Old Masters Academy

Artwork by Alan Contreras

I am a self-taught painter, I strive to learn every day the technique of the old masters of the Renaissance.

Art is for me, it is the breath of life that makes me envelop every day in a heavenly spirit.

My great artistic challenge is to achieve with my paintings that people change for the good, that those people who are suffering, find in my art spiritual happiness.

Artwork by Evelyn Johns Rivera

I started becoming interested in making art in grade school, when a teacher unexpectedly posted a pen drawing of two bears that I had made as an illustration to a story assignment. I had not thought of myself as someone capable of making art until that day. Since that day, I have got on with it in life, enjoying my day job and my family, always doing art. I always wished for the day that I had all the time in the world to focus on art, but that day has not yet come. I realized along the way, that even the “great” artists still had lives and that a balance is often needed between the two parts of this world.

I have always wanted to better myself as an artist. At first, raising children, I had little income to devote to it, so I continued to draw, and painted as I could afford it. I eventually went back to school to study art, joined a local painting cooperative, and colored pencil association, and learned to exhibit and sharpen my skills. When your life is always rooted in art, art has a way to live within it. …