Art and Materials

Resident teacher, Store Owner.

Chris Mathiot is owner and operator of Art Materials and Ballantyne Framing. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Management from University of Phoenix, and is a commissioned artist. His work is displayed in Eastern North Carolina. Chris helped develop the art program at The Epiphany School where he taught for one year.

Click Here to contact Chris.

 Resident teacher, owner

(Shelley's most recent series is the New Bern Bear theme)

When Shelley isn't homeschooling four kids, she's throwing and teaching pottery in Bear Hands Pottery Studio located inside Art &Materials. Shelley has been a potter for four years, and attributes her success to two fine artists in this area; Jim Bisbee and Elizabeth Priddy. She blogs about her pottery adventures here.

Hannah Mathiot is a Senior in High School and studies as a part time college student at Craven Community College. She began drawing at a young age, and sold her first painting when she was twelve. She has done several commissions and has won awards for her artwork in various shows, and will have her own show in the New Bern Craven County Public Library in the upcoming months. She assists Chris and Shelley in their classes, and now teaches Little Art Explorers at Art &Materials.

 
Maggie's favorite mediums are Oil and Acrylic. She's been painting since she was a child, and studied Art Education at Craven and East Carolina University, and photography at Carterett. Her favorite artists are Ann Packard and George Innes. She is passionate about art and loves teaching. She has been teaching at Art &Materials for 1 year, and taught art at assisted living homes. She teaches the beginning acrylic class along with oils.

 
Guest Instructor

Catherine Hillis has painted all her life, winning numerous awards and honors at competitive shows regionally and nationally.

Mrs. Hillis primarily paints in watercolors, including busy street scenes, intricate florals and her favorite, the historic sites near her home on the Blue Ridge in Northern Virginia.  The hallmarks of her work are rich color and a touch of humor. She has been honored to paint abroad, most recently in Europe and Asia.

Visit Catherine's website: http://catherinehillis.com

Guest Instructor

"My painting philosophy is very simple. I paint because I can't stop. I don't know exactly when I became obsessed with watercolor painting. It caught me when I wasn't paying attention and changed my life. I no longer look at the world without seeing common things in a special way. The subjects I paint are recognizable but certainly not painted in a photographic manner. The design of my "painted shapes" are more important than painting realistic details. Many times I paint people. I always paint the presence of people, even if their image is absent in the painting. My work has been described as abstract but intimate..................I hope you agree."

 Judy Morris earned B.S. and M.S. degrees in art education from Southern Oregon University in Ashland, Oregon. She taught art at South Medford High School for thirty years before retiring in 1996 to become a full time professional watercolorist. In the last fifteen years Morris has been a popular juror and workshop teacher throughout the country and in Canada, Mexico, England, Switzerland, France, Italy and Japan.

Visit Judy's website here: http://www.judymorris-art.com

Rain Beauty by Georgia Mason

Guest Instructor

 Georgia Mason was born, raised and graduated college in Monroe, Louisiana. She has lived throughout the South - in Florida, North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland, and now has a home and studio in Emerald Isle, NC. She has painted for 30 years in watercolor and now works primarily in mixed-media collage. She began taking painting classes at the YWCA in Charlotte, NC, and has continued studies with many nationally known teachers in workshops and classes. She has found personal exploration to be the best teacher.

*Bio from Georgia's home page. Read more about Georgia Mason and visit her at her website here.

Self Portrait

Guest Instructor

Dan Nelson* failed the very first assignment of his academic career. On DAY ONE of kindergarten he colored the balloons instead of counting them. The artistic itch was already that strong. Undaunted by such inauspicious beginnings, he went on to win a string of prestigous awards:

• 2nd Place, National Safety Poster Contest
• 3rd Place, Local Pumpkin Carving Contest!
• 1st Place, Small Town Window Painting Competition (against a bunch of kids roughly half his age, as it turned out)

Naturally, such accolades kept the itch going, so he went on to earn a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from a small college in the Midwest. His real education, however, took place during the 15 or 20 years when he sat at his desk 50 or 60 hours a week drawing whatever the telephone told him to draw. Most Americans would have stumbled upon Dan's work at sometime during the 80's -- in restaurants and sporting good stores, at summer camps, from IBM to hospitals and book covers to billboards. "I'm really famous," he used to tell his kids, "just nobody knows it".

Dan now divides his time between illustration and fine art, still doing a wide variety of work--airbrush realism, cute (or funny) cartoons, architectural renderings, street paintings, portrait and landscapes in oil. He loves painting large and he loves an audience, so doing 8 x 10 foot murals in public is one of his favorite activities.

*Dan's bio was taken from this page. Learn more about Dan at his website here.

Self Portrait

Rich Nelson is an award-winning portrait and gallery artist residing in the mountains of North Carolina. Though portraiture is a major part of his career, he also loves painting landscape, still life, and figurative gallery pieces. He is endlessly fascinated by people, places, and things and considers it a privilege and a challenge to capture some aspect of their essence on canvas. All of this work (except some portraiture) is done exclusively from life.

(Bio taken from Rich's website. Click here to learn more about Rich.)