Vocation : Art : Fine art artist

Edna Jeanette Taçon, whose name is often written, incorrectly, as Edna Tacon, (born Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1905, died New York, New York in 1980) was a Canadian pioneer of modernism.

Richard Sharpe Shaver (October 8, 1907 – November 5, 1975) was an American writer and artist who achieved notoriety in the years following World War II as the author of controversial stories that were printed in science fiction magazines (primarily Amazing Stories). In Shaver's story, he claimed that he had had personal experience of a sinister ancient civilization that harbored fantastic technology in caverns under the earth. The controversy stemmed from the claim by Shaver, and his editor and publisher Ray Palmer, that Shaver's writings, while presented in the guise of fiction, were fundamentally true. Shaver's stories were promoted by Ray Palmer as "The Shaver Mystery".
During the last decades of his life, Shaver devoted himself to "rock books"—stones that he believed had been created by the advanced ancient races and embedded with legible pictures and texts. He produced paintings allegedly based on the rocks' images and photographed the rock books extensively, as well as writing about them. Posthumously, Shaver has gained a reputation as an artist and his paintings and photos have been exhibited in Los Angeles, New York and elsewhere.

Peter Gallo (born 1959 in Rutland, Vermont) is an artist and writer who lives and works in Hyde Park, VT. He received his Ph.D. and MA in Art History from Concordia University, Montreal, and has written about the intersection of biopolitics, medicalization, and artistic experience from the eighteenth to early twenty-first centuries. He has a BA from Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT. For many years Gallo worked as a psychiatric crisis support worker and services coordinator for people with psychiatric and developmental disabilities in northern Vermont. Additionally, the artist has been active in the Grass Roots Art and Community Efforts (GRACE) in Hardwick, VT. He has organized numerous exhibitions including "Insider Art," (GRACE traveling exhibition, 1990), and Our Yard in the Future: The Art of Gayleen Aiken (Horton Gallery, 2007). He has contributed criticism to Art in America and Art New England, among others. The artist is represented by Anthony Reynolds Gallery in London, UK. Gallo's works have been featured in solo and group exhibitions in the United States and Europe, and are included in notable collections of contemporary art.
Gallo draws from a wide variety of sources – art historical, political, and literary, and often incorporates poetic, philosophical and found texts in his mixed-media paintings. He utilizes simple formal structures which emphasize the materiality of painting, and his works alternate between or combine both abstract and figurative elements. Nautical imagery derived from historical sources such as the "ship of fools," and the "ship of state," are among his signature subjects. His paintings often incorporate unconventional materials, including buttons, toothpicks, newspaper clippings, found photographs, string, typed texts, dental floss and chicken bones. His “improvisatory” style has been compared to that of Ree Morton, Joy Division and Forrest Bess. Critic Jonathon Goodman writes that in current art trends this kind of “ad hoc creativity often serves to mask poor skills, but in Gallo’s case, the rawness is a genuine part of his aesthetic, whose ungainliness keeps us thinking.“

John Altoon (November 5, 1925 – February 8, 1969) was an American artist. Born in Los Angeles to immigrant Armenian parents, from 1947 to 1949 he attended the Otis Art Institute, from 1947 to 1950 he also attended the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles, and in 1950 the Chouinard Art Institute. Altoon was a prominent figure in the LA art scene in the 1950s and 1960s. Exhibitions of his work have been held at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Corcoran Gallery, Washington D.C, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, The Baxter Museum, Pasadena, and The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (opened June 2014).

Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein, known as the Goethe Tischbein (15 February 1751 in Haina – 26 June 1829 in Eutin), was a German painter from the Tischbein family of artists.

Hervé Jean-Pierre Villechaize (French: [ɛʁve vilʃɛz]; April 23, 1943 – September 4, 1993) was a French actor and painter. He is best known for his roles as the evil henchman Nick Nack in the 1974 James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun, and as Mr. Roarke's assistant, Tattoo, on the American television series Fantasy Island that he played from 1977 to 1983. On Fantasy Island, his shout of "De plane! De plane!" became one of the show's signature phrases. He died by suicide in 1993.

David Weidman (June 28, 1921 – August 6, 2014) was an American animator, animation artist and silkscreen print artist known for his mid-century modern works, including posters, prints and ceramics. Weidman began his career in animation as a background artist during the 1950s and 1960s. During his later life, Weidman's silkscreens were featured in the sets of the AMC television series, Mad Men, which revived interest in his work. In 2010, the Los Angeles Times referred to Weidman as possibly "the most famous unknown artist."Weidman was born in the Belvedere Gardens section of present-day East Los Angeles on June 28, 1921. He initially attended Garfield High School, but transferred to Manual Arts High School to focus on an art career. He received a scholarship to Otis Art Institute, but never attended because of the outbreak of World War II, which led to his enlistment in the United States Navy. He used the GI Bill to enroll at Jepson Art Institute following the war. He met his future wife, Dorothy, at Jepson, where she was a silkscreen instructor. The couple married in 1953.Weidman began his career with animator John Hubley. He then became a background artist and painter at United Productions of America, better known as UPA. He is credited with helping UPA develop the "distinctive modern style" which became a hallmark of the animation studio's productions. His television series and special credits with UPA animation included The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo, The Gerald McBoing-Boing Show and Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol (1962). Aside from his work at UPA, Weidman also worked on television shorts for Crusader Rabbit, Popeye, and Fractured Fairy Tales.David Weidman briefly left animation after to focus on silkscreening after becoming frustrated with a group-centered animation process. Weidman developed a blotting process to create original works. In a 2013 interview with Greater Long Beach, he described how he utilized pictures of objects or blocks of color with "varying degrees of transparency." His prints often mimic the backdrops he painted for 1960s era animated cartoons. He opened a small gallery and workshop located behind a liquor store on La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles. He gained a corporate clientele, who used his prints in hotels and other public buildings. However, he disliked having to tailor his work, telling Find Art in a 2014 interview, "When clients began dictating to me the color and the subject, they took me off my rails." He created thousands of silkscreens, but few were purchased by collectors. Some works were priced as low as ten dollars. His printing shop gradually transformed into a custom framing business.Weidman returned to animation during the middle of the 1960s. He worked on Wacky Races and Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines for Hanna-Barbera. He also returned to UPA to work on Uncle Sam Magoo (1970), the last Mr. Magoo television special.While he continued to produce posters and ceramics for decades, Weidman stopped creating silkscreen prints around 1980 due to the work-intensive nature of the process. He did not begin creating new silkscreens again until his artwork was "discovered" or "rediscovered" circa 2008 when he was well into his 80s.Interest in Weidman's pieces were revived with the premiere of Mad Men, which first aired in 2007. Mad Men's set designer, Claudette Didul, is quoted in an article by David A. Keeps of the Los Angeles Times, "The style is very distinctive and indicative of that era and the popularity of Danish modern...They remind me of pictures I saw growing up and seemed in keeping with Peggy's sensibilities and reflect her younger and somewhat more cheerful outlook." Weidman's work was used to colorfully decorate the set in Peggy Olson's office and other rooms in the fictional 1960s ad agency.The inclusion of Weidman's prints in Mad Men led to new opportunities. Urban Outfitters licensed a line of pillows emblazon with Weidman's mid-century art. In 2008, Steven Kurutz, a writer for The New York Times published a book on the artist and his work, "The Whimsical Works of David Weidman" through Gingko Press. A retrospective of his work opened on June 28, 2014, at the Weidman Gallery, now located on Melrose Avenue. Weidman attended the opening of exhibition, which ran until July 31, 2014.David Weidman died of congestive heart failure at his home in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles on August 6, 2014, at the age of 93. He had lived with his wife and family in the home since they built it in the 1950s. He was survived by his wife, Dorothy Weidman, whom he married in 1953, and three children, Lenna Weidman, Josh Weidman and Troy Weidman.

Taro Yamamoto (October 29, 1919 – June 12, 1994) belonged to the New York School Abstract Expressionist artists whose artistic innovation by the 1950s had been recognized across the Atlantic, including Paris.

Larry John Bissonnette (born 1957 in Winooski, Vermont) is an American autistic artist who starred in two films showcasing his art and travels. 2005 in My Classic Life as an Artist and in 2011 Wretches & Jabberers. Both films have been criticized by the science community for claiming that Bissonnette can communicate through the discredited pseudoscience facilitated communication.