Mia Bergeron

Mia Bergeron's interest in art was cultivated early on, beginning with continuous exposure to visual works through her parents' graphic design firm in New York City. As a high school student, Mia pursued the arts both at the curricular and extracurricular levels, and in 1998 she was admitted to the Rhode island School of Design. After a year of intensive foundation courses, she decided to leave RISD to pursue a more academic painting program. Between 2002-2005, Mia was a student of classical painting at the Charles H. Cecil Studio in Florence, Italy. The Charles H. Cecil Studio is a small private painting atelier primarily focused on the naturalistic traditions of such artists as Van Dyck, Velasquez, and John singer Sargent.

Among her various artistic ventures, Mia has focused on charcoal cast drawing, portrait and figure drawing, oil painting, portrait sculpting, still lifes, and copies of old master paintings. Most recently, Mia has focused on capturing figures in landscapes. During her time at the Charles H. Cecil Studio, she also taught portrait painting and drawing to beginner and advanced students. In January 2007, she was featured as the Artist of the Month for the American Artist Website. Recently, she was published as one of the winners for the American Artist Cover Competition in May, 2007. She now lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where she works full-time as a painter.

According to Mia, ''Art, at its best, can maintain a certain truth to the natural world while serving as a great means of expression.''