In addition to being a painter, Tom Root is also a songwriter, musician, and a writer of children's stories. He studied drawing and painting at Lyme Academy of Fine Arts in Old Lyme, Connecticut, under Aaron Shikler N.A. and Deane G. Keller, and at Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida. He lives in Tennessee with his wife, painter Peggy Root, and their two children.
Emily C. McPhie’s life revolves around family, faith, and art, and her paintings reflect the tenderness and toil of these things. Her art explores motherhood and avenues for gathering strength, beauty and wisdom from life.
Emily was born and raised in Orem, Utah. She graduated with a BFA from Brigham Young University in 2001. Chandler, AZ is now home to Emily, with her marvelous husband Gavin and sweet daughters Cordelia Lavender, Clover Iona, and Ezra Petunia.
Nguyen Dinh Dang was born in Hanoi, Vietnam, in 1958. He began drawing at age five and became an outstanding student. He hoped to become a professional painter but the Vietnam war and lack of painting materials restricted his work and made it difficult for Dang to pursue a living as a painter. This did not dampen Dang's passion for painting but the war led him to pursue a career in science.
Dang graduated from the Moscow State University in 1982. He received his Ph.D in nuclear theory in 1985, and his doctor of physics and mathematics sciences in 1990 at the same university. He went to Japan in 1994 as a research fellow and joined RIKEN (the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research) in 1995. Currently, he's an Accelerator Research Scientist at RIKEN's Heavy-Ion Nuclear Physics Laboratory.
For the past two decades, Dang's painting has shifted from impressionism to surrealism, whose most eminent representative, Salvador Dali, remains one of Dang's favorites. Once he gets an idea, he spends nights and weekends painting. A self-taught painter, Dang believes it is not important to explain the literal context of any artwork. "In the creative process of both art and science, the most important thing is intuition. You feel something intuitively. You cannot explain how it comes to you," he says.