Meet Our Art Instructors | Goodyear, AZ Children’s Art Studio

Our Team

Studio Owners

Dan and Natalie Vasile

Dan and Natalie Vasile are the owners of the Children’s Art Classes franchise in Avondale, Arizona. Dan spent nearly 30 years in financial services, including the last 13 years as a wealth adviser. He left the corporate world behind to pursue a business that focuses more on giving back to his community and provides a fun place for children to enjoy. Natalie stepped away from the corporate world three years ago to be a full-time stay-at-home mom, while also homeschooling their three children.

Together, they wanted to model entrepreneurship for their kids while providing a space where local youth can explore and express themselves. They believe art is a powerful way for kids to develop emotionally and creatively, to discover skills and talents unknown, and to foster growth and confidence. Inspired by their children’s own love for art and recognizing the limited opportunities available for children, the Vasiles are committed and excited to share this unique experience with families in their community.

Instructors

Samuel De Lemos

Samuel De Lemos is an artist, filmmaker, painter, videographer, poet, educator, and doctoral researcher whose interdisciplinary work explores memory, exile, aesthetics, and the surviving atmospheres of medieval Iberian convivencia. He received his BFA and MFA from San Francisco Art Institute and earned an MA in Philosophy from San José State University.

He is currently completing a PhD at the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts, where his research develops the frameworks of Converso Cosmology and the Aesthetics of Kura (קְרַע), examining how cultural memory survives through art, literature, architecture, poetry, and visual form under conditions of rupture and displacement. With over twenty-five years of experience as an educator, his practice moves fluidly between film, painting, philosophy, translation, and poetic inquiry, reconstructing atmospheric coherence from the fragments of history.

Katherine Spicer

I am a native Arizonan born and raised. As a wife to my husband of thirty-one years and mother of three beautiful young ladies, I know I I’ve been blessed abundantly.

I am a graduate of the University of Arizona, earning a BFA in Fine Arts: Graphic Design and Illustration. I spent 17+ years as an Art teacher in the private Christian School Education sector. I feel very blessed to have been lead in to teaching and to Children’s Art Classes (CAC.) Inspiring students in Art, and being inspired by my students and their efforts in Art is such a joy and part of who God made me to be.

Magdass Richard

Hello, my name is Magdass, call me Maggie for short. I’m a recent ASU grad student with a BFA in Painting and Drawing! I love music, film, photography, reading and learning foreign languages in my free time. Throughout my life, I’ve always been a learner whether in school or out of school. A lot of the lessons and materials I currently teach students are the things I learned while in university and look forward to planting and watering the future artists in this class!

Alexander "Alex" Neish

Alexander “Alex” Neish is a Storyboard Artist, Animator, Character Artist and Illustrator specializing in cartooning, games, comic books and webcomics. With a lifelong passion for drawing, refined by a Masters of Fine Arts from the Savannah College of Art and Design, Alex learned to turn his love of creating characters into compelling storyboards and animatics. Alex has also supplemented the animation studies with instruction in game design and sequential arts.

He is adept at 2D and 3D work, and has been trained by world class instructors in MAYA, PHOTOSHOP, and many other applications. He has also studied studio art and film studies at a university level, studied art in Florence, Italy and has been a Panelist at 2017 San Diego ComicCon.

Alex tries to bring out various aspects of his experiences throughout his work and is adaptable to a variety of styles.