Eddy Beard is an artist in recovery. Eddy lives in Denver, and utilizes RedLine’s Community Studio.

Eddy had overcome a 12 year period of incarceration in the Texas state prison system he received for engaging in criminal activities. Eddy has overcome drug addiction and homelessness, which occurred following his prison experience—and all of the stigmas associated with prison life and the criminal element.

Art for Eddy is like prayer and helps him focus on what's most important: life, sobriety, and loving others. Eddy works in the recovery field, where his lived experience is helpful to people new into recovery, including recovery from drug abuse/imprisonment and mental health challenges.

Eddys job led him into the doors of the RedLine Community Studio. He’s able to be supported in his art project endeavors with space/supplies to create art.

Eddy wants to open his own recovery agency that uses art therapy has a pathway for recovery for new and healthier lifestyle changes and choices.

Kesiena’s art is multifaceted, ambiguous, confusing, and always left up to interpretation.

Kesiena’s main inspiration for her art comes from her love of all life forms. This includes abstract watercolors depicting colorful microorganisms, multicolored and psychedelic floral paintings, and acrylic paintings that depict the female body in an experimental way. This originates from two things: her college major and her personal life. As a biology major, Kesiena found a passion for all living things along with a feeling of urgency related to the climate crisis. She wants her audience to experience a strong feeling of wanting to protect the beauty and life of the subjects within her pieces. One of her favorite quotes that inspires her artwork is, “Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.”

By drawing from real biological life forms, Kesiena attempts to manifest this beauty into her artwork. Her pieces also touch a lot on femininity. Kesiena has been drawing women in all forms since early elementary school. Growing up, she never wanted to acknowledge the reasoning behind her artistic depictions of naked women. These depictions are drawn from personal experiences of living with a feminine body and her attraction to women as a whole in every way.

Being a multimedia artist has allowed me a platform to communicate in various styles to my audience the messages I want to convey. My artistic efforts are influenced by many places, people, senses, and events surrounding me.

My desire is to transcend information through my work and imprint on the mind an experience that will move the viewer to think outside the box of their normal idea of what art is. My abstract collage work is such an example of this experience.

I want to be associated with being passionate, different, ever changing, and presenting daring subject matters and colors to be analyzed.

It's my effort to give intelligent information to the viewer through my artistic efforts. The why, how, and knowledge shown in my work as the world is swiftly changing eagerly allows me variety in my creative process. Also, my personal views of history, changing experiences keeps me with new ideas to bring to the viewing audience with fresh ideas and diversity through my work.

I have enjoyed my journey as a visual artist, ceramic artist and collage work, it has been rewarding. My work has brought healing as well liberating ideas for me as well hopefully the viewing audience.

Mateo is an artist and musician working in Denver. He has an AA degree in theater. He began making art, music, and poetry at a young age, then started painting in college and quickly found he was making art all the time. He often updates his style and has some exciting new approaches. He believes in collaboration and creative communication. He likes not knowing exactly what the result will be. Image formation and interpretation are necessary functions of Mateo's mind.

Mateo works for P2P Recovery and as a part of his shop runs a Saturday art group at RedLine in the Community Studio.

Mateo is prolific. Mateo is obsessed. Mateo is always working creatively. Mateo likes to feature his collaborators.

After experiencing so much lost, for the longest time I came to the end of pain and needed to discover that I can still love. I needed to find that place within me where there is pure love, and it awakened my creativity—from emptiness to bountiful beauty. I am grateful for COVID-19, which isolated me and caused me to be still and look within. It was in this place that I found I have been the recipient of the most spectacular gift of love dwelling within me. I am grateful for this gift, whether it’s my painting or the making of a model which you can’t see or simply interacting with nature; hugging or planting a tree. I thank you, the viewer, for sharing these wonderful discoveries with me. I am Grace.

I am an African American woman about middle age. I am originally from Oxnard, California, but now reside in Denver, Colorado.

I started creating art during the pandemic because it was therapeutic to be away but and around people. I work at home and the RedLine Community Studio.

I have gone through several different hard times, including homelessness, mental, and substance conditions, and family loss.

My creative therapy is to express things in my art. I create all different types of art using painting, sewing, writing, and now clay manipulation. I feel that my writing can tell stories and keep me out of my head. My sewing helps with giving to others and showing a sense of style. My art lets me experiment with different substrates to show how complicated but connected the world is.

These things help me to recover from the experiences that held me down, but now lift me up. I strive to show other people of color, age, and through recovery that it is possible to keep pressing forward no matter what.

Vanessa Starr draws much of her inspiration from growing up in a community of artists in a plantation town in Hawaii. While Starr studied politics instead of art in college, she has found a way to incorporate her passion for social justice with her desire to create. Starr is a visionary artist who invites viewers into a world of captivating imagination and emotion.

Starr’s artistic journey was influenced by Hawaii’s rich history and diverse artistic heritage. She developed an early fascination with color and form, often spending hours observing the interplay of light and shadow both in the wild on land and on the sea. She generally uses materials that are most accessible, learning from her mother who was both an artist and a master of resource management.

Starr describes her process as, "When I paint I often imagine looking through a window framing an item of interest or beauty. I enjoy painting images of faces and flowers because they can hold my attention with their individual uniqueness. I'm endlessly fascinated by the curve of a lip, or by an upturned petal in a blossom”. Her work often explores themes of identity, transformation, and the delicate balance between chaos and harmony.

Starr is a member of Reach, an artist-led studio that offers “an inclusive space for artists to build their creative practice together”. She also has recently had the honor to be represented by Art Lifting, a venerable organization that “Champions Artists Impacted By Disabilities And Housing Insecurity”.

Laura A. Killoran is a citizen of the United States of American by birth. She was born to a military family in Kenitra Morocco, and lived most of her early life overseas. She has had the benefit of exposure to different cultures. This led to varying perspectives. She loves America deeply, but can clearly see its flaws. She wants to help heal those defects.

As a young child, she expressed her creative abilities in poetry and music. As a teen and adult, the expressions have been many and varied. Needlework, sewing, home décor, jewelry making, furniture refinishing. She studied woodworking in college before switching to Computer aided drafting and design, which is what her second degree is in. Her first degree is in Cardiopulmonary Sciences, which allowed her to work as a respiratory therapist in hospitals helping people.

In her own words: “I create because I need to. Its almost as essential as breathing. At this point in my life its very therapeutic, a means to an end. Recovering from trauma in my recent past makes this essential- the thought put into my art reveals things to me I didn't see before. I am also blessed with a family to make art with."

As a service connected disabled veteran, Laura pays her bills with the VA checks. She works at odd jobs to earn money for art supplies. Quality supplies make a huge difference in the quality of the art. A member of a once weekly writing group, she explores ideas to improve our world. She spends time at the Community Studio at Redline gallery creating, and looks forward to the impact she can make on our world.

The twin threads of storytelling and creativity have been interwoven throughout Matt’s life. His creative adventures have crossed numerous mediums and subjects, arriving full circle to his true first love of mythical visual art presented with his own surreal flare. His natural existential curiosity finds its lens through his craft, informed by his own personal journeys.

Creativity puts Matt and everyone who shares connection with the art into a state of aliveness, awakening people at the levels of mind, body and spirit – to elevate from the mundane to the mythical. Coming from a religious upbringing, his fascination with the symbolic has propelled him along a personal journey connecting world wisdom traditions through the lens of mythology.

Based in Denver with his wife and son, his two most ardent supporters, he's been blessed to be featured in local galleries, coffee shops and more. Matt seeks to expand the definition of creativity beyond a limited number of activities, as a way of being in the world. Mythic art and creative education form a bridge between the inner and outer worlds.

Robin is a Capricorn and has 3 beautiful children: two boys and one girl. Her favorite color is purple and favorite car is a 73 Super Beatle. She is left handed. She likes to be different and original. The easiest and best way to be original is to produce and create.

She gets pleasure when she creates. From coming up with a new idea or recreating an old idea, to deciding which materials are best to use, to solving problems to make her artwork.

She works constantly. She keeps a notebook for ideas for new projects wherever she goes. She frequents RedLine for work space, supplies, and inspiration. She also works in and on her RV at the park, library, and on the bus.

My name is Royce. I am an artist born and raised in Denver, Colorado.

I haven't gone to school for art, but I have been creating for as long as I can remember.

I create art because it is the purpose of existence, bringing forth imagination into reality.

Tiffany Medina is a multimedia and community artist living and working in Denver, Colorado. She received a Business Degree from the Community College of Aurora. She is an entrepreneur and former Ophthalmic Technician. Tiffany currently works as the Reach Community Studio Facilitator, and as a RedLine Youth Art Mentor. She also works as the Creative Athletic Director for Athlete Strategy, a sports performance company. Tiffany also teaches art classes through the Montbello-based non-profit Athletics and Beyond.

Alongside Reach Core Artist Leticia Tanguma and RedLine Resident Artist Sheika Leslie-Eke, Tiffany helped create “Artists of Perspective and Peace” in 2018. The three artists began working on a traveling mural project pertaining to gun violence, which will travel the city to bring awareness to the cause.

After Tiffany’s mom passed in 2010, she gave birth to her third child the same year, and began her divorce process. Her personal healing journey began through the losses she acquired. Beginning with her fitness, she began to transform, and realized she was missing what she needed most. This propelled her to submerge herself in creativity. Leaving the field she was in, she began to work on growing her art practices. She learned about RedLine Contemporary Art Center, and began attending Reach while she was also experiencing housing hardships. RedLine gave her the space and resources to help her feel again.

Eckseption is a multidisciplinary artist who comes from a family of talent and has had a passion to create since she was young. She is from Denver, a student at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design studying Fine Arts, and Core artist at RedLine Contemporary Art Center.

She creates work based on her personal perceptions, experiences and they are often very representational to her life living in Colorado. She creates art as a form of therapy and to share her practice for a better understanding of self awareness.

Her work is very diverse in illustration and visual arts utilizing acrylics, oil, pyrography, unicorn spit stain and calligraphy ink on canvas and wood.

She is intrigued by the viewers interpretations and aspires to open her own community studio one day to help others find their niche, passion to create and make the necessary exceptions to be the best versions of themselves..

A loved one once told me that my art is my soul. So art is always with me.

From my early childhood in the 70s in Houston, I witnessed my father paint murals that reflected truths that were hard to stand against by many. Truths such as Texan police brutality, truths of racism against people of color such as against our own people - mi Chicano y Chicana compadres, and, of our literal neighbors, our Black brothers and sisters.

Truths of polluting the environment by the vast Texas oil fields and corporations around the world destructing the rainforests and magnificent animals. And truths of oppression by our own government in the U.S. and beyond. My father painted about this to give a voice to all of us against these empires and institutions.

I remember when I was 5, climbing on giant scaffolds, walking with my father miles and miles through the city to paint those murals, walking to his art studio, and of moving away from Houston because the Ku Klux Klan burned down his art studio and threatened our family’s lives. I painted beside him then, and still do – he now in his 80s, me in my 50s. This is my education. This art and the community. Still learnin’.

In my mid 20s, I painted Children of the World Dream of Peace with him at Denver International Airport and countless other murals with him at various schools and organizations, often singing Victor Jara songs while we painted together.

I did not interpret art as art being “art for art’s sake.” I had no idea about that. Or even about the color wheel or the Divine Design. Instead, within me grew a knowledge, respect, and love of “art of conscious and art of the people.” Simply, this is art that speaks out against injustices and art that stands for peace, nonviolence, hope, and promise.

Despite the KKK burning down his art studio, that did not stop my father from painting. Nor did it stop me from creating art. There is a greater truth than that of Racism and oppression. The greater truth is human dignity.

I also wanted to do other things in my life. I was a single Mom and worked at crises centers and hospitals. Regardless of my job description or career, I either offered or was asked to use my art in someway to help encourage others. I drew portraits of children who had come in the center physically, mentally, or sexually abused. I invited them to draw their own portraits to express and see their own light. I cherish the memories of their smiles and their shining eyes as they looked at their completed portraits.

I painted murals with Black and Brown and White youth in detention centers (prisons) who talked about their dreams of not returning to jail and to begin new lives and of defying society’s expectations and stereotypes of them. I drew with people suffering terminal illnesses at the hospitals, some so that they may give their drawings to their loved ones after they died. I drew portraits of men and women at the detox center, hearing their story and voices amidst their withdrawals, DTs, and struggles. I painted with men and women; we found our voices as we escaped domestic violence.

So the art I shared with my brothers and sisters, who inspire me and who deepen my heart and soul, is not really known or in galleries or on murals or in art journals. The art we created keeps me alive.

Now I paint with beautiful friends at the Reach Studio at RedLine.

My plan is to continue the legacy I learned as a little girl from my father. This I will paint along side people who are not housed and who are often swept away in homeless camp sweeps - determined to plan two large murals with them, important messages of promise, protest, and faith, through art of conscious and art of the people.