Each animal image Cole Johnson captures, through a painstaking process employing powdered charcoal or graphite, possesses a persuasively lifelike, highly dimensional immediacy that can make viewers forget they’re looking at a flat, monochrome surface.

Over the decades of living in and painting Charleston, West Fraser has witnessed its transformation from a sleepy Southern town to a vibrant city where older neighborhoods have been gentrified and a slower lifestyle has been replaced by aspects of contemporary American life.

It’s not always easy to define what inspires him, says Carl Bretzke, but when it happens, he often feels a telltale sense of urgency to paint before the light changes. In fact, he is known as a master of portraying light.