Candice Bohannon is a classically trained figurative artist born and raised in rural northern California.  She is a graduate of the Laguna College of Art and Design with a BFA in Painting and Drawing, and a minor in Sculpture.  She has received awards for artistic excellence from the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, the California State Fair, and four years of portfolio and academic based scholarships at the Laguna College of Art and Design.  Her work is featured in the book "How Did You Paint That? 100 Ways to Paint Landscapes" volume 1, and is a prizewinner in the Landscape competition of "International Artist" magazine.  "Coast Magazine" has also featured Mrs. Bohannon and her artwork, and in 2007 she was juried into membership with the California Art Club.  In the 2006 Art Renewal Center Salon Competition, Candice earned an Honorable Mention in the figurative category of oil paintings.  Mrs. Bohannon resides in Placer County, California with her husband and fellow working artist Julio Reyes. 

        Currently, Candice is working on a body of work including large paintings, drawings and sculpture to be finished and shown sometime in 2009.  She takes portrait and equestrian commissions regularly, and enjoys any opportunity to meet and share words with art lovers and art patrons.  

       When working on her art, Candice focuses on portraying more than a mere image of someone/something;  She embeds emotional content into her pieces, and believes that by doing so she can better capture the complex nature of the human soul, the way we perceive places and things.  Her artwork is both time and labor intensive, and it is not unusual to spend over a hundred hours working on a single painting or sculpture.  She uses high quality materials and time tested techniques to ensure that her pieces will look as beautiful in the year 2100 as they do today.  

      "The greatest effect art can have is in reminding one of what is essential in this life.  Great artworks can be related to a feast, the meal laid out for you : beauty, thought, emotion, and kinship.  It can leave you feeling full or perhaps serve to awaken the appetite further, but it will never leave you empty.  Great art is saturated by the human soul, connecting the world through the kinship of one human being to another.   

      I am not a cynic. I find that much of the art hailed today comes from a cynical point of view, created to mock and tear apart that which I hold dear, and I can not forgive the art world for embracing that type of art so completely.   Art can be so much more than that.  Let it be more than that.  Become patrons of art that strives to connect, to heal, to awaken the emotions, to bring substance to light in a cynical world.   I create because I must create, it is what I was born to do.  There is no other life for me, I have no other means of expressing myself so fully.  These are the gifts God has given me and I shall not waste them."

                                                                   -Candice Bohannon