Realist painter Curtis Stewart Jaunsen was raised in Atlanta, Georgia. He attended the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he was awarded both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in Architecture. For many years, Curtis worked as both an architect and an artist, moving from abstract expressionist paintings in the early 1990s to realist paintings inspired by artist such as Rembrandt, John Singer Sargent and Emil Carlsen.
In 2002, Curtis moved with his wife and two young children from Ocean Springs, Mississippi, home for four years, to Florence, Italy. For the next two years, he was enrolled at the academic atelier-styled Florence Academy of Art where he studied drawing and oil painting in the classical realist style under Daniel Graves. Subjects that he studied ranged from anatomy to paint grinding. In Italy, Curtis not only learned how to create classical art, but he also learned about many of the great artists and architects of the Renaissance and after. Inspired by the beauty found in nature, Curtis now works on
still lifes, portraits, and landscapes at his home and studio in Ocean Springs, Mississippi.