Charlene M. Taubert, a Southwest Florida-based artist, actively works across multiple artistic mediums, including painting, mixed media, digital art, and cartooning.

Her work has garnered multiple awards, featured in gallery exhibitions, and resides in numerous private collections.

Taubert’s passion for art ignited during her sixth-grade art class when she won the annual “Picture Contest” with a captivating autumnal scene created using pastel chalk on construction paper.

As a young adult, Taubert developed an affinity for creating artwork on unconventional surfaces while designing sets for children’s Christmas plays and securing first place at the annual pumpkin decorating contest held at the famous Publick House Historic Inn in Sturbridge, Massachusetts. The recognition she received fueled a surge of unsolicited requests for custom “painted pumpkins,” capturing the essence of the fall season. Her reputation grew, leading to numerous commissions and an annual output of over 40 painted pumpkins.

Taubert’s artistic journey further expanded through commissioned canvas paintings for celebrity chef Roy Yamaguchi’s restaurants in Bonita Springs and Naples. She was also invited to showcase her work in a solo art exhibition titled “Familiar Faces: An Expression of Celebrity” at the Chicos FAS Taga Gallery in Fort Myers, Florida.

During her time as an innkeeper in coastal Maine (2013-2022), Taubert’s creative force flourished. She took painting workshops with acclaimed Maine artists Dennis Perrin and Mary Byrom. She was commissioned to paint an array of special event posters. Each autumn in Maine, Taubert created large-scale, seasonally-inspired public art displays. These displays gained viral traction on social media and attracted significant local media coverage, culminating in her esteemed first-place award at the 2017 Ogunquitfest Halloween Display Contest in Ogunquit, Maine.

Now back in Southwest Florida, Taubert serves as the General Manager and Construction Oversight Manager of the Blue Dolphin on West Gulf Drive, a landmark cottage resort on Sanibel Island that was completely destroyed by Hurricane Ian, requiring a full rebuild. She dedicates her creative time to mixed media painting and her digital cartoon series, “On Podunk Road.”

“My artwork has always been dominated by playful and colorful elements, along with an embrace of the types of warmth and nostalgia that always seem to make children of all ages smile!”

Charlene M. Taubert, onpodunkroad.com

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Eric J Taubert is an artist, contemporary fine art photographer, and writer based in Southwest Florida. He has worked internationally, with an emphasis on coastal New England (including a deep connection to Maine and the Ogunquit Art Colony + Ogunquit Art Association / Barn Gallery), Southwest Florida (particularly Sanibel/Captiva Island + the area between Fort Myers and Key West), and Europe. Taubert’s work has been exhibited in a variety of fine art galleries across the United States, featured in magazines, and is also held in many private collections.

“I’m most-often drawn towards an examination of coastal textures in my work. Weathered wood. Salt-crusted working waterfronts. Seaside dive bars. Residents, workers, and tourists in coastal villages, coves, and harbors. My work is created through the process of a slow, deliberate, and mindful look at the interaction of places near the ocean with the human-made stuff found along these coastline areas.

How do the sun, and the storms, and the salt water have an impact on the dwellings, signs, tools, boats, docks, fishing gear, and gathering places of the people who live in proximity to them?

What truths are revealed through the eclectic encounters that occur in these delicate ecotones where complex tourism-economy pressures ceaselessly collide with the fragile habitats of the native species and day-to-day lives of those who call these heavily-marketed destinations home?

How do tangles of ropes, buoys, driftwood, human-generated debris, beach-town ephemera, and the passage of time all conspire to become part of these nostalgia-drenched and kaleidoscopically-evolving landscapes that speak so loudly to so many of us?”

Eric J. Taubert, taubertgallery.com

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