having your child's portrait done can be a tricky process. we have heard horror stories from our friends and collectors. so when hidell brooks gallery stumbled upon the paintings of laura sanders at art miami a few years ago we smiled. laura is a figurative painter. she is drawn to figures in water whether it be a pool, lake, or ocean. how the water distorts the body, drips and rolls off the skin and reflects the light throughout.

we were awestruck by her paintings so when we found out she takes on a select number of portrait commissions a year we were ecstatic! above all laura sanders want her portraits to be beautiful paintings that just happen to be portraits.

her process is simple, but not quick. she comes to your choice of locations for a few days. takes 1,000 plus photographs of her subject. filters through the photos one by one. laura chooses two to three she thinks will make amazing paintings based on composition, reflection and color. the client chooses their favorite which has ended up not being an easy task. then 6 to 8 months later the painting arrives depending on the size.

laura sanders has an incredible talent when it comes to handling paint. we are thrilled to be showing her paintings as well as being able to offer our clients an option when it comes time to have you or your child's portrait painted!!!

we have come across a whole new group of future art collectors....preschoolers!! they are inquisitive, extremely insightful and they love art. they were mesmerized by everything in the gallery. the perfect collector.

katharine answers questions from our little collectors. they were most intriqued about the johan hagaman sculpture behind her which has an anitique canary coal mine cage on top. explanation of the cage was a bit tricky, luckily for us one of the mothers in attendance lent us a hand.

we had rushed to get miranda lake's solo exhibition up since it had just arrived the day before. miranda lives in new orleans and paints amazing oil and encaustic on panel paintings. her recent work focuses on animals. perfect subject matter for this crowd. they were taken by the seahorse with wings of coral and a leopard who looked like he was about to jump out of the painting.

the exquisite paintings of bill braun caught the eye of the new collectors. they were tricked as well as most of our older collectors when viewing one of bill's trompe l'oeil paintings. they were taken aback at the fact that everything was painted and not collaged as the eye would trick you to believe.

last but not least we took them into the secret and very special viewing room to turn the lights off on jacob cooley's beautiful landscape paintings. jacob can capture light like no other in his marsh scenes of the north and south carolina coasts. as you can imagine the lights were turned out quite a few times. the paintings glowed. they would be the perfect night light.