Ann Cooper

Note: Ann Cooper was born and raised in New Orleans and graduated from Metairie Park Country Day School and Newcomb College where she studied under Pat Trivigno and George Rickey. Cooper’s art is vibrant, dynamic and evokes a feeling of simplicity and charm. Her bold planes of color lend a modernist perspective to her often traditional subjects, while patterns and subtle texture enliven the surfaces. Cooper has been the subject of over forty one-woman shows and is represented in numerous private and museum collections, both in Louisiana where she is fondly remembered and nationally.

Note: Gretchen Rothschild Eppling was born in 1940 in New Orleans. The daughter of local artists, Charles and Vera Reinike, she grew up surrounded by art and was never wanting for various art supplies. Summers in Louisiana meant trips to her parents’ summer art camp in Saint Francisville where she flourished. She decided to major in art at Barat College in Chicago and met her first husband Herbert Rothschild, whom she followed to Harvard and Yale for his academic pursuits. Herbert later accepted a position at Louisiana State University, and thus Gretchen returned to her home state where she taught art at a local elementary school and eventually began exhibiting her work at The Baton Rouge Gallery, as well as in New Orleans at the Reinike Gallery.

Following the end of her marriage to Herbert, Gretchen moved back to New Orleans in the 1980s where she continued to volunteer and teach art to children. It was there she reignited a relationship with an old flame, high school sweetheart Irvington Eppling, whom she later married. Irvington admired Gretchen’s creative ambitions, and she pursued a new artistic path with his enthusiastic support. While Irvington has since passed, Gretchen continues to paint and exhibit her work at the Reinike Gallery, continuing the proud tradition of her talented family. Ref.: “Gretchen Eppling.” Reinike Gallery. www.reinikegallery.com. Accessed Mar. 4, 2023.

Note: When Allison Stewart began the undergraduate biology program at Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama, she did not know that she would eventually become a professional artist. Though the arts and sciences are often positioned in opposition with one another in academia, Stewart’s background in both fields and her training as a biologist provide her with a unique skillset as an artist. Throughout her forty-year art career, Stewart has created a large, evolving oeuvre that continues to explore environmental issues, particularly ones that involve the Louisiana coastline. In writing about her work, Peter Frank summed it thusly: “Stewart’s painting inhere so much of their sources’ natural vitality that they are charged with an energy that

Louise Guidry

Note: Born in Ville Platt, Louisiana and later residing in St. Martinville, Louise Guidry began creating art in childhood, although she did not have any formal training. It would not be until she was thirty years old that she began to paint in earnest. In addition to teaching elementary school for thirty years, Guidry also taught art to children and adults while raising her own family. Once her children were grown, she attended the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and received a Bachelor of Fine Art degree at the age of fifty-eight. She also followed a passion to travel the world, and she has been creating ever since.

Guidry has said that early in her career much of her inspiration came from nature. Even as she moved more toward abstraction, she still drew heavily on the outdoors and her many travels. Her works are filled with texture and saturated color, and she has won numerous awards and seen her work exhibited worldwide.

bridges the real and painted. There is finally no distinction between those two states – a condition many organic abstractionists seek but only a few achieve as regularly, and as deftly.”

Stewart is an active member of the New Orleans arts community. In 1998, Stewart and her husband, fellow artist Campbell Hutchinson, created Louisiana non-profit KIDsmART. This program emphasizes improving arts education in Louisiana schools and aims to make art education a more integral aspect of a child’s learning.

Ref.: “About.” Allison Stewart. www.allisonstewart.com. Accessed Mar 6, 2023.