Founder of Galeria San Francisco, born and raised on the East coast where she spent her summer vacations wandering the sandy beaches of the New Jersey shore.

After graduating from high school she moved to Greenwich Village, New York and received a Bachelor’s Degree in Art History from New York University.

A year later she moved to Woodstock, New York in order to pursue her dream of becoming an artist. While living in Woodstock, Susan taught school in Ulster County and attended the Art Students League, to study drawing and painting for a number of years. After leaving New York and moving to Venice, California, she enrolled in the Fine Arts Graduate Program at California State University, Los Angeles earning a MA in Fine Arts. Upon graduation, her devotion focused on painting full time in studios in Venice and later downtown Los Angeles.

Susan eventually decided to forgo city living and moved to Topanga Canyon, where she met her husband Ral, an architect and nightclub owner. They lived in Topanga Canyon and in Box Canyon both located in in the Santa Monica Mountains, not far from the Pacific Ocean. She continued to paint and enjoy the rural scenery while teaching art for over 25 years in Los Angeles, then serving as the Art Department Chairperson at Palisades Charter High School in Pacific Palisades, California, before retiring from teaching in June of 2011.

During summer vacations, they took many trips to Mexico and eventually fell in love with San Miguel de Allende. Her husband designed their current home with a large art studio and they moved there permanently in July of 2011.

San Miguel, a well-known artist´s colony and UNESCO World Heritage site, along with the people and culture of Mexico, continues to inspire Susan’s current body of work, now devoting herself full time to her painting. Her art has been exhibited in galleries on both the East and West coasts and was represented by Orlando Gallery in Los Angeles for over 28 years, and by Magenta Gallery, in San Miguel de Allende for 2 years.

“Growing up in Chicago, I always liked to draw. When I started High School, the “advisor” waved test scores in my face and yelled that I was “too smart to be an artist!” After many years of trying to do what “smart” people did, I proved her wrong. I wasn’t all that smart.

I changed my name to “Rhoda Draws” legally in 2009. I’m an Urban Sketcher and I teach “Sketching Fast & Loose” workshops in San Miguel and other magical towns in Mexico. Website: https://ontheRHODAgain.com/

As a professional caricature artist, I’ve had decades of experience creating rapid drawings of people at events. An early pioneer of digital painting, I used Corel Painter for live caricature events as well as studio work. This led to publication of numerous books on the creative use of both Painter and Adobe Photoshop.

I also use digital media to create quick gestural drawings of live models. Some of these drawings are combined digitally or printed on archival rice paper. Many such combinations inspire larger mixed media paintings on canvas.

In 2018 I moved to San Miguel from the San Francisco Bay Area. My house in Colonia Guadalupe, is called “Casa de Dibujo.” (House of Drawing). You can see my urban sketches and figurative drawings at Galeria San Francisco in La Aurora. Larger figurative paintings and portraits can be viewed by appointment at “Casa de Dibujo.”” Rhoda Draws

Jane started her artistic career in the late ’70s creating and selling unique Batiks & Acrylic Watercolors before beginning her lifelong journey with clay.

She sold her own original ceramic tableware designs successfully all across Canada for twenty-five years. Then, after being inspired by a visit to the Mask Museum in San Miguel in 2008, she began creating her first clay Bird Sculptures. The public response was immediate and extremely positive and eventually sculpture became a feature at all of her shows across Canada.

In 2010 Jane began sculpting Women from many unique & tribal cultures around the world and then, in 2016, expanded her technique beyond the slab construction used to create the wall pieces, to encompass building free-standing pieces featuring animals, birds and women. She enjoys the contrast between the two methods of sculpture and utilizes found recycled metals and various fabrics to enhance the essence of each piece.

Jane seeks to capture the spiritual dimension of her subjects with empathy, inviting the viewer to relate and reflect. Her work can be found in collections in Japan, Australia, Switzerland, the UK, Isreal, Mexico and the USA. Her work has been shown at numerous Ceramic Galleries across Canada. In 2016, The Galeria San Francisco invited her to join their artists, where she has developed a loyal following, locally as well as internationally.

Recently she began a series of Chine-Colle Mono-Prints merging black and white images of her sculptures with vibrant colors, to create two-dimensional renderings that capture the soul of her subjects.

Jane Dill is an abstract artist specializing in mixed media, photo collage and cold wax & oil. Since joining the Galeria San Francisco in 2015, Jane’s work has expanded and grown as she learned and experimented with new techniques.

Classically trained as a calligrapher by some of the field’s best instructors, she had been experimenting with lettering and art while living in San Francisco and Santa Fe, with additional study in England, Belgium and Mexico City. Jane has always found a way to incorporate lettering or “asemic writing” into her work, to use it as an expressive element, either through collage, writing with large brushes, or scraping into wet surfaces of her paintings. She also teaches monthly classes at the Galeria San Francisco in Mixed Media & Photography, Color & Collage, and Abstract Painting with Texture.

During the recent pandemic, she has found a new venture, her book QUARANTINE COCKTAILS – 50 Cocktails in 50 Days of Quarantine in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. This was also a benefit to raise money for our local Feed the Hungry-San Miguel, and a win/win for all.

For more information, please click here: https://www.janedill.com/cocktails

Robert ‘Bo’ Sweeny was a lifelong artist and permanent resident of San Miguel after visiting for the better part of two decades.

He exhibited with Galeria San Francisco, since its inception and his work was, and continues to be very popular with collectors. He earned a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and studied with many wonderful artists including Adrian Deckbar, Jane Dill, Harry Callahan, Dale Chihuly, Greg Newington, Ron Pokrasso, Rhett Thurman and Minor White. When he was not in the studio he was often found walking the streets of San Miguel with his camera always on the look out for new subject matter for his paintings.

In February of 2020, he made a decision to move to Portugal in order to begin a new phase of his life. Unfortunately he passed away there, before his dreams could be realized. All of the artists in the gallery will always hold him in their hearts. Bo was loved and admired by everyone who had the pleasure to know him.

Galeria San Francisco is now the sole representative of the artwork in his estate.

“I have always been an artist. In the early years I was a painter and then a printmaker. I was formally educated in bits and turns – first at the Cleveland Institute of Art and finally at San Francisco State University where I became fascinated with metal sculpture.

When moving to San Miguel de Allende in 2015 I was asked to join the Galeria San Francisco as a metal sculptor. As time passed and I became an “expert” cutting and designing the metal I found that some of my devotion began to wane. What had been pure joy for a very long time started to feel like “work”.

In August 2017 I took a ceramic workshop and my heart burst open! After working in such a rigid medium with metal, the clay was so voluptuous. I knew from that first day that I was hooked! I learned quickly that clay allowed freedom but in return demanded surrender. My carefully planned images where a thing of the past. From the beginning my days in the studio remained joyful. I was lucky to be able to take weeklong workshops from some of the very best sculptors from the United States who came to San Miguel. After learning a range of techniques from these teachers I began to find my own voice and dialogue with the clay.

I have used my love of myth and folklore, mysticism and dream states to determine the direction of my sculpture. Winged beings, goddess figures and those who inhabit the realms of the ethereal are what draw me.

I fall in love with my creations every time – perhaps later comes more analytical appraisal but when in the midst of my sculpting I feel real bliss. I am completely one with my process. The idea that a lump of clay can become a cherished image takes my breath away.” Susan Fiori

“After enjoying thirty eight years of living in Mexico City and retiring from advertising, I arrived in San Miguel in 2007, stepped out of the car, and knew this was the place I would spend the rest of my life.

I have always made art. I worked in pencil, ink, water colors, charcoal and pastel. It was all part of the creative drive that kept me interested in experimenting throughout the years. I did some design, some illustration and a lot of sketching and doodling. But primarily I spent many hours a day in an office.

When I came to San Miguel, I enrolled at Belles Artes and discovered oil painting. It became my obsession. After a year at Centro Cultural Nigromante, I met Donna and Tom Dickson, and spent the next five years studying and learning from two masters of representational painting.

I am a street walker. I paint street scenes. All the nooks and crannies and rooftops and winding streets and vendors and parks. I paint the wonderful light and the contrasting shadows. I paint the faces and fun and the vibrancy that is this fascinating town. After more than a decade of painting San Miguel, I never tire of it. It never gets old.

Lately I have been painting around the Juarez Park area: first inside, and now that the park is closed, around the perimeter. My next project will be the narrow streets that lead up to the Camino Real a Queretaro. My only fear is that I will run out of time enough to paint it all.

We live in a magical town. Lovely light and energy and full of creative and interesting people. My goal is to attempt to capture and share with the observer the physical and emotional experience of living here. Of being able to walk through five hundred year old buildings, where life is slower, kinder, more generous. I hope to capture the soul of what makes our town so special and share it with others.

I have the privilege of showing and selling my work in Galeria San Francisco in Fabrica Aurora, which has been my gallery for the past five years. I hope you will stop by and visit us. While you’re there, take minute to look at San Miguel the way I see it. Maybe you and I will make a long lasting connection.” Karen Lee Dunn

Sandra Palma de Ruíz, was born in Monterrey, Nuevo León, México and moved to San Miguel de Allende in 1998, where she currently resides.

During her many years of artistic training, including painting, photography, sculpture, jewelry, Sandra learn the painting process used by the great Renaissance masters, under the tutelage of William Martin a master painter, who lived in San Miguel for many years, she began to focus solely on her oil painting. This journey allowed her to experiment with various and different techniques and styles. Palma´s paintings are reminiscent of Magic Realism in Latin American literature : they fuse the real and the fantastic. The stories she creates exist in a world of fantasy, where nature and femininity star are dominant elements.

These unique combinations create a warm, surreal atmosphere where each painting offers a fantastic visual experience, meant to stimulate the viewer’s imagination as well as offer a visual journey in to another world.

Sandra continues to explore the combination of naturalistic and surrealistic elements unique to her style.

Linda Whynman has devoted her professional and personal life to making art and art education, as a teacher, coordinator and administrator, gallery curator, graphic designer, and–nearest to her heart–painter.

Watercolor is her medium. She takes inspiration from masters such as Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, and Charles Reid. Her passion is for personal subject matter or motifs taken from her life in San Miguel de Allende. Most of her past work was done en plain air, as reflected in her previously collected works in “The Capillas de San Miguel de Allende: A Legacy of Faith” and “Traveling the Back Roads of San Miguel: Snippets of Paintable History.” For sites less accommodating to painting in the moment, she avails herself of photographs to capture scenes in and around San Miguel and Mexico.

Her art reflects her pleasure in the play of the pigments and water to conjure emotions and atmosphere. In her works, details may be left inferred, to invite viewers to participate in the painting, to have space to personalize the scene for themselves.

Linda’s paintings are in collections around the world. She is represented by Galería San Francisco.

Darlene Olivia McElroy comes from an old New Mexico family of artists, musicians and inventors. She is a mad scientist of art techniques and is continually exploring new surfaces, materials and techniques.

Throughout her career McElroy has combined heart and soul in her journey of creating evocative mixed-media paintings. Trained as a painter and illustrator, she has an obsession for materials, passion for dreamlike imagery, and love of new technologies, which she uses to immerse herself in richly textured surfaces, mixtures of old and new, and brilliant and subdued tones. And always, there is a face or symbol of humanity that serves as a guide into mysterious layers which challenge reason and draw upon emotions.

She has worked as an artist, illustrator, art teacher and author. Her work as an international illustrator won many awards and articles and took her to Paris for two years. On her return to the states, she taught college level fine art and computer software classes both In Southern California and Santa Fe, NM.

McElroy has written five art technique books, published by F&W Publications (now Penguin Random House). They have been translated into five languages and are used as teaching tools in many schools around the world. Her work has been featured in numerous books and magazines in the US, France and Holland.