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Instructor Biographies

Program Director

Charles Miano

Charles Miano is a well known contemporary realist painter who is renowned for his teaching.  His talents include singer/song writer musician. His first love, visual art, has stirred thousands of people from around the world being prominently featured in educational books and periodicals.
Charles Miano is the founder and director of The Southern Atelier in Sarasota, Florida. This Atelier is a visual arts studio with a twofold thrust - the study of techniques understood by the Old Masters and the sun's illumination of nature in the south.  Miano believes nature to be his ongoing principal educator, though he studied painting for a time at Studio Incamminati in Philadelphia, USA and at the Florence Academy of Art in Italy. He is also a strong advocate of workshop studies and does so with various renowned painters. Miano also spends innumerable hours of research and study at Museums around the world. He currently holds a master class at The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida. Miano is a member of the Portrait Society of America.

www.thesouthernatelier.org

Visiting Instructors

Judith Carducci

Listed in "Who's Who in American Art," JUDITH CARDUCCI has received international recognition as one of today's best portrait painters. Her work has been shown in such venues as The National Arts Club and the Salmagundi Club in New York City, the Cahoon Museum of American Art, and the Butler Institute of American Art. She has been featured in International Artist, Pastel Artist International, American Artist, The Pastel Journal, The Artist's Magazine, and the books, Best of Portrait Painting and Best of Pastel (North Light Books), "100 Ways to Paint People" (International Artist), and Portrait Highlights (American Artist). She is one of two Americans featured in the book Paint! Portrait and Figure by the Swiss publisher RotoVision, and her painting, "Xanadu," was selected as one of the "best of the best" by the former curator of the Smithsonian Institute's Renwick Gallery for the art book Beautiful Things (Guild). Her work is in collections in the United States, Canada, Israel, and Europe.

www.judithcarducci.com

Douglas Flynt

2005 WORKSHOP STUDY with instructor Anthony Ryder
2001-2003 WATER STREET ATELIER (Primary Instructor Jacob Collins), Brooklyn, New York
2000-2002 MASTER OF FINE ARTS, New York Academy of Art, Graduate School of Figurative Art
1999-2000 APPRENTICESHIP (Edward Jonas, Vice Chair of the Portrait Society of America, portrait artist and sculptor), Tallahassee, Florida
1996-2000 BACHELOR OF FINE ARTS IN STUDIO ART, Florida State University
1996-2000 BACHELOR OF ARTS IN HISTORY AND CRITICISM OF ART, Florida State University

www.douglasflynt.com

Lois Griffel

Lois Griffel studied classical painting at the New York Art Students League with great artist who included Ray Kinstler, Burton Silverman and Harvey Dinnerstein. After moving to Provincetown, MA in 1975, she became close friends with Henry Hensche. Hensche was the greatest influence on Griffel’s paintings which now combines a classical background with the color of the impressionists. After stepping in as the new Director of the Cape Code School of Art she expanded the color principles of her predecessors and since then has authored two books published by Watson-Guptill, entitled, Painting the Impressionist Landscape and Painting Impressionist Color.

www.loisgriffel.com

Robert Liberace

Robert Liberace is a contemporary classicist, equally accomplished in drawing, painting, and sculpture. His work is inspired by the centuries of knowledge, skill, and elegance of the old masters. He works in a variety of mediums including pencil, chalk, pen and ink, watercolor, and oil. In the February 2006 issue of The Artist's Magazine, Rob received the honor of being selected as one of the top twenty realist artists under the age of forty.

www.robertliberace.com

Mary Minifie

Mary Minifie was educated at Wellesley College and earned an M.F.A. from Boston University School of Fine Arts. For the next ten years she lived and worked abroad in Cairo, Egypt, Oxford, England, and Vienna, Austria, exhibiting widely. In 1985 when she returned to the U.S., she began her study of portrait and the figure with portrait painter, Paul Ingbretson.

www.maryminifie.com