Celeste 'Cleo' Plowden especially enjoys painting animals, in styles from traditional realism to whimsical contemporary minimalism, using gouache on paper or oil paint on canvas. Through her years as a fabric designer and now a fine artist, experimentation has been a hallmark of her style. She majored in the History of Art, with further design studies at Parsons School of Design, in New York, and has published over a dozen craft books for Dover Publications. She has shown her work at the Albany Institute, the Froebel Gallery, Albany Center Gallery and other galleries in the Albany, NY area. Currently, Celeste makes her home in the mountains of West Virginia. She is also a writer of dark historical romance and speculative fiction.