Founder and Chairman of the Art Renewal Center®, Ross is the leading authority on William Bouguereau and co-author of the published Catalogue Raisonné William Bouguereau: His Life and Works. Ross received his MA in art education from Columbia University. His speeches and essays are read by over 300,000 art professionals, educators, students and fans each year; and have become required reading in countless classrooms. He has given lectures and speeches at prominent venues including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Sotheby’s NY, The Dahesh Museum, NY, the Berkshire Museum, MA, The Wadsworth Athenaeum, CT, the MEAM Museum, Barcelona, as well as university campuses among other venues. Ross is also a well-known collector of 19th Century European painting and of Contemporary Realism, being published in numerous magazine and newspaper articles including Forbes Magazine and Fine Art Connoisseur among others. Ross has also been a frequent Juror in numerous competitions and is an ARC Salon and ARC Scholarship judge.

Kara Lysandra Ross is the Co-Chair and Chief Operating Officer for the world-renowned Art Renewal Center® (ARC). She holds a BA in Art History from Drew University. As an art educator she has been a contributing writer for Collections Magazine, and Fine Art Connoisseur, and has been published frequently in other magazines and newspapers. She was the co-editor of the William Bouguereau Catalogue Raisonné and author of chapter 28 in the published second edition. In her role at the ARC she spearheaded the introduction of the live exhibition associated to the ARC Salon Competition which has traveled to prestigious venues such as Sotheby’s NY, Sotheby’s LA, The European Museum of Modern Art (MEAM) and the Salmagundi Club, serving as chief organizer and curator. She is an ARC Salon Juror, and has served as juror in other competitions for organizations such as the 2nd Velázquez Painting & Sculpture competition, China, the South African Portrait Society, International Guild of Realism, IX Arts, and the Ani Academy. She is also an expert on 19th century Academic French and English painting, co-authoring William Bouguereau: The Essential Works and is currently researching and writing the catalogue raisonné on Edmund Blair Leighton, for which she is accepted as the world authority, authenticating works by this artist for Sotheby's, Christie's, and Bonham's among others.

Swanson has his PhD from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, England and was the Director of the Springville Museum of Art, Utah, where he has served for over 30 years. He is a lecturer/scholar/writer and expert on 19^th Century European Art and Russian Art through the 20^th Century. Swanson is the leading authority on Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema and John William Godward and author of the Catalogue Raisonnés for both artists. In total, the number of books Swanson has published is well into the teens.

Michael John Angel is an ARC Living Master™ and regarded as one of the foremost figurative painters alive today; with his paintings hanging in both public and private collections on both sides of the Atlantic. From 1982 to 1988 he was the Director of the National Portrait Academy in Toronto, Canada, and from 1992-1995 the Assistant Director of the Florence Academy of Art in Florence, Italy. In 1997, his school, the Angel Academy was founded with the assistance of Lynne Barton. Angel Academy is now one of the most successful Atelier Schools in the world, requiring of its students the highest standards of traditional techniques.

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Juliette Aristides is an ARC Living Master™ and founding member of the Water Street Atelier with Jacob Collins, Aristides is a recipient of the Elisabeth Greenshields Grant; and founded the Classical Atelier at Gage Academy of Fine Art in Seattle, Washington. She has authored three books, Classical Drawing Atelier, Classical Painting Atelier, and Lessons in Classical Drawing, which includes an instructional DVD and quickly became a best seller. Her books have become well received guidelines for drawing and painting.

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Daniel Graves is an ARC Living Master™. He was a student of Richard Serrin at the Villa Schifanoia Graduate School of Fine Art, and studied under Nerina Simi, daughter of the Florentine painter, Filadelfo Simi, a student of Gérôme. Daniel Graves went on to found The Florence Academy of Art in 1991, where he still serves as the Academic Director. In April 2008 Daniel Graves and The Florence Academy of Art received the Excellence in Art Education Award from the Portrait Society of America. The academy’s programs in Florence, Sweden and the U.S. are accredited by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design.

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B. Eric Rhoads is the Founder and Chairman of Streamline Publishing, Inc., publisher of Fine Art Connoisseur Magazine, which provides art collectors and enthusiasts with in-depth editorial coverage of historical and contemporary representational art authored by well-known experts. Rhoads also publishes PleinAir, a magazine focused on representational landscape painting with in-depth coverage of historical and contemporary artworks painted en' plein air and in studio and the Plein Air Convention. The company also produces artist videos with many masters including ARC Living Master™ Max Ginsburg. Rhoads, an entrepreneur, founded the company in 1986 and produces other magazines and conferences. He is a well known author and blogger on art marketing, has released a DVD series for artists on art marketing, and is also a landscape and figurative painter.

Patrick Wilshire is the Director of the Association of Fantastic Art, dedicated to the promotion, recognition and elevation of the art of imaginative realism. This genre includes works that were heavily influenced by the storytelling paintings of the 19^th century; artists such as Burne-Jones and John William Waterhouse. It is the organization behind the groundbreaking IlluXCon symposium started in 2008, and the Illustration Exchange, the online nexus for collectors of original paintings, drawings and sculpture from this style of realist art. In addition he is the author of Visions of Never: The Collection of Fantastic Art, (2009), The Art of the Dragon: The Definitive Collection of Contemporary Dragon Paintings (2012), and the History of Imaginative Realism. He was also honored to be the guest curator of AT THE EDGE: Art of the Fantastic, mounted at the Allentown Art Museum, PA, in June of 2012.

Anthony Waichulis is an ARC Living Master™ and is regarded as the premiere trompe l'oeil painter living today. Celebrated by critics and collectors alike, Waichulis' works have been published in nearly every major art publication worldwide including but not limited to: The Artist's Magazine, Fine Art Connoisseur, American Artist, American Art Review, American Art Collector, Art News and Art-Talk. Anthony has exhibited in a salvo of key venues across the country including the Smithsonian Institute, National Arts Club, Orlando Museum of Art, Butler Institute, Washington Museum of Fine Arts, The World Arts Museum in Beijing as well as many others. He is also the founder of the highly successful Waichulis Studio and co-founder and chief curriculum designer of the International Ani Art Academies project. In 2011 The Waichulis Studio merged with the Ani Art Academies project to form the domestic flagship of the Ani project, The Ani Art Academy Waichulis in Wilkes Barre, PA. Since then the Ani Art Academies project has seen the launch of international Academies in Anguilla, The Dominican Republic, Thailand and Sri Lanka.

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Kamille Corry’s art education and apprenticeship began in Florence, Italy, where she pursued etching studies at Il Bisonte and drawing and painting at Studio Cecil-Graves. Thereafter, Ms. Corry also trained extensively with noted painter D. Jeffrey Mims in Florence and North Carolina. Awards include the prestigious Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant, the Achievement Award from the Florence Academy of Art Alumni Exhibition in San Francisco, First Place for Figurative Painting and an Honorable Mention in Drawing at the ARC Salon 2015, and an Honorable Mention at the Figurativas 2017 Competition at the MEAM museum in Barcelona. She was recently awarded First Place in the Academy of Realist Art in Boston’s Figure Painting Competition 2018. Notable recent exhibits include two-person shows with painters Jill Hooper and Louise Camille Fenne at Ann Long Fine Art in Charleston, "Self Portrait, an Exhibition" at Eleventh Street Arts in New York, Figurativas 2017 in Barcelona, ModPortrait 2018 in Zaragoza/Barcelona, "12 x 12 Portraits" FAA Gallery, and currently in the exhibit “Prism” at the Florence Academy of Art Gallery in NJ. From 2002 - 2012 Ms. Corry founded and directed the Corry Studio of Figurative Art in Salt Lake City, Utah. In recent years, Kamille has been teaching intensive workshops in the US and Europe. Ms. Corry is Vice President of the Academy of Classical Design in North Carolina (Director, D. Jeffrey Mims).

Mandy Hallenius is a certified K-12 art teacher and past Co-President Elect of the Washington Art Education Association. She is the president and cofounder of the Da Vinci Initiative as well as a graduate of the four year program at the Aristides Atelier. She also studied classical drawing at the Corry Studio of Figurative Art and Mims Studios. She has 7+ years of classroom experience, and teaches professional development workshops for art teachers all over the United States.

Arantzazu Martinez is the co-founder and main instructor of Atelier Madrid, an academy dedicated to teaching the classical art of drawing and painting in the capital of Spain since 2013. Her ability to recreate a dream world where imagination meets reality is a feature of her painting, as well as producing very careful compositions with an exceptional treatment of the human figure and light. These qualities have made her work internationally recognized. Martinez has taken part in such projects as Star Wars Visions by Lucas Film Ltd., The Images of Russia, and the IBEX Masterpieces Project. She has also been awarded the Art Renewal Center’s prestigious William Bouguereau Award and Best In Show 2015.

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Mario Andres Robinson is an ARC Living Master™, an Exhibiting Artist Member (EAM) of The National Arts Club, an Artist Member of The Salmagundi Club and a Signature Member of The Pastel Society of America. His work has been featured several times in The Artist's Magazine, The Pastel Journal, Watercolor Magic, American Art Collector, Fine Art Connoisseur and on the cover of American Artist magazine. In the February, 2006 issue of The Artist's Magazine, Mario was selected as one of the top 20 realist artists under the age of 40. The work of Mario Andres Robinson fits squarely within the tradition of American painting. Robinson's finished works bear a close affinity to the masters of the realist tradition, Andrew Wyeth and Thomas Eakins. Robinson's work has a timeless and universal quality, capturing the human spirit by exemplifying his subjects inner psyche. Although Robinson's oeuvre is diverse, beginning in 1994, Robinson began to extensively incorporate rural subjects, primarily located in the state of Alabama.

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A recognized authority on California Impressionism, Art Historian Jean Stern has extensive experience in the field as an author, curator, lecturer, and teacher. He is the executive director of the Irvine Museum Collection at the University of California, Irvine. In over twenty-five years at the museum, he has established a national presence for the Irvine Museum in the fields of California Art and History through a noteworthy international series of books, exhibitions, lectures, articles and video documentaries. In his career, he has presented over 250 lectures and judged and juried nearly 100 art competitions. Mr. Stern has written essays for over 25 books and museum exhibition catalogues, such as all three PLEIN AIR PAINTERS OF CALIFORNIA series. He has presented tours and lectures on California Art in numerous museums including the International Cultural Center, Krakow, Poland; Mona Bismarck Foundation in Paris, France; National Academy Museum in New York as well as many others. He was a consultant to and appears in IMPRESSIONS OF CALIFORNIA, a PBS documentary video series on art in California, and on PLEIN AIR: PAINTING THE AMERICAN LANDSCAPE, (PBS 2007). Since 1992, the Irvine Museum, with Jean Stern as director, has produced a number of traveling exhibitions, including SELECTIONS FROM THE IRVINE MUSEUM (1993 and 2010); ROMANCE OF THE BELLS, The California Missions in Art (1995); GUY ROSE, and more. In 2017, Mr. Stern received the prestigious CHEVALIER OF THE ORDER OF ARTS AND LETTERS by the French Ministry of Culture. He has also been presented with three LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS: by the Laguna Plein Air Painters Association in 2013; by the Plein Air Painters of America in 2014; and by PLEIN AIR MAGAZINE, at the Third Annual Plein Air Convention in Monterey, CA, in 2014.

Dan Thompson, an ARC Living Master™, has won numerous awards including Grand Prize for Best of Show in the American Society of Portrait Artist’s International Portrait Competition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Erlebacher Award from the New York Academy of Art, two Ethel Lorraine Bernstein Memorial Awards for Excellence in Painting from the Corcoran School of Art, and two Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grants.

He co-founded two schools of Art in New York City: The Grand Central Academy of Art and the Janus Collaborative School of Art. Thompson has served on the MFA faculty of the New York Academy of Art for 15 years, the Art Students League of New York and is a senior faculty member of Studio Incamminati, School for Contemporary Realist Art in Philadelphia.

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Sadie Valeri (b. 1971) is a nationally recognized oil painter and art instructor based in San Francisco. Sadie studied drawing and painting at the Rhode Island School of Design, earning her BFA in Illustration in 1993. She later discovered the emerging realist movement of 19^th century-based Classical art training, and continued her education with living masters of realism including Ted Seth Jacobs, Juliette Aristides, and Michael Grimaldi, and at Studio Escalier in France. Her paintings, evocative of the Dutch Golden Age of still life, have shown at prestigious galleries across the United States and have attracted significant honors including First Prize for Still Life in the 2010 Art Renewal Center International Salon. Her work has been published in dozens of periodicals and books, and the originals have been acquired by prestigious collections including the New Britain Museum of American Art. Sadie was a faculty member at the 2017 Portrait Society of America's annual conference, and in 2018 she was a headlining presenter at F.A.C.E: Figurative Art Conference and Expo.

Yuqi Wang was born in China, 1958. His work has been collected by many public institutions, including: the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. , the Art Museum of Harvard University, China National Gallery, as well as by private collectors all over the world. His work has been recognized with awards both nationally and internationally, winning the Grand Prize at The International Portrait Competition of the Portrait Society of America and Second Prize at The Portrait Competition of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C., among others. Wang classically trained at the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts and Central Academy of Fine Arts, China. He has huge artistic talent as a self-taught, child prodigy, in the time of the cultural revolution, becoming a brilliant success in China. Remaining continuously curios in the Renaissance masters, and later, for a long time, with the work of the Pre-Raphaelites, year after year, he developed rationality through history's path, to arrive at himself; a contemporary artist, who stands upon our time, facing the condition of people’s lives, sharpening his subjects with signature mastery and sensitivity to the human spirit.

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Xu Mangyao is a leading figure in contemporary Chinese realistic painting and is one of the few teachers who actively advocates study and inherit excellence in classical paintings in modern China. He has promoted the development of realistic art worldwide, by hosting a series of Classical Painting Seminars with European classical painting masters such as Antonio Lopez-Garcia, Golucho, and Odd Nerdrum in Spain, Italy and China. Xu Mangyao, was born in 1945 and is a famous contemporary Chinese painter. In 1980, he received his MFA in painting from the China Academy of Art, and later became an instructor at the CAA painting department. In 1984, Xu Mangyao continued to advance his studies at the Acaddémie des Beaux-Arts, Paris France, with Professor Pierre Carron. From November 1991 to January 1993, he returned to France as a visiting scholar for academic exchange at the National Academy of Decorative Arts in Paris (École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs). In 1998, he began teaching at the Fine Arts College of Shanghai Normal University, and later became professor and dean of the Fine Arts College of Shanghai Normal University. Xu Mangyao holds the positions of Distinguished Professor and Ph. D. Tutor in the Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts. He has held individual exhibitions and joint exhibitions in China, Hong Kong, Macao, France, America, Britain, and Belgium. His works have been aquired by museums and collectors alike.