“Dreams seldom materialize on their own”
– Dean Fossey

Back at the end of the last century, NOAPS had the dream of its own website to promote the beautiful art created by its members, and as a result www.NOAPS.org , created by L.Diane Johnson, was born around the year 2000.

In the Running
by Mary Sumner

The website had an excellent site map and design competing with the best of the time and by 2003 it required a dedicated maintenance person.  In January 2004, Mary Sumner, a NOAPS’ artist member, volunteered to temporarily maintain the website. Little did she know that “temporary” will translate into almost ten years of dedication not only to website maintenance, but also to word processing, final editing, and proofreading.  Mary became the person “Behind the Scenes” resizing and adjusting the colors of the exhibition slide entries.  She was the one accurately displaying the picture hues and downsizing the pixel-heavy ones in order to make the site faster and user-friendly.  And while receiving the support of other volunteers in the board, what Mary enjoyed most was helping artists promote their art.

As an artist, herself, Mary personally met many of the other members and participated in the Best of Missouri Exhibition 2004 and in the Best of America Exhibition in 2005 and 2006. She is a painter of Nature and even though one might hear her talk about percentage of light in each computer pixel, she reveres artistic growth through life observation.

Always efficient and accurate, there was not even one catastrophe that can be recalled in the period of ten years. The information flowed seamlessly from the Society to the members and site visitors. However, the web is a constantly changing space demanding adherence to the latest trends. In July 2012, the idea of an updated NOAPS website surfaced among the board members and Pavel Melecky, another NOAPS Artist and Member of the Board assumed the task.

New ideas were born and although we will miss our beloved Bengal tiger that embellished

Queen Genie
by Pavel Melecky

the top of the home page in the old website, a beautiful new picture and logo were created. In our new NOAPS website, Pavel exclusively designed every page and every template. He then placed them on top of a gold color canvas also specially created for NOAPS . With 40 years of experience as a graphic designer and as a professional artist, Pavel is proud of creating unique work for each customer. He feels it is important when a viewer can recognize a website by its design and it is ultimately different from all others in the internet. Well, he did it! NOAPS has a beautiful, elegant, and distinctive new website.

Pavel, as Mary before him, will be the person “Behind the Scenes” helping to promote your art and our Society.

Like all of us, Pavel is an accomplished artist winning the Best Portrait Award in the Best of America Exhibition 2011. Another of his paintings, the stunning art work above this paragraph, “ Queen Genie,”  was a finalist in the Outwin Bouchewer Portrait Competition 2009 and it was exhibited at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington D.C. for one year in the neighboring room to the one with the American Presidents.

To these people Behind the Scenes, L.Diane, Mary, and Pavel,  congratulations for a job well done and we appreciate your work and dedication to make a difference for our National Oil & Acrylic Painters’ Society. Thank you!