for his work on Looney Tunes: Back in Action, Pocahontas, Aladdin, The Princess and the Frog, Fat Albert, Fantasia 2000, Moana, Winnie the Pooh and Hercules.
He has also voiced Marvin the Martian, Tweety Bird and Speedy Gonzales in Looney Tunes media.
Fabio Napoleoni
What the heart wants and the heart needs can be found in a Fabio Napoleoni painting. Nostalgia, sorrow and moments that lift the soul are all there for the world to see and experience along with him. The vivid colors and captivating characters invite you into an emotional ride that is welcomed by the mind and the heart. Simple landscapes set the stage to the value of emotional attachment that can be compared to no other. Influences from some of this century’s greatest artists are hard to find in his pieces, but are drenched deep in the fabric of what pulls a Napoleoni painting together.
Michael Summers
The paintings of Michael Summers take us into a crisp and colorful world, alive with nostalgia, splendor, and whimsy. Within each vibrant scene are playful reminders that our everyday lives are filled with wonder, beauty, and magic, if only we allow our eyes to see it.
The meticulously crafted paintings of Michael Summers are firmly rooted in contemporary west coast surrealism with a strong pop sensibility. He uses his Pop Surrealist style as a tool to reflect his inner vision: creating the impossible and more importantly, making the impossible seem plausible.
The artist creates imaginary characters - often alluding to mythical archetypes - in acrylic paint with a keen hyper-attentiveness. His unorthodox use of intense saturation and arbitrary, multi-chromatic hues encourages the viewer to look a little closer, a little longer.
Tom Everhart
Bursting with dazzling color, expressionistic imagination, and in-your-face proportions, Tom Everhart's paintings are the culmination of 20 years of close association with cartoonist Charles M. Schulz and the PEANUTSTM phenomenon.
The only fine artist authorized to artistically render the PEANUTSTM characters; Everhart had been a successful painter of large-scale landscapes before being asked to render drawings of the PEANUTSTM characters for a commercial project in 1980. With no background in cartooning, Everhart prepared for the task by projecting Schulz's comic strips onto a 25-foot wall in his studio for closer examination. He was stunned to discover that, blown up larger than life, Schulz's pen strokes closely connected to his own painting style. His immediate fascination with Schulz's "line" — and his remarkable ability to capture it with his own distinct interpretation — impressed Schulz and launched a friendship and collaboration that continued right up until Schulz’s death in February 2000.
Willie Ito
As a young child, Willie Ito learned to draw on the pages of Sears catalogues while his family was incarcerated at the Japanese internment camp in Topaz, Utah during World War II. He then studied at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles before joining Walt Disney Studios in 1954 where he became Iwao Takamoto’s assistant as an in-betweener on the “Lady” unit of the feature film, Lady and the Tramp, illustrating the movie's famous spaghetti-eating scene.
Ito then worked alongside legendary animator Chuck Jones at Warner Bros. before joining Hanna-Barbera during development of The Jetsons. Ito remained at Hanna-Barbera for the next fourteen years, where he worked on layouts and backgrounds for such series as The Flintstones and The Yogi Bear Show, and designed characters like the title characters from Hong Kong Phooey and Goober and the Ghost Chasers.
Willie Ito continues to draw and speak to audiences about his career at the leading animation studios.