Rosario Ponte is a classically trained portrait painter with more than 30 years of commissioned work. Since 2010 she has been Instructor of Painting at the University of Texas at El Paso.

She trained at the New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the Florence Academy in Italy, and has studied under master painters including Daniel Greene, Robert Liberace, and Jeremy Lipking. Her commissioned portraits include a life-size painting of U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, unveiled in El Paso in 2010. Her work has appeared in 17 solo exhibitions and more than 30 group exhibitions across Texas, Washington D.C., New York, and Mexico. She is a member of the Portrait Society of America and Oil Painters of America.

Rosario teaches year-round in El Paso and travels to Florida several times a year for a small number of in-person workshops in Sarasota and St. Petersburg.

In her workshops she teaches the way she was taught: patiently, from the foundations up. Students learn to see before they learn to render — proportion, structure, value, light. Classes are small and hands-on, built for people who want real instruction rather than a finished souvenir. Beginners are genuinely welcome.

See her work and free lessons at rosarioponte.com and on YouTube at @Rosario_Ponte.