Kelly Wilkinson Coffin is a native Virginian and graduate of the University of Virginia (Col "88).

She returned to Charlottesville, VA to open her own studio after completing three years of full time study at the Ingbretson Studio of Drawing and Painting, an atelier in the tradition of the Boston School, which combines the drawing and discipline of the Academies of 19th Century Paris with the color and light effects of the impressionists.

Additionally she completed a semester studying portraiture and figure painting at the Charles Cecil studio in Florence, Italy. Prior to pursuing painting full time she served on Active Duty as a Naval Aviator for 10 years and later flew as a First Officer with US Airways while continuing to serve in the Naval Reserve.

She is married to Tad Coffin, Kelly lives on a farm with her family in Ruckersville, VA.

Coffin chose a view of steeplechasers clearing the iconic Montpelier brush hedge for her 2015 painting. Montpelier has the only completed course of natural brush jumps on the steeplechase circuit. In this painting the Mansion is shown after the restoration, as it was in the Madison’s tenure.

Sandra Forbush's career as a portrait painter brings together the diverse elements of her life-as a young art student, a professional model, a mother and wife, and an active horsewoman-onto one canvas. This flurry of activities and careers diverted Sandra, who grew up in Maryland and studied at the Maryland Art Institute, away from her artistic aspirations until life took another sharp turn when her days in the saddle were ended by a car accident. She had always sketched to pass time while waiting to compete at horse shows, and as she lay recuperating from serious injuries, she felt drawn to once again study art, signing up for classes at the Corcoran School of Art and Northern Virginia Community College.

Sandra is now a busy, popular artist, working exclusively in oils. Her commissions include a long list of private clients, as well as numerous horse shows and steeplechases, which use her equestrian scenes both for their posters and program covers.

Her works have been selected for exhibit at the American Academy of Equine Art, the Dog Museum, the Beresford Gallery in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and the Museum of Hounds and Hunting. She has held one-man shows in Houston, Texas, Middleburg, Va., at the National Trust's Montpelier, and the Farmington Hunt Club as well as the Longview Gallery in Sperryville, VA.

Sandra's unique background as a horseman gives her an edge in understanding animal anatomy, observing individual traits, and adhering to correct details, just as her modeling career helps her hone in on and emphasize her human subject's most appealing features. She loves portraying children, and has a knack for incorporating impressionistic garden scenes or dramatic background and indoor lighting. She also teaches painting lessons to an active group of amateurs at her home studio at Foxhall Farm.

Forbush has painted two paintings for the Montpelier Hunt Races. The first in 1994 of a “cocky jockey” from the back sporting Marion DuPont Scott’s silks is arguably the most popular poster to date. Her second poster, from 2018, she revisited the jockey theme with a dramatic pose of a young jockey in the same DuPont Scott silks. Both of her posters are on display in the exhibition along with the original 2018 painting.

Mary Shira began working as a professional artist, taking commissions while still in graduate school, and spent four years working at Belmont Park studying horse anatomy and confirmation. In her painting today she explores the place of nature in the modern world.

As an educator she has taught a range of students from gifted kindergarteners to university honor students. She has been an Instructor at James Madison University’s School of Art, Design and Art History, teaching Foundation classes in Studio and Lecturing in Art History since 1997.

Shira created two paintings for the Montpelier Hunt Races, first in 2006 showing the start, a view very few race goers get to see as it occurs on the far side of the racecourse. The second painting, for the 2011 poster, is a paddock scene which is displayed in this exhibition.

Artist Pat Turcotte, Lakewood, N.Y., specializes in equestrian illustration and portraiture, most specifically eventing. She also enjoys child portraiture and works primarily in watercolor, although she does accept commissions in oil.

Turcotte has created two paintings for the Montpelier Hunt Races, one in 1999 and one in 2000. Her 1999 painting shown in this exhibition, a dramatic view of a racehorse in Marion DuPont Scott’s silks racing towards you with the Montpelier Mansion as it was in Mrs. Scott’s day in the background. The 2000 painting is a view of the Paddock with the Temple in the background.