Twenty assorted 5 x 7 in. blank notecards (5 each of 4 designs) with envelopes in a decorative box
Printed on recycled paper
ISBN 9780764977336
Daniel Merriam grew up in a small village along the coast of Maine in a household filled with music and creativity. Surrounded by ornate Victorian and Colonial houses built in the rugged landscape, his imagination soared. Daniel taught himself to paint at a young age, and he learned to build log cabins in the woods alongside his father. He then studied mechanical and architectural design and began a career as an architectural illustrator.
Unfulfilled after a few years, Merriam gave up commercial art to follow his dream of artistry. He built his skills and portfolio with fantasy-fueled drawings and paintings, including one titled Bubble Street. His surreal artworks combine a romantic Victorian sensibility with a dreamlike quality. He says his paintings are vehicles for his dreams, not the product of them, so viewers can jump in and take the story wherever they choose.
In 2012 Merriam opened Bubble Street Gallery—an emporium celebrating creativity and the imagination in Sausalito, California—where he and other steampunk-infused artists showcase their work. Merriam’s artwork has been exhibited across the United States, Europe, and the Middle East.
Contains 5 each of the following notecards:
Living on the Dragon’s Back, 1994
Like Honey to a Bee, 1999
The Weekender, 2000
High Altitude, 2005
Twenty assorted 5 x 7 in. blank notecards (5 each of 4 designs) with envelopes in a decorative box
Printed on recycled paper
ISBN 9780764977800<
American artist Eric Wert is known for visually intense, sensually charged still lifes that are anything but still. Whether on small or large canvases, his larger-than-life oil paintings nearly vibrate with saturated color and decadent detail. His expertly shaped fruits, vegetables, and flowers approach realism but go beyond its limitations. Not surprisingly, Wert (b. 1976) began his career as a scientific illustrator. Influenced by Dutch still life painters, he uses stunning jewel tones to depict sumptuous subject matter, taking traditional compositions in new directions. Wert notes that with close observation, the complexity of his everyday subjects becomes ever more mysterious.
Wert received a bachelor of fine arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a master of fine arts degree from Northwestern University. He has had solo exhibitions from New Mexico to Massachusetts, and his work has been included in group shows around the world. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
Contains 5 each of the following notecards:
Irises
Magnolia and Plum
The Arrangement
Tribute
The Bishop’s Apricot, 1924, by Gustave Baumann (American, b. Germany, 1881–1971)
Color woodcut, 15.2 x 19.4 cm (6 x 7? in.)
A noted member of the artist colony in Brown County, Indiana, Gustave Baumann (American, b. Germany, 1881–1971) started a new life in 1918 at the center of the Santa Fe art scene, immersing himself in the dramatic landscapes of northern New Mexico. He devised innovative printing techniques that lent his woodcut prints a luminous quality to match the glowing imagery, broad skies, and relentless sun of the Southwest.
Ten 3½ x 5 in. blank notecards with envelopes in an acetate-topped box.
Printed on recycled paper.
Published with the New Mexico Museum of Art.
ISBN 9780764974663
Twenty assorted 5 x 7 in. blank notecards (5 each of 4 designs) with envelopes in a decorative box.
Printed on recycled paper
Published with Wadsworth Atheneum
ISBN 9780764907722
America’s first native school of landscape painting emerged between 1825 and 1875, when artists created distinctive style that came to rival portraiture as the premier focus of painting in the United States. These artifacts frequented the Catskill Mountains of New York; several built houses along the Hudson River.
The discovery, exploration, and settlement of the land were central themes to the painters of the Hudson River School. Their legacy to American art embodies the reverence for nature and national idealism that prevailed at the middle of the nineteenth century. In lush, richly colored depictions of quiet river valleys, dramatic coastal vistas, and vast reaches of mountain and forest, they captured the wonder of an America still untouched by the plow.
This notecard assortment presents four magnificent works from the Wadsworth Atheneum, home to one of the world’s most extensive collections of Hudson River School Paintings.
Contains five each of the following notecards:
John Frederick Kensett (American, 1816–1872), Mount Washington from the Conway Valley, 1867
Asher Brown Durand (American, 1796–1886), View toward Hudson Valley, 1851
Frederic Edwin Church (American, 1826–1900), Coast Scene, Mount Desert (Sunrise off the Maine Coast), 1863
John William Casilear (American, 1811–1893), Lake George, 1860
Twenty assorted 5 x 7 in. blank notecards (5 each of 4 designs) with envelopes in a decorative box
Printed on recycled paper
ISBN 9780764977480
Canadian artist Jean Bradbury’s paintings celebrate nature while encouraging connection with our emotions. Rabbits and hares appear in a number of her paintings, sometimes reflecting the human feeling of being alone in the woods. “I paint gardens inhabited by whimsical and often vulnerable creatures. Both joyful and sinister, these places celebrate our own gentle natures in a world where anxiety and heartache lurk. My paintings remind me to observe nature and to take care with our world and our hearts. There is beauty in the small and strength in intimacy.”
Born in Scotland in 1963 and raised on an organic farm in Canada, Bradbury traveled Europe and the Middle East before settling in Washington State. Her artwork can be found in the United States, Canada, Britain, Australia, China, and Kuwait, and in Jordan, where she teaches art to rural women in a farming community near the Dead Sea.
Contains 5 each of the following notecards:
Portrait of Jerome, 2009
Bunny in Winter Fog, 2009
Crazy World, 2010
We Are Alone. We Are Not Alone., 2010
Ten 3½ x 5 in. blank notecards with envelopes in an acetate-topped box
Published with the Fitzwilliam Museum
ISBN 9780764978876
Johann Christoph Dietzsch (German, 1710–1769)
Nigella (Love-in-a-mist) with a pale clouded yellow butterfly and insects
Johann Christoph Dietzsch was a member of the Dietzsch family of artists in Nuremberg, which was second only to London as a center for botanical art. Dietzsch and two of his sisters were employed at the Nuremberg Court, where they specialized in painting botanical subjects. Dietzsch and his father were also known for their landscape paintings.
Katie Hofgard’s digital paintings are built on a love of nature, animals, and fantasy. From small, loosely painted icons to grand, finely detailed dreamscapes, Hofgard’s paintings express a character’s personality at any scale. Given a few hours, she can detail whole worlds. These commissioned portraits—fierce and playful—have earned the admiration of fellow artists who turn to her for help with the intricacies of painting digitally, a medium Hofgard defends in the face of those who might not appreciate its form.
Hofgard, who also goes by Eskiworks, trained at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, where she received a BFA in Illustration, and transitioned from painting on canvas to painting digitally. She grew up in Colorado, where she still lives and paints.
Contains five each of the following notecards:
Gold and Green
Jassani Portrait
Miu’s Bell
The Highbrow
Twenty assorted 5 x 7 in. blank notecards (5 each of 4 designs) with envelopes in a decorative box.
Printed on recycled paper.
ISBN 9780764974373
The thirteenth child born into a family of silk weavers, Kazuyuki Ohtsu (Japanese, b. 1935) began studying traditional woodblock printmaking in Tokyo at the age of eighteen. For forty years Ohtsu served as an assistant to Kiyoshi Saito, a woodblock artist at the forefront of the s?saku hanga movement, before working on his own. Breaking with the traditional division of labor practiced by Hiroshige, Hokusai, and virtually every other Japanese printmaker who preceded them, the s?saku hanga (creative print) artists handled every step of print production—they painted the original pictures, carved the woodblocks, and printed the images.
In Ohtsu’s perfectly balanced compositions we discover places nearly forgotten, tranquil scenes of natural beauty and harmony. His prints forsake an earlier period’s use of strong outlines to rely on rich, elemental colors to depict the countryside of Japan.
Contains five each of the following notecards:
Red Camellia
Bamboo in Summer
Ten 5 x 7 in. blank notecards (5 each of 2 designs) with envelopes in a decorative folio.
Printed on recycled paper.
ISBN 9780764974229
Kazuyuki Ohtsu (Japanese, b. 1935) served for forty years as the assistant to Kiyoshi Saito, a woodblock artist at the forefront of the s?saku hanga movement. Instead of the division of labor relied on by Hiroshige, Hokusai, and virtually every other Japanese printmaker who preceded them, the “creative print” artists handled every step of the production of prints themselves. They painted the original pictures, carved the woodblocks, and printed the images.
The four prints in this collection capture the beauty of cherry trees, celebrated in Japanese literature, poetry, and art for hundreds of years. The spring blossoms are rich in symbolism, with their brief lifespan and fragile beauty often serving as a metaphor for the ephemeral nature of life. Ohtsu’s colors are elemental, deep, and true—expressive without drama. He draws us into his compositions in a poetic contemplation of nature and harmony. Ohtsu’s artwork has been exhibited and collected worldwide.
Contains five each of the following notecards:
A Cherry Tree and Mt. Yatsugatake
Flowers in Village
Miharutaki Cherry Tree and Moon
A Large Cherry Tree in Spring
Twenty assorted 5 x 7 in. blank notecards (5 each of 4 designs) with envelopes in a decorative box.
Printed on recycled paper.
ISBN 9780764974236
Twenty assorted 5 x 7 in. blank notecards (5 each of 4 designs) with envelopes in a decorative box
Printed on recycled paper
ISBN 9780764976681
Claude Monet (French, 1840–1926) spent much of his childhood on the Normandy coast near Le Havre, where he observed the sea, the sand, and the ever-changing weather. As a teenager, he drew and sold caricatures, and made pencil sketches of sailing ships. He began painting when he met Eugène Boudin, one of the first French landscape artists to paint outdoors. Monet was profoundly affected by the immediacy of painting in plein air, and thus began his lifelong fascination with light, color, and capturing on canvas the fleeting sensory perception of nature.
After serving in the military in Algeria from 1861–1862, Monet returned to France. He settled for a time in Paris, where he met Renoir, Cézanne, Whistler, and Manet. Despite his prolific period of the late 1860s, Monet struggled to support his family with infrequent sales of landscapes, seascapes, and portraits. But in these early works one can see the emergence of Monet’s genius for capturing the sublime in the everyday, his broken brushstrokes illuminating his impressions of life.
Contains 5 each of the following notecards:
The Beach at Trouville, 1870
Luncheon on the Grass, center panel, 1865–1866
The Landing Stage, 1871
On the Bank of the Seine, Bennecourt, 1868
Chakra is a Sanskrit word used in yoga and meditation practices to refer to swirling wheels of energy within the body. Seven chakras, each corresponding to a different color vibrational frequency and controlling various bodily functions, align along the spine from the base to the crown of the head. The energy that flows through the chakras is called prana. Proper alignment and balance of the chakras is key for physical, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing.
Artist Paul Heussenstamm (American, b. 1949), whose artist parents “met at the easel,” grew up in a highly creative, spiritual environment that helped form the pattern of his life and work. He immersed himself in the philosophies of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Christianity and has made it his life’s work to create sacred art that he shares with others. To this end, he has painted more than 2,000 unique artworks. So that others may discover their own paths, he teaches Art as a Spiritual Practice workshops around the world.
Contains five each of the following notecards:
Chakraman Blue
Chakraman Sky
Chakra Master Black
Chakraman Chocolate
Twenty assorted 5 x 7 in. blank notecards (5 each of 4 designs) with envelopes in a decorative box.
Printed on recycled paper.
ISBN 9780764975684
Ten 5 x 7 in. blank notecards (5 each of 2 designs) with envelopes in a decorative folio
Printed on recycled paper
Published with the Barnes Foundation
ISBN 9780764978487
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841–1919) is one of the best-loved painters in the history of modern art. After exhibiting with the impressionists in the 1870s and early 1880s, Renoir went on to paint for three more decades, focusing on the bucolic landscapes of the south of France, idealized bathing groups, scenes of his family, and portraiture. His paintings are charming and accessible, yet often boldly experimental, with loose brushstrokes and unexpected compositional arrangements. Throughout his career Renoir looked to the past for inspiration and was influenced especially by eighteenth-century French painters and by the artists of the Italian Renaissance. He is known above all for his mastery of color and facility in the handling of paint—qualities that during his own time won him the admiration of his peers, including Henri Matisse, and which continue to astonish us today.
The two paintings reproduced in this notecard set are from the extraordinary collection of The Barnes Foundation in Pennsylvania, which houses one of the world’s finest collections of impressionist, post-impressionist, and early modern art, including 181 paintings by Renoir.
Contains 5 each of the following images:
Portrait of Jeanne Durand-Ruel (Portrait de Mlle. J.), 1876
Promenade (La Promenade), c. 1906
