John Brewster Jr. (May 30 or May 31, 1766–1854) was a productive, deaf-mute traveling painter who produced many charming portraits of well-off New England families, particularly their children. He lived much of the latter half of his life in Buxton, Maine, footage the faces of much of Maine’s elite society of his time.According to the website of the Fennimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York, Brewster was not an artist who by the way was Deaf but rather a Deaf artist, one in a long custom that owes many of its skin and achievements to the fact that Deaf people are, as scholars have noted, visual people.

Family and early life

Little is known about Brewster’s childhood or adolescence. He was the third child born in Hampton, Connecticut, to Dr. John and Mary (Durkee) Brewster. His mother died while he was 17. His father remarried Ruth Avery of Brooklyn, Connecticut, and they went on to have four more children.John Brewster Sr., a doctor and descendant of William Brewster, the Pilgrim manager, was a member of the Connecticut General Assembly and also vigorous in the local church.

Work as a deaf artist

Brewster probably communicates with others using pantomime and a small amount of writing. For an display of Brewster’s work, the Florence Griswold Museum describe what being a deaf portraitist would have meant in the late 18th and early 19th centuries in the United States: It is astounding then that Brewster traveled great distances, sometimes in areas that were unfamiliar, negotiated prices, decided poses and artistic ideas with his sitters, as well as living in the middle of his sitters of weeks or months at a time.Being deaf also may have given Brewster some advantages in portrait painting, according to the museum exhibit web page: unable to hear and speak, Brewster listening carefully his energy and ability to imprison minute differences in facial expression. He also greatly emphasizes the gaze of his sitters, as eye contact was such a critical part of communication among the Deaf. Scientific studies have proven that since Deaf people rely on visual cues for announcement [they] can differentiate delicate differences in facial expressions much better than hearing people.

Mather Brown was born in christened October 11, 1761–May 25, 1831 was a portrait and historical painter, born in Boston, Massachusetts but active in England.

Brown was the son of Gawen and Elizabeth (Byles) Brown, and descended from the Rev. amplify Mather on his mother’s side. He was trained by his aunt and around 1773 (age 12) became a pupil of Gilbert Stuart. He at home in London in 1781 to further his training in Benjamin West’s studio, enter the Royal Academy schools in 1782 with plans to be a miniature painter, and begin to exhibit a year later.

In 1784 he painted two religious paintings for the church of St Mary’s-in-the-Strand, which led Brown to found a company with the painter Daniel Orme for the commercialization of these and other works through display and the sale of engravings. Among these were large paintings of scenes from English history, as well as scenes from Shakespeare’s plays. However, despite their success he began to concentrate on portraiture. His first successes were with American sitters, among others his patron John Adams and family in 1784–85; this painting is now in the Boston Athenaeum. In 1785–86 he painted the first representation of Thomas Jefferson, who was visiting London. He also painted Sir William Pepperell.

His 1788 full-length portrait of Prince Frederick Augustus in the uniform of Colonel of the Cold stream Guards led to meeting as History and Portrait Painter to the Prince, later the Duke of York and Albany. Other paintings include the Prince of Wales, later George IV (about 1789), Queen Charlotte, and Cornwallis. A self-portrait now belongs to the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts.

A falling off of support in the mid-1790s, and failure to be elected to the Royal Academy, led Brown to leave London in 1808 for Bath, Bristol, and Liverpool. He established in Manchester, returning to London almost two decades later, in 1824, where, even after West’s death, he continued to imitate his teacher’s style of painting. Unable to secure commissions, Brown eventually died in poverty in London on May 25, 1831.

William Rush (1756 - 1833) was a U.S. neoclassical sculptor from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is measured the first major American sculptor.

He was qualified in the carving of ships’ heads in wood. This translates into sculptures that were deeply undercut and able to be seen from far away through the dramatic use of contrast and strong shadows. Rush blended American artisan tradition and neoclassical form.

Rush was one of the first to make outdoor public sculpture in the U.S. His Comedy and Tragedy was carved in 1808 for the New Theater on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia intended by Benjamin Latrobe. His Water Nymph and Bittern was created in 1809 for a Philadelphia waterworks that was also planned by Latrobe.

His statue of George Washington, imprinted in wood, is in Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Rush helped found the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, viewing his interest in art beyond the American craft tradition.

Remedios Varo was born in December 16, 1908 - October 8, 1963 was a surrealist painter. She was born in Anglés Cataluña, Spain in 1908 and died from a heart-attack in Mexico City in 1963. During the Spanish Civil War she flees to Paris where she was mainly prejudiced by the surrealist movement. She met in Barcelona the French surrealist poet Benjamin Péret and became his wife. She was compulsory into banish from Paris during the Nazi profession of France and moved to Mexico City at the end of 1941. She at first considered Mexico a temporary haven, but would remain in Latin America for the rest of her life.

In Mexico she met inhabitant artists such as Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. However, her strongest ties would be to other exiles and expatriates, and particularly her extraordinary friendship with the English painter Leonora Carrington. Her last major relationship would be with Walter Gruen, an Austrian who had endured concentration camps before escaping Europe. Gruen believed severely in Varo, and gave her the support that allowed her to fully concentrate on her painting.

After 1949 Varo developed into her mature and extraordinary style, which remains beautifully enigmatic and instantly recognizable. She often worked in oil on Masonite panels she ready herself. Although her colors have the blend resonance of the oil medium, her brushwork often concerned many fine strokes of paint laid closely together - a technique more reminiscent of egg tempera. She died at the height of her career.

Her work continues to achieve successful retrospectives at major sites in Mexico and the United States.

Gilbert Charles Stuart was born in Stewart on December 3, 1755 - July 9, 1828 was an American painter.  Born in Saunderstown, Rhode Island, he grew up in Newport and was tutored by Cosmo Alexander, a Scottish painter. Stuart moved to Scotland with Alexander in 1771 to finish his studies. His mentor died in Edinburgh the following year. Attempting briefly and without success to earn a living as a painter, he returned to Newport in 1773.  Stuart’s prospects as a portraitist were jeopardized by the onset of the American Revolution and its social disruption.

Following the example set by John Singleton Copley, Stuart departed for England in 1775. Unsuccessful at first in pursuit of his vocation, he then became a protégé of Benjamin West, with whom he studied for the after that six years. The relationship was a useful with Stuart exhibiting at the Royal Academy as early as 1777.  By 1782 Stuart had met with success, mainly due to acclaim for “The Skater,” a portrait of William Grant. At one point the prices for his pictures were exceeded only by those of Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough.

In spite of his many commissions, however, Stuart was habitually neglectful of finances and was in danger of being sent to debtors’ prison. In 1787 he fled to Ireland, where he painted and accumulated debt with equal vigor.  In 1803 Stuart open a studio in Washington, D. C. By the end of his career he had taken the likenesses of over a thousand American political figures.

He was praised for the vitality and naturalness of his portraits, and his subjects found his company agreeable. “Speaking generally,” said John Adams, “no penance is like having one’s picture done. You must sit in a constrained and unnatural position, which is a trial to the temper. But I should like to sit to Stuart from the first of January to the last of December, for he lets me do just what I please, and keeps me continually amused by his conversation.” Stuart worked without the aid of sketches, beginning directly upon the canvas.  

Manuel Rocha Iturbide was born in 1963 in Mexico City; he started musical studies when he was 13 years old. In 1983, after studying musical pedagogy in Lyon France for one year, he determined to start a career as composer at the “Escuela National de Musical” of the University of Mexico. The enormously academic and traditional studies in that institution led him to explore different creative ways beyond instrumental music and so he practiced photography at “Taller de los Lunes”, a workshop organized by Mexican digital photography pioneer Pedro Meyer.

In 1988 he started using video work and in 1989 he realized his first sound sculpture at the mild stone exhibition “14 artists around Joseph Beuyce” in Mexico City along with significant Mexican artists from his generation such as Gabriel Orozco. In 1989 Rocha Iturbide travels to USA to the University Mills College in order to pursue an MFA in electronic music. There, he composes “Frost Clear”, a piece for enlarged refrigerator, double bass and electronic sounds that has been played by him through the years in different important festivals such as the “San Francisco electronic Music Festival” in 2006. In 1991, Rocha Iturbide travels to France where he studies and works as a researcher at IRCAM, and where he peruses his doctoral thesis on grainy synthesis and Quantum Mechanics in relation to sound from 1992 to 1999.

In these years, Manuel Rocha Iturbide worked with Curtis Roads and Barry Truax, two of the most important pioneers on granular synthesis computer music techniques. In 1999 the president of the jury of his doctoral thesis defense was Jean Claude Risset (The name of his thesis was “The granular synthesis techniques”). The influence of this research can be seen in different electroacustic works of this composer: “Transiciones de Fase” for brass quintet and electronic sounds (1994), Moin MOR for electronic sounds (1995), SL-9 for electronic sounds (1994), etc. At his return to Mexico after 7 years abroad, Manuel Rocha Iturbide devoted himself to sound art, being one of its pioneers and biggest promoters.

Ralph Earl (May 11, 1751 - Aug 16, 1801) was an American historical and portrayal painter. Ralph Earl was an itinerant artist who decorated at least 183 individual portraits and six landscapes, including a panorama display of Niagara Falls.

Ralph Earl was born in either Shrewsbury or Leicester, Massachusetts. By 1774, he was working in New Haven, Connecticut as a portrait painter. In the autumn of 1774, Earl returned to Leicester, Massachusetts to marry his cousin, Sarah Gates. A few months later, their daughter was born; though, Earl left them both with Sarah’s parents and returned to New Haven.

Like so many of the colonial craftsmen, Earl was self-taught, and for several years was an itinerant painter. In 1775, Earl visited Lexington and Concord, which were the sites of new battles in the American Revolution. Together with engraver Amos Doolittle, he painted four of his most well-known pictures, all battle scenes.

In London, he entered the studio of Benjamin West, and decorated the king and many notables. Earl continued painting portraits in the town of Norwich. He later married Ann Whiteside, an English woman, despite the fact that he had never ended his marriage ceremony with Sarah Gates. In 1785 or 1786, Earl returned to the United States with his new wife.

Gabriel Orozco is a Mexican post minimalist artist. He was born in Jalapa, Veracruz, Mexico and educated in the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plasticas between 1981 and 1984. He then sustained his education in Madrid at the Circulo de Bellas Artes between 1986 and 1987.

Exploring the use of video, drawings, and installations in addition to his photographs and sculptures, Orozco allows the audience’s imagination to explore the imaginative associations between oft-ignored objects in today’s world. His work permits a rarely allowed interface between the artwork and the audience.

For instance, visitors at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, California could play a four person game of table tennis on Orozco’s Ping Pond Table (1998). The work’s center is a lily pond with four semi-circular ping pong table pieces set in a clover shape approximately it.

James Peale (1749-May 24, 1831) was an American artist, best known for his tiny and still life paintings, and a younger brother of noted artist Charles Willson Peale.

Peale was born in Chestertown, Maryland, the second child, after Charles, of Charles Peale (1709–1750) and Margaret Triggs (1709–1791). His father died when he was a child, and the family moved to Annapolis. In 1762 he began to supply apprenticeships there, first in a saddlery and later in a cabinetmaking store. After his brother Charles returned from London in 1769, where he had studied with Benjamin West, Peale served as his assistant and learned how to paint.

The total number of Peale’s landscape paintings remains indefinite, but he executed more than 200 watercolor miniatures on ivory, perhaps 100 still-life paintings, less than 70 oil portraits, and at least 8 history paintings.

Peale died in Philadelphia on May 24, 1831. Three of his six kids became talented painters: Anna Claypoole Peale (1798–1871), a miniaturist and still-life artist; Margaretta Peale (1795–1882), painter of trompe l’oeil subjects and tabletop fruit; and Sarah Miriam Peale (1800–1885), a portraitist and still-life painter.

Fernando Ortega is an adult contemporary singer-songwriter in contemporary Christian music. He is noted for his interpretations of traditional hymns and songs, such as “Give Me Jesus”, “Be Thou My Vision”, and many others, but also for writing clear and accessible songs, such as “This Good Day”.

Fernando grew up in a village near the banks of the Rio Grande. His family lived in Chimayo, New Mexico for eight generations; his music is influenced by those roots.From all this heritage, from his classical training at University of New Mexico, and varied life experiences, this turned into a unique sound that embraces country, classical, Celtic, Latin American, world music, modern folk and rustic hymnody.