Primavera Birth of Venus by Vanessa Teresa Davisson

Davisson Studio - www.davissonstudio.com

12" Small Butterfly

Vanessa has been a professional designer, muralist, educator and illustrator for 40 years. She holds a BFA in Illustration and Advertising Design with a Minor in Photography & Painting from Syracuse University (NY) in 1979, and has been continuously employed as an advertising artist on Madison Avenue, an exhibit designer in Los Angeles and a graphic designer in Phoenix since then. She received her Master of Arts Degree in Art History at ASU in 2009, with a concentration in the High Renaissance in Ferrara, Italy, specifically in the paintings of Benvenuto Tisi da Garofalo, the court artist to the Este and the most prolific of the Renaissance Masters. She is a Ph Kappa PW and Suma Cum Laude scholar and has twice received ASU's Rabiner Award for Italian Studies and other scholarships from ASU's Herberger School of Art.

She has traveled extensively throughout Italy, Europe and Egypt and is proficient in translating ancient vulgate" Italian. She teaches art and other subject areas as a Substitute in the Fountain Hills and Desert Mountain School Districts. She has taught Acrylic Painting onboard Crystal Cruises, and currently teaches Studio Art and Art History at the Fountain Hills Charter School.

As a professional muralist and faux finisher, she has painted was and ceilings commercially and residentially throughout Arizona and in New York. Her paintings have been selected numerous times for the Foothills Juried Competition and the FH Juried Competition,
where she achieved multiple blue ribbons in painting and mixed media. She is proficient in restoration and preservation of paintings, having studied the techniques at the Pinacoteca in Ferrara, Italy.

A founding member of Fountain Hills Community Theater, and 20-year member of their Board of Directors, she painted their sats for 20 seasons. As a scenic artist she has rendered the sets for many other theaters, including Phoenix Theater, Arizona Jewish Theater, Hale Theater Center, Valley Youth Theatre and Black Theater Troupe, painting over 100 sets since 1988. She has won two Prizm Awards at FHCT and has been nominated for two Arizonia Awards for set design.

As a graphic designer and illustrator, she has created hundreds of logos, menus, brochures and other marketing materials, illustrated all of the Fountain Hills cartoon maps, and has designed and illustrated several children's books and medical legal textbooks for publishers in several states. She has thorough knowledge of 4-color printing and photographic processes and is adept in QuarkExpress, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator for Macintosh.

She is married to Dan for 40 years with three grown children and two grandchidren, all in Arizona