Erika Osborne

May 17 – July 14, 2019

Erika Osborne creates artworks in a variety of media that raise awareness and communicates the nuances of the many environmental issues present today in the American West. Equally, her artwork delves into our cultural and personal connections to place and environment. Her artistic focus explores environmental degradation and the hope for a sustainable future as well as our connection to place in a world where the environment is loved and abused simultaneously.

Erika Osborne received her BFA from the University of Utah in painting and drawing and her MFA from the University of New Mexico. She has exhibited extensively nationally and internationally, with over ten solo exhibitions and over 60 group exhibitions in recent years – including shows at the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Nevada Museum of Art and the Chautauqua Institute. Erika is currently represented by Robischon Gallery in Denver, Colorado.

She has also been the recipient of numerous grants and awards, locally, nationally and internationally. Erika’s work has been highlighted in three books surveying the evolution of land and environmental art in the West. It has also been featured in regional publications along with international art magazines such as New American Paintings, Art Papers, Sculpture Magazine and Southwest Art Magazine.

Erika Osborne has also dedicated herself to university level art education. As an Associate Professor in the Department of Art and Art History at Colorado State University, Erika teaches all levels of painting alongside an interdisciplinary field course for artists titled, Art and Environment.

Ron Kroutel
Ohio to Colorado: The Journey Continues

Lynnette C. Jung-Springberg Gallery
May 17 – July 14, 2019

Growing up in Chicago, Kroutel attended The Art Institute of Chicago for studio art courses in painting and drawing and The University of Chicago for academic courses.

In 1966 he took a position at Ohio University where he eventually became chair of painting, drawing and foundations for many years. Nationally and internationally exhibited with over 39 solo exhibitions, Kroutel has been awarded three Ohio Arts Council Fellowships, an Arts Midwest NEA Fellowship and numerous prizes and awards. His work most recently has appeared in the book International Painting Annual 1, published by Manifest Gallery.

As a professor at Ohio University, he had the good fortune to teach in a considerable number of Education Abroad programs in London, Prague and Florence.  These experiences profoundly influenced his teaching and his art practice. More recently he finished teaching in Ohio University’s London Education Abroad program starting in the summer of the year 2000.

Early in 2018, Kroutel was honored with a retrospective exhibition at the Kennedy Museum of Art in Athens, Ohio entitled “50 Year Journey: Ron Kroutel Paintings.” He and his wife, Patrice Wolf, a recognized painter, now work in their studios in Old Town, Fort Collins, CO where they moved in 2017.  Currently he is working on traveling the Ohio retrospective to a museum in Colorado where he can introduce his work to a new community.  His journey continues.