Vail Public Library proudly displays art featuring local artists from the Vail Valley and beyond. The library participates in Vail’s Art in Public Places program and is home to permanent pieces of Vail’s collection. You can learn more about Art in Vail here. Our community room also has a gallery hanging system which accommodates framed pieces and rotates monthly. Additional display space is available for 3D, sculpture, and mixed media in our display space in the Galleria.
Would you like to display your art in Vail Public Library? Please email Libinfo@vail.gov
FEATURED ARTISTS
April 2026
Vail Mountain School
We are delighted to feature the talented students of Vail Mountain School as our April 2026 Artists of the Month! Our rotating gallery is currently transformed into a vibrant showcase of youthful creativity, featuring a diverse collection of pieces created by students across varying grade levels.
From bold experiments in color to intricate technical studies, this exhibition highlights the artistic growth and unique perspectives of our local student community. We invite you to stroll through the gallery and experience the energy and imagination that these young artists have brought to our walls
March 2026
George Lamb
Looking back, I would say my mother’s creativity instilled a passion for art in me and my three brothers. This passion was later fueled in an all-boys boarding school where, other than sports, the only other outlet I discovered was from an incredible art teacher. I spent four years learning drawing, watercolor and egg tempera. I had a double major in college, art and economics. After college I worked for a brief time in advertising in New York City and took some classes at the Art Student’s League. In the mid-seventies I lived at the Vail Mountain School campus in Dowd Junction and developed an informal art program. I went back East for about a year and a half doing a few odd jobs, including selling art throughout New England. Since returning to Vail in 1977, I have a day job which has afforded me the opportunity to paint when and what inspires me.
February 2026
Julie Graham
I loved making art as a child growing up in St. Johnsbury, VT, but as I got older, I became more inhibited and critical of my work, so I focused on academics and a career in healthcare. While reevaluating my life six years ago, I decided to make art a priority, and started taking oil painting classes in Honolulu. I moved to the Vail Valley four years ago, and have continued taking art classes, and pursuing my artistic goals.
I like to paint what I see, trying to capture exact details and likenesses, to make my paintings look as real as possible. Recently, I have enjoyed being less restrictive, letting go of my perfectionist tendencies, and getting into the flow, even painting abstract images. When I let go of control and rigidity, I’m able to be in the present moment, where I find peace, inspiration, and joy.
January 2026
Rose McPhee
Rose McPhee is a Denver-based painter and psychotherapist with a background in fine arts and education. After three decades teaching high school and adult art, she transitioned her creative focus from clay sculpture to painting. Her work is informed by her clinical practice in art therapy and a lifetime spent in Colorado’s artistic community.
Rose’s work is a celebration of magical realism, captured through acrylics and pastels in a loose, expressive style. Drawing inspiration from her travels and the natural world, she seeks to portray the inherent joy and vulnerability of her subjects. By prioritizing color and “artistic license” over photo-realism, Rose aims to translate the things she loves into art that captures their purest, most innocent essence.
December 2025
Jen Hammond
Jen Hammond is a conceptual abstract artist from Vail, Colorado. Using a palette knife and working with acrylics and metal leafing she
explores focus and symbolism in her textured impressionistic paintings. Trees have long been a theme in her life, she finds inspiration in the aspen groves of the Rocky Mountains. Her work often depicting the light through the leaves, she enjoys the symbolic nature of the trees; the rooting, reaching and growing, the imagery of the family tree, the connectedness of the groves with their shared root system, the parallels in that they are the lungs of our planet and resemble our very own lungs with their branches.
For the last several decades in Vail, Jen has framed space, augmenting, highlighting, celebrating that which was beautiful through event design, stage production, interior design, photography and fine art painting. A writer and a poet, Jen Hammond’s practice of art is her way of externalizing emotion and expressing complex human experiences.
