Anita Robbins

Meet the Owner

Dallas artist, ANITA KIM ROBBINS, is the owner of Studio Art House. She is known for her highly textural renditions of nature that combine sculpture and painting. Her work is generous in color, paint and texture. Dynamic lighting and the illusion of 3-D are distinctive qualities that define her work. To see examples of Anita’s work visit www.anitarobbins.com

Anita received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Brigham Young University. She is a member of the Cross Timbers Artist Guild, Grapevine Art Project, and Visual Arts Society of Texas. In addition to her passion for creating art, she also enjoys teaching art. She teaches workshops, group classes, and private lessons. Her students placed highest honors at the Texas State Fair the last three years, including two Best of Show awards. Anita herself has been the recipient of several awards and recognitions including:

• Acceptance into the 2002 Spring Salon, 241 works accepted out of 942, ‘Evolution’
• First Place in the Intermountain Watercolor Autumn Show , ‘Leaf with droplets’
• Excellent for the Utah County Fall Show ‘Peonies -n- Pears’
• Acceptance into the Religious and Spirituality Exhibit at the Springville Museum of Art, ‘Adversity Forms Magnificence’
• Chosen one of Dallas/Fort Worth’s Best Artists and featured in the 2009 and the 2010 CityArtCal Calendar

Anita studied painting in Canada under the instruction of Watercolour Masters Willie Wong and Marilyn Kinsella. In the United States she received instruction from Tony Couch, Robert T. Barrett, Robert Marshall, Don Seegmiller, Hagen Haltern, and Joseph Ostraff. Anita has received multiple awards for her work both locally and nationally. She has done corporate commission work for Flowserve and Great Wolf Lodge in Grapevine. Her work has been featured on book covers for Covenant Communications Publishing for both novelists Michelle Ashman Bell and Marilynne Todd Linford.

Sara McCain

Sara received her Bachelors of Arts in Art Education with All-Level Teaching Certification in Art Education through Texas Woman’s University.

Through the TWU Art education program and through working at Studio Art House, she has gained diverse experience in working with different age groups and demographics of students. Sara has been apart of art classrooms at different levels throughout her education and has seen the benefits that art can bring to a person’s life. Sara teaches Preparatory Art, Young Artist, Studio Artist, Tween, Private lessons and Adult Classes. Sara continues learning through attending workshops by experienced artists and gaining different perspectives.

Sara encourages students to be independent and to build upon their individual art skills. She works with her students to think creatively and explore new ideas . She has had experience with different mediums such as, charcoal, watercolor, acrylic, oil, pastel, and photography. Sara’s main focus in her own work is realism in oil painting, portraiture, and charcoal drawing.

To see examples of Sara’s artwork visit www.saramccainartwork.wordpress.com

Brittney Brown

Brittney received her Bachelors of Science in Human Development from Brigham Young University. Her emphasis was in Human Development. She loves working with adults and seeing how their life experiences creates unique artwork from each of her students. She loves relating how the human brain works to different aspects of art and how that understanding can help the development of new skills!

Britt’s love for art started as a child watching her mom paint, helping her dad with his professional photography and visiting art museums. Britt began developing her art as a teenager first as a photographer, and then through manipulating her photography in photoshop. She took a variety of art classes throughout college including sculpture, drawing, color theory, photography, bookbinding, and art history. Now Britt’s art includes sculpture, drawing, and painting. Drawing is her area of emphasis, specifically working with charcoal, oil pastels, and colored pencils.

As a teacher of art classes, Brittney’s greatest strength lies in encouragement. While learning artistic skills is a great result of her art classes, Britt really tries to build her student’s confidence in themselves and invites them to find the good in their own work rather than comparing themselves to other students.

Susan (Sue) Passarelli Ferraro

Sue was raised in a family of artists and art educators in the foothills west of Denver. As a young child, she grew up in her father’s high school art classroom. Sue graduated from Colorado State University, Ft. Collins, Colorado with a B.A. in Art History and a minor in English. She received her K-12 Art Education Certification from the University of Northern Colorado, Greeley. Able to instruct in a wide variety of mediums and styles, she has instructed K-12 Art in several public schools along the front range of Colorado.

Upon moving to Texas, she worked as the Senior Marketing Manager at the Dallas Museum of Art. While at the museum, Sue was surrounded by an encyclopedic collection and met some of the country’s most influential living artists and art educators. Sue’s passion for art education and the creative process is what brought her back into the studio and the art classroom. Since leaving the DMA, Sue has developed her own more contemporary style of art and her personal work reflect her many diverse life experiences.

Before coming to the Art House Sue instructed students from Pre-K to adult while acting as the Director of Art Education at a small art school in Frisco, TX.

Summer Pirkle

Summer graduated from the University of North Texas with a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Drawing and Painting, learning traditional methods and finding a way to use them for something modern and fun. She grew up observing her mother paint murals and faces, working in a wide range of art that eventually influenced Summer to explore many different styles herself.

Since she was a child, she has always had a passion for cartoons in their every form, creating comics, animations, and illustrations in various Anime and Western Cartoon styles. Though she is trained in many mediums, Summer has a special fondness for Ink Pen, Watercolor, Oil Painting, and Digital Art.

As a teacher, Summer strives to help students discover their own artistic passions and keep the desire to create burning. Her goal is to replace negative views of one’s own work or skills with positive thinking and the desire to experiment and grow as an artist.

Margie Crosby

Margie Averill Crosby is an art teacher by day, and free lance illustrator by night. She has a BA in Graphic Design and Illustration from Taylor University.

Margie is currently working towards her goal of being a children's book illustrator and writer. Her favorite mediums to use and teach are charcoal, watercolor and printmaking. 

Guest Tony Couch - Watercolor

Tony Couch received a bachelor’s degree in art from the university of Tampa and did further work at Pratt Institute in New York, while an artist for associated press.  Then for years he was a freelance illustrator while studying watercolor painting with Edgar A. Whitney, ANA, AWS.

He has written three books on watercolor.  His first, titled “Watercolor: You Can Do It!” was published by Northlight Publishing in 1987.  It went through five printings and became Northlight’s all-time best-selling book on painting.  It has been the textbook for several college art departments and has been translated into Chinese for markets overseas.

In 1989 a follow-up book on technique was published by the same publisher.  It went through three printings and was translated into Japanese for that market.

A third book, on design, titled “Tony Couch’s Keys To Successful Painting” was also published by Northlight.

Tony’s watercolor instruction articles have appeared in “Palette Talk”, “American Artist”, “Australian Artist”, “Northlight” “Watercolor Magic” and “The Artist” magazines.  His work is included in twelve art instruction articles and publications by other artists in the US, Australia and the UK.

He has produced 10 “how to” DVDs, some of which are used in colleges and in various state educational systems via TV.  He conducts workshops throughout the US and abroad.

Tony has been elected to membership in The American Watercolor Society, Academic Artists Assn., Allied Artists Of America, the Hudson Valley Art Assn., Knickerbocker Artists, Salmagundi Club, Society Of Marine Painters, Watercolor West, the Pittsburgh, Georgia and Southern Watercolor Societies, as well as Transparent Watercolor Society Of America and the Whiskey Painters Of America.

He has won over 70 national awards and his work has been included in three annual exhibitions of the National Academy of Design.

Guest Jan Sitts - Textural Abstract

In Jan's more than thirty years as an art instructor and professional painter, she continues her exploring and experimentation with a wide variety of artistic mediums.  Her accomplishments in the art arena are many, working in commercial art, teaching in public schools, and teaching international workshops and a wide variety of art classes.  Her studies include the Kansas City Art Institute (Kansas City, Missouri), a B.A. degree at Western State College (Gunnison, Colorado), and ongoing lifetime of workshops and seminars in the arts. Jan's main focus revolves around layered and experimental art.

Guest Deb Hart - Polymer Clay

Deb is an authority on polymer clay and has been featured several times in the definitive authority on polymer clay, PolymerCafe magazine. Deb's distinctive style is a fusion of millefiori technique, Native American symbolism, animals & icons from the American Southwest, and custom sculpted boxes & containers. Her art is bold and vibrant - unique and recognizable in the growing polymer art community. She has taught on multiple websites, written tutorials and articles for polymer magazines, created video classes, and traveled the United States to teach workshops and demos.

Her pieces can be purchased at the ART house Gallery.

Guest Sunny Jacquet - Alcohol Ink

Sunny has been chosen by D-Magazine as one of the New Dallas 9, 9 artists that have made an impact in their mediums and are considered the areas best artists.  Sunny was born and raised in Seoul Korea and immigrated to the U.S. in late 1980’s to pursue her art passion and dreams in the land of opportunity.  After receiving a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts, Summa Cum Laude, she continued her education in art by completing a Master’s degree in Arts with two years of full scholarship. She received both degrees from Texas Woman’s University. 

Sunny's artwork combines trompe l’oeil and other classical painting techniques with surreal settings of still life objects. Her paintings and artwork have been displayed in a variety of businesses and schools, including North Lake College and Texas Woman’s University Denton and Houston campuses.

Her pieces can be purchased at the ART house Gallery.