Faculty & Staff
Holly
White-Gehrt
Founder/Executive Director/Instructor
Holly originally went to college at New Mexico Tech to study chemistry and physics, but eventually found herself at the Aegean Center for the Fine Arts in Paros, Greece. Although her conflict of interests between art and science continued for over a decade, art ultimately won out. While making a living in Materials Science, she earned a BFA from Pacific Northwest College of Art, having made a choice to pursue art. She graduated there with the Governor's Award for Thesis Work, but soon after realized that her art degree did not equip her with the drawing and painting skills she desired. She sought out more rigorous training and while living in Seattle, she discovered the Atelier Movement.
Holly studied in Seattle for over three years with Tenaya Sims at the Georgetown Atelier and for a forth year with Juliette Aristides at the Aristides Atelier at Gage Academy. She has also studied with Daniel Graves, Michael Grimaldi, Jordon Sokol, Colleen Barry, Michael Mentler, Anthony Visco, Zoey Frank, Nathan DiPietro, Fred Wessell, and Koo Schadler. Holly designed and taught the inaugural part-time classical atelier at Georgetown Atelier (with a waiting list of nearly 50 people for the two years she taught there), and taught classes at the Gage Academy as well.
The classical and representational training she received at both Ateliers finally allowed Holly to develop the skill, technique and ability she had desired when she sought out an arts degree years before. Holly has now joined the long and prestigious line of Atelier master artists who provide the traditional and classical education to drawing and painting that is no longer offered at art schools and university programs. See our Brief History of the Atelier Movement to learn how Hill Country Atelier is directly connected to over 500 years of classical art training.
See Holly's work on our gallery page, at HollyWhiteGehrt.com, or on Instagram @whitegehrt.
Mary Thomas
Business Manager
Roger Parsons
Instructor
Roger was born in 1957 and raised in Evansville, Indiana. Roger enjoyed drawing at an early age, but art school was not in the cards. He graduated from the US Air Force Academy in 1979 with a degree in civil engineering. Two years later, he took his first basic drawing class—and he was hooked! Roger took art classes and workshops, and painted sporadically as his engineering “day job” would allow. A stroke in 2011 changed his life dramatically and ended his day job. After months of rehabilitation he learned to walk again. Visual impairments caused by the stroke gradually resolved, and he began painting full time in 2012.
Roger claims Wilson Hurley and Arturo Chavez, with whom he has studied extensively, as his artistic lineage. He has also studied with Dan Mieduch, Michael Lynch, and Ovannes Berberian. Roger paints landscapes of the American West & Southwest, for which he has won several awards. Now he signs his work with a red dot as a stylized symbol of the blood clot that caused his stroke. His goal as an artist is to make the viewer feel like they are there or inspire the viewer to go there.
Awards include: 2011 Salon International, Merit Award for Western Genre, "Afternoon Glow", Greenhouse Gallery of Fine Art 2008 Salon International, Jury's Top 50, "Wind Patterns" 2007 Salon International, "Caprock Fortress" 2006 Coppini Academy Fall Show, Best Oil Painting,"Vermillion Sunset" 2006 Salon International, Jury's Top 50, "Vermillion Sunset"
Find Roger's work on our gallery page and on Instagram @rparsons_fine_art
Rebecca Burritt
Instructor
Rebecca Burritt began her art studies at her beloved Waldorf School in Chestnut Ridge, NY, taking classes at Cooper Union in New York City and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, before she found her path at the Barnstone Studios. She fell in love with Myron Barnstone’s method of art instruction, which aimed to teach artists the valuable knowledge of classical drawing and design used by the masters, knowledge that is lost in most contemporary art curriculum. After mastering Barnstone’s rigorous training in classical drawing and design, Rebecca found her passion for helping students develop and excel as Myron’s teaching assistant.
Armed with her desire to bring classical art foundations back to art education, she went on to receive a BA in Studio Art from Smith College, and a Master of Arts in Teaching from the Savannah College of Art and Design.
Rebecca has taught at various educational institutions, including Waldorf and Montessori. For the last several years, she has been teaching figurative and portraiture studies, as well as drawing workshops, at the Southwest School of Art. Meantime, she has also developed and taught a 2-year fine arts program in observational drawing, plein air, and watercolors studies at the Cibolo Center for Conservation.
Rebecca taught at the Hill Country Atelier when it was in Ingram, TX, and we are delighted to have her back! Nothing gives her greater satisfaction and pride than to watch her students discover their own unique artistic voices emerge from a mastery of the foundational concepts of art.
See Rebecca's art on our gallery page.
Matthew Fielder
Assistant Instructor
Tenaya Sims
Visiting Instructor
Tenaya is Founder and Master Instructor of the Georgetown Imaginative Realism Atelier, now part of the Gage Academy in Seattle.
Tenaya worked in the video games industry and earned his BFA from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA. He then left the games industry to dedicate five years of full-time study to classical drawing and painting. He attended the Watts Atelier for one year before apprenticing with Juliette Aristides for four years.
Tenaya has exhibited his work at a variety of galleries and venues, including the Salmagundi Club, MEAM Museum in Barcelona, Krab Jab Gallery in Seattle, IX ARTS in Redding, PA, and is currently represented by Abend Gallery in Denver, Colorado. In 2016, Tenaya was awarded Best In Show at the highly competitive and prestigious International ARC Salon Competition.
The Texas Hill Country Atelier is delighted that Tenaya, Holly's primary atelier mentor, teaches an annual workshop in our Kerrville studios. He also serves on the Board of Directors of TX HCA.
Find Tenaya's work here, or check out Georgetown Atelier, here.
Teresa Craighead
Executive Director Emeritus
After two decades in executive management and publishing, Teresa has turned her interests to pursuing the arts and serving with non-profits. First attempting arts education at a public university, Teresa quickly discovered the drawing and painting skills she wanted to learn were no longer taught. She discovered Holly White-Gehrt and the Atelier movement and became an avid student. As the Atelier grew, Teresa and Holly teamed up to advance the Texas Hill Country Atelier and move to downtown Kerrville, where Teresa also lived and served on the City of Kerrville's Main Street Advisory Board.
Teresa draws on her background in helping start ups build infrastructure to bring Holly's vision for a full-fledged classical art education to life. As Executive Director of the Atelier, she guided the business end of the school and oversaw budgets, strategic planning and operations.
We wish Teresa well in her next endeavor and are forever grateful for her contribution in establishing the Texas Hill Country Atelier as a 501(c)3.
Teresa is also a ceramic artist and you can find her on Instagram @teresacraighead.art
If you desire to achieve more skill and learn more technique than you are currently receiving, atelier training is what you need. Sign up for our newsletter and join our community of passionate artists. We welcome you to enroll in our life-changing art instruction.