Guest artist at Alliance Gallery for April is St. Louis photographer

HANNIBAL, Mo. — St. Louis photographer Bruce Toulmin is Alliance Gallery’s guest artist for April.

After years of taking only black and white film photos, his family gifted him a Nikon digital camera when he was in his 60s. It led to him exploring the options available to him to manipulate his images. Six months later, he applied for the Shaw Art Fair and was accepted. He has exhibited in art fairs in Chicago, Milwaukee, Cleveland and Bloomington, along with other St. Louis art fairs.

With no training and using only free digital editing apps, his photos are what he calls “digital folk art.” He creates his artistic photographs in a variety of categories including musicians, sports (especially St. Louis teams) and portraits. He has a variety of framed and matted works.

In a press release, Toulmin said, “It has been a great joy to find this a bit later in life, although finding it when I was 39 would have been great too.”

April will also spotlight the collaboration of Alliance artists Peggy Burchard-Ballard, Libby Campbell and Patricia Garey. They will be presenting new creations based on colors selected from the watercolor paints manufactured by Buchard-Ballard. Garey’s watercolor paintings inspired Campbell’s hand-dyed and hand-spun yarns and her weavings. Garey’s paintings have a concentration of florals. Campbell’s weavings are an exploration of woven patterns of geometric shapes like monk’s belt and summer and winter.

As these artists present their work exploring color, visitors are encouraged to do their own exploration by taking a color walk. They may select a printed color card and then look for that color as they move throughout the gallery and then continue the color walk along Main Street.