Santa Fe artist/teacher Jakki Kouffman is a Signature Member of Plein Air Painters of New Mexico, a Signature Member of the Pastel Society of New Mexico, and a Master Pastelist with the Pastel Society of America. In 2007 she won First Prize, Collectors’ Choice Award at the Plein Air New Mexico Paint Out, and in 2008 she mounted a solo exhibition of her brightly colored, gestural landscape paintings at the Las Cruces Museum of Art. Her Las Cruces show, Sandstone, Rivers and Sea, featured work executed in acrylic with imagery drawn from nature, memory and the imagination.

       Kouffman has shown her work in many juried and invitational shows around the country. She has also taught workshops and classes, juried shows, and won awards in many venues. In 2010, her painting High Desert, Cool Shade was selected as the exhibition poster for the first annual Biennale Grande at the Hubbard Museum of the American West in Ruidoso Downs, New Mexico. In 2009, two of her paintings, Red Rock, Near Creek and Canyon View, Late Day, were installed at public facilities in Santa Fe and Las Vegas, New Mexico through the New Mexico Art in Public Places (AIPP) program. In 2008, her painting Cholla Blossoms, River Below was installed at the Mesilla Community Center through AIPP.

       Kouffman has won prizes at annual juried shows at the Rio Grande Art Association Encantada Show, the Pastel Society of New Mexico National Show, the Masterworks of New Mexico Exhibition, and the Mesilla Valley Fine Arts Association Annual Juried Show. In addition to the Las Cruces Museum of Art exhibition, she has had one-person shows in Kansas at the Wichita and Hutchinson Museums and in Alaska at the Juneau-Douglas City Museum.

       Kouffman’s work appears in several books, including The Artist and the American Landscape by John Driscoll and Arnold Skolnick, Painting Alaska by Kes Woodward, and Messages from Alaska, published by the M. J. Murdock Foundation. In 2010, her work will appear in Acrylic Innovation: Styles & Techniques by 64 Visionary Artists, written by Nancy Reyner and published by North Light Books. Kouffman’s work has been covered in the Santa Fe New Mexican, Pasatiempo, Cowboys & Indians, Albuquerque Journal North, Santa Fe Reporter, and many other publications.

       A native of Boston, Kouffman has lived in Santa Fe for the past ten years after having lived in Juneau and New York City. She received her B.A. magna cum laude from Brandeis University, was awarded a Sachar International Fellowship for one year of art study in Pietrasanta, Italy, and studied painting at the Art Students League of New York for four years with Daniel Greene.

       Kouffman has taught workshops around the country for more than twenty-five years in locations such as Abiquiu, Taos, Amarillo, Big Sur and Juneau, as well as in Arizona, Utah, Oklahoma, Nevada, Colorado, Florida, New York, New England and the Yukon. She also teaches painting and drawing classes at Santa Fe Community College Continuing Education.