The Arkansas Arts Center offers a way to appreciate nature while still remaining in climate controlled settings.  The exhibit INSPIRED BY NATURE by David Paul Cook, Victoria Harvey and Catherine Rodgers, is on view through October 18 in the Museum School Gallery.

“We are pleased to host works by our very own Museum School instructors who work tirelessly to teach students of all ages and skill levels to become artists,” said Arkansas Arts Center executive director Todd Herman. “These faculty members created wonderful works of art by working in the open air – influenced by nature and the environment around them.”

David Paul Cook has been the Museum School’s Watercolor Landscape and Plein Air (outdoor) Instructor since the fall of 2002. He also works with beginning students on watercolor techniques and brush handling and helps more advanced students with landscape composition and design. David is an avid outdoor painter of Central Arkansas scenes, rendered in a realistic style. His colorful and unique sketchbook-journals have been recently featured in articles in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and the Maumelle Magazine.

Victoria Harvey is a landscape painter in the medium of oils on canvas. A juried member of Oil Painters of America and Landscape Artists International, her work is represented in many notable collections around the country and is shown in Artworks Gallery on Nantucket. She teaches Beginning Painting and Landscape Painting and is the coordinator for Plein Air Painters of Arkansas and resides in Little Rock and in Nantucket, Massachusetts.

Catherine Rodgers attended summer workshops at the Arkansas Arts Center as a child. Her works are held in hundreds of private collections in Arkansas and across the United States. Recent exhibits include the55th Annual Delta Exhibition, the Inaugural Exhibit of the Mississippi River Museum and The Erudites Exhibit at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.