WHO WE ARE

The Gateway Academy of Classical Art began as a group of seven artists seeking out teachers to train in traditional drawing and painting skills. After studying with Florence Academy graduate and oil painter William Neukomm, they realized that St. Louis needed an atelier based school, so they decided to start one. The new studio is taught by their newest partner and artist, B.J. Parker, PhD, from the Texas Atelier of Fine Art. The Gateway Academy of Classical Art allows for continuous atelier training and for more nationally-known fine artists to come to St. Louis and teach workshops in representational art topics. Now known as GACA, the studio hosts open-studio figure drawing events, and continues to offer classical atelier studies, and arranges workshops featuring the finest guest artists from St. Louis and around the world.

To reach us, please contact B. J. Parker, PhD
at (314) 399 5118 or
bjparkerfineart@gmail.com
gacastudio.info@gmail.com

B.J. Parker, PhD, Co-Founding Director, Artist and Instructor

B. J. Parker is a realist artist based in St. Louis, MO.  Trained at Texas Academy of Figurative Art (TAFA) under the mentorship of Ron Cheek, B. J. is committed to furthering the realist tradition within the contemporary art world.  His original works emphasize smooth contours and graceful highlights as they manifest in the human form. A proponent of arts-based research, B. J.’s PhD uses art theory and original work to propose a new reading of the Hebrew Psalter.  His arts-based scholarship has appeared in Review & Expositor and Digital Humanities Quarterly.  As an Old Testament scholar, he has also accumulated a substantial portfolio of archeological drawings for scholars writing about the Ancient Near East. Please consider supporting him on his Patreon account.

BJ has been designated as an ARC (Art Renewal Center) Associate Living Master.

BJ has dedicated himself to becoming a realist artist with the wish to express our shared humanity through the visual arts. In addition, an ARC “Associate Living Master™ has shown significant skill in all of the building blocks of great art as defined by the ARC. He has further developed his skills, experience and body of work to the point where he will be in striking distance of becoming a full ARC Living Master. As such, all GACA classes are ARC accredited.
BJ's Art Renewal Page

Ingrid Oertli, Co-Founding Director

Ingrid earned her degree in Physical Therapy from University of Missouri, Columbia where it was required to do some anatomical drawings.  That piqued her interest in illustration of the human body.  After a long time away from any art, she became a Decorative Artist.  But the interest in the figure and portrait was always in the background.  When the opportunity to learn the Atelier approach to classical drawing and painting became available, she was hooked once again on the beauty of the human figure, but especially the portrait.

Martha Iler, Website & Social Media Director

Martha Iler worked as a graphic designer until she moved to the St. Louis area. Since then, she has owned several galleries and a gallery/cafe while pursuing art, teaching herself to draw and paint portraits and still life. Since being a student at the Gateway Academy, she has become the Social Media Director and takes care of the website.

Andrea Myles, designed our logo and did much of our graphic design.