HORNE FINE ART offers artwork ranging in style from traditional to contemporary. The gallery presents works by artist Karen Horne, her mother, Phyllis F. Horne, as well as a select group of invited artists from the local community and beyond. With its sixteen foot ceilings and large skylights, attractive exhibition space and working studio, HORNE FINE ART offers a dramatic setting for the display and creation of art.

The gallery brings together the talents of Karen Horne and her husband Michael Rowley. Born in London, Michael has extensive experience directing and curating in galleries in New York, Santa Fe and San Francisco, and has offered the work of living artists as well as that of masters ranging from Rembrandt to Matisse to Milton Avery.

A graduate with honors from Yale, Karen Horne painted and exhibited for over a decade in New York City and has actively participated in the Utah art scene since her return in 1996. She has won numerous national awards and grants, and has work in private, corporate and museum collections. She has taught at universities, including the University of Utah. Recent exhibitions include the Cultural Olympiad Exhibition and the Lieutenant Governor’s Invitational. Noted for her expressive color and skill at capturing gesture, Karen was recently elected one of the hundred “Most Honored Artists of Utah.”

Phyllis F. Horne is a widely admired painter, whose work over three decades has won top state and national awards. Her work is featured in numerous corporate and state collections including the State Art Collection, St. Mark’s Hospital and the Springville Museum. She too was recently named one of the hundred “Most Honored Artists of Utah.” She is noted for her dramatic handling of light and evocative painting of trees.

The gallery continues a family tradition of promoting fine art in Utah which dates back to the nineteenth century. In 1898, Karen Horne’s great-grandmother, Alice Merrill Horne, ran for the 3rd Utah Legislature specifically to advance the arts agenda. Once elected, she authored legislation to create the Utah Arts Institute (now the Utah Arts Council), the first state-sponsored arts agency in the nation. Her support and promotion of early Utah artists took many forms. She established a state art collection, now numbering over 1,200 works, she established 37 collections of Utah Art in public schools, and she presented exhibitions in numerous venues such as the ZCMI Tiffin Room and the Newhouse Hotel. (more about Alice Merrill Horne)

Beyond the arts agenda, Alice Merrill Horne was a civic-minded visionary. She penned legislation setting aside the land grant for the University of Utah. She was an early preservationist and environmentalist, helped save Eagle Gate from demolition, and fought for cleaner coal.