Winter Festival Part Two: The Representational Artists

2023 WINTER FESTIVAL THE REPRESENTATIONAL ARTISTS

2023 Winter Festival: Part two The Representational Artists

Part Two of the 2023 LewAllen Galleries’ Winter Festival continues a project of providing a rare opportunity for a larger than usual group of gallery artists working within the same artistic genre to exhibit together.

This second part features nine artists each of whose work is considered representational. Part One of the Winter Festival, just completed, was very well received and showcased the work of eight non-objective painters regularly shown by the gallery. Each installment of the Winter Festival allows the viewer the occasion to compare and contrast different ways that artists create important works of art within the abstract and representational styles of art-making.

In Part Two of the Winter Festival, nine additional gallery artists are presented whose work is representational using a variety of techniques within the genre to produce images which, by definition, are in some respect identifiable as something familiar. They may depict or reference objects, land or other forms of nature, figures, or scenes from the real world. The term “representational” is broad enough to subsume “realism” but also impressionistic or abstracted variations of something recognizable.

If for abstract painters arrangements of colors and forms provide the vocabulary for the visual language of their mode of expression, representational painters adhere to an impetus to present in the work imagery reflective of their observed experience or perhaps imagined imagery derived from descriptions of the experience of others, stories, mythology, or dreams. Works by artists featured in Part Two of the Winter Festival include various aspects of these influences.

For more than four decades, Randall Exon has created representational paintings featuring landscapes and figurative subject matter that are filled with dream-like mystery and Arcadian beauty. Exon's paintings are essentially a product of his imagination, drawing from real-life elements and piecing them together to create a new, idyllic landscape. Often incorporating both figure and natural scenery in his work, Exon acknowledges Andrew Wyeth and Edward Hopper among his major influences. Alluding to ordinary life while expressing a sense of the extraordinary, Exon’s work evokes an alluring sense of place and people, inspiring feelings of both nostalgia and wonder.

A second-generation New York School artist trained under the great Hans Hofmann, Wolf Kahn (1927–2020) became one of the most renowned figures of American landscape painting of the last seventy years. His was a unique blend of realism and color field painting that conferred a rich signature atmospheric quality to his work from a fusion of color, spontaneity, and representation. Kahn is known especially for luminous, lyrical paintings of farmlands that evoke a new sense of romantic American pastoral. He painted weathered barns and tree lines that evoked his own Vermont barn and embraced a spare, evocative New England aesthetic.

With a successful career spanning more than forty years, Ron Kingswood is renowned for his distinctive paintings of animals in their natural habitats. With his gestural brushstrokes and a lifelong study of the outdoors, his work exists at the exciting intersection of naturalism, realism, and impressionism. Offering a refreshing and iconoclastic approach to wildlife art, Kingswood stuns with his unexpected compositions and mastery of color. Each quiet moment allows the viewer an extraordinarily intimate glimpse into the unfettered and noble lives of the animal kingdom, inviting meditation about the preciousness of nature.

2023 Winter Festival: Part two

The Representational Artists continued

For over thirty years, T. Allen Lawson has been highly-regarded for his breathtaking oil paintings of natural scenes. Lawson’s paintings of mountains, plains, and small-town life accentuate the immaterial play of light, shadow, and color. His paintings draw on his robust plein-air practice, which incorporates his observations of the landscape but bends them past literal depiction in his studio towards a quality of metaphor. Even though his paintings are borne through specific experiences in nature, as Lawson has said, “I am not drawn to nor inspired by subject alone.” Instead, Lawson’s work gains a feeling of intimacy and timelessness from Lawson’s desire to capture on canvas the abstract, ephemeral qualities of nature.

David Ligare is a brilliant technician and learned classicist who brings to his representational painting enduring ideals of beauty, knowledge, and myth in which reside keys to finding meaning and significance in human life. His imagery often references ancient Greek and Roman myth while simultaneously evoking thoroughly contemporary ideas about nature, social diversity, and culture. By using imagery that connects with the classical past, Ligare’s representational painting integrates eternal ideals with contemporary sensibilities and inspires as it reminds.

For more than forty years, Lucy Lyon has been internationally recognized for her expressive glass sculpture. Driven by a strong narrative impulse, her work alludes to contemporary urbanity and youthful independence. Lyon is an indisputable master of capturing human gesture and subtle nuance in her superlative cast glass sculptures. The artist’s characteristic works derive from a different, more personal, context than that usually encountered in the modern glass world— individuating her from her contemporary counterparts.

Over a distinguished career of more than 54 years, Forrest Moses (1934–2019) became legendary for his graceful visual responses to place through intricate rhythms of color, lines, and form that established a dynamic tension between representation of familiar forms of landscape and aesthetic philosophies of abstraction in order to reveal a sudden transcendent quality of the simple experience of being in nature. His masterful depictions of serene woodlands and placid bodies of water emphasize both the tranquility of their subject matter and the eloquence of understated gestures. He presents an art of intimation rather than disclosure, where seasons are suggested by sophisticated color harmonies, and expertly balanced compositions include no more than is necessary in the service of evocation.

With an aesthetic approach very much reminiscent to that of Renaissance or Old Master painting, Elias Rivera (1932–2019) made a career of capturing the humanity and dignity of contemporary Indigenous peoples of New Mexico and Central and South America. He was a close student of the human condition and painted scenes from with exquisite beauty and technical virtuosity that used his unparalleled sense of realism to impart a remarkable sense of compassionate empathy regarding his subjects.

With a successful career spanning more than three decades, Linda Stojak is well-regarded for her highly nuanced representation of the female figure. Situating spare figuration within gossamer, liminal space, Stojak’s sumptuous canvases insinuate complex mysteries and hidden subtext within her spectral treatment of the female form. Veiled in mystery, Stojak’s paintings speak in a quietly haunting and melancholic voice – conjuring unsettled apparitions and faded, shifting recollections. Elegantly excavating the subconscious, Stojak opens portals to unexplored passages and furtive dimensions of the human mind.

Randall Exon’s representational paintings feature landscapes and figurative subject matter that are filled with dream-like mystery and pastoral beauty. Alluding to ordinary life while expressing a sense of the extraordinary, Exon’s work evokes an alluring sense of place and people, inspiring feelings of both nostalgia and wonder. Exon was born in South Dakota and raised in Kansas and Oregon. He received a BFA from Washburn University and an MFA from the University of Iowa.

Since 1982, Exon has been teaching at Swarthmore College and is the Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot Professor of Art. He has been honored with the Andrew Carnegie Prize from the National Academy of Design in New York.

Randall Exon

Randall Exon Hunter, 2008

Oil on panel, 16.25 x 16 inches

Randall Exon Beach House Window, 2006 Oil on canvas, 24 x 24 inches

Randall Exon Sheets & Garage, 2006

Oil on canvas, 24 x 34 inches

Wolf Kahn (1927–2020)

Wolf Kahn was a German-born American painter whose unique blend of Realism and formal discipline of Color Field painting distinctively set his work apart. As an artist, Kahn embodied a synthesis of artistic traits – the modern abstract training of Hans Hofmann, the palette of Matisse, Rothko’s sweeping bands of color, and the atmospheric qualities of American Impressionism. Born in Stuttgart, Germany, Wolf Kahn immigrated to the United States by way of England in 1940. In 1957, he married artist Emily Mason in Venice, Italy. Kahn was the recipient of a Fulbright Grant, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, and an Award in Art from the Academy of Arts and Letters.

Wolf Kahn (1927–2020) Barn with Blue Shadows, 1984 Pastel on paper, 30 x 44 inches

Wolf Kahn (1927–2020) Barn in a Summer Haze, 1984 Oil on canvas, 36 x 52 inches

Ron Kingswood

With a successful career spanning more than forty years, Ron Kingswood is an internationally regarded painter of contemporary naturalism. His beautiful paintings are elegant, intimate glimpses of nature and the remarkable life within it. They are distinguished for redefining traditional wildlife painting and presenting a uniquely different approach to exploring the spatial grandeur and inner spirit he finds at the intersection of landscape, habitat, and wildlife. Born in St. Thomas, Ontario, in 1959, Ron Kingswood studied at H.B. Beal in London, Ontario, and received a degree in Bird Ecology and Ornithology at The University of Western Ontario. He lives and works in Sparta, Ontario.

Ron Kingswood Vespers, 2020

Oil on canvas, 64 x 68 inches

Ron Kingswood

High Above the Mesa, 2014 Oil on canvas, 98 x 84 inches

Ron Kingswood The Clearing, 2003 Oil on canvas, 55.75 x 63 inches

T. Allen Lawson

For over thirty years, T. Allen Lawson has been highly-regarded for his breathtaking oil paintings of natural scenes. Lawson’s paintings of mountains, plains, and small-town life accentuate the immaterial play of ephemeral light, shadow, and color. His paintings draw on his robust plein-air practice and gain a feeling of intimacy and timelessness from his desire to capture on canvas the abstract, ephemeral qualities of nature. Born in 1963 in Sheridan, Wyoming, Lawson attended the College of Santa Fe, the American Academy of Art in Chicago, and later the Lyme Academy of Fine Art in Lyme, Connecticut. He has been awarded the many prestigious honors including the Jurors’ Choice Award from the Buffalo Bill Historical Center.

T. Allen Lawson

Desert Air, 2022

Oil on linen on panel , 12 x 18 inches

T. Allen Lawson

Basalt Sentinel, 2019

Oil on linen on panel , 32 x 34 inches

T. Allen Lawson Hoar Frost, 2021

Oil on linen on panel, 26 x 24 inches

David Ligare

David Ligare is a brilliant technician and learned painter who brings to classicism a thoroughly modern reverence for nature, social diversity, cultural traditions, and enduring ideals of beauty, knowledge, and myth in which reside keys to finding meaning and significance in human life. Through his masterful integration of eternal ideals and contemporary sensibilities, Ligare’s restrained and gracefully balanced imagery resurrects the deep satisfactions that man has always sought and found from aesthetic and spiritual curiosity and craving. Ligare was born in Oak Park, Illinois, and studied at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.

David Ligare

Legend, Woman with Deer, 2020 Oil on canvas, 48 x 72 inches

David Ligare

Landscape with a Horse, 2019 Oil on canvas, 60 x 80 inches

Cassandra, 2021 Oil on canvas, 72 x 48 inches

David Ligare

Lucy Lyon

For more than forty years, Lucy Lyon has been internationally recognized for her evocative glass sculpture. Driven by a strong narrative impulse, her work alludes to contemporary urbanity and youthful independence. Lyon is an indisputable master of capturing human gesture and subtle nuance in her superlative cast glass sculptures. Lyon was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in 1947. She graduated from Antioch College, Ohio, earning a BA in philosophy, and was further educated at Pilchuck Glass School, Washington. Her works have been exhibited in public institutions including: the Redding Museum of Art and History in California, the Albuquerque Museum, and the New Mexico Museum of Art, among others.

Lucy Lyon

Doppelganger II, 2014

Cast glass, 18 x 23 inches

Lucy Lyon Aesthete, 2021 Cast glass and fabricated steel, 26.5 x 11.5 inches

Lucy Lyon Young Woman Standing, 2010 Cast glass and fabricated steel, 38 x 18 x 10 inches

Forrest Moses (1934–2021)

Tesuque Watershed, Detail #7, n.d. Oil on canvas, 36 x 40.25 inches

Over a distinguished career of more than five decades, Forrest Moses delighted in conveying images of rivers, forests, and the stirring colors of changing seasons through distinctive and complex rhythms of color, line, and form. Moses sought to convey in his paintings a sense of being in a place, transforming the landscape in order to manifest what he called an “expressionistic response to a figurative subject.” Born in Virginia, Moses relocated to Santa Fe in 1969. Moses was educated at Washington and Lee University and the Pratt Institute in New York. His work is included in numerous major private collections and in those of diverse public institutions, including the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Forrest Moses (1934–2021)

Forrest Moses (1934–2021) Tesuque Falls, 1974 Oil on canvas, 42 x 42 inches

Forrest Moses (1934–2021) October Reflections with Woods, 2001 Oil on canvas, 48 x 72 inches

Linda Stojak

With a successful career spanning more than three decades, Linda Stojak is well-regarded for her highly nuanced, evocative representation of the female figure. Situating spare figuration within gossamer, liminal space, Stojak’s canvases insinuate complex mysteries and hidden subtext within her spectral treatment of the female form. Stojak earned her BFA from Arcadia University in Pennsylvania and her MFA from Pratt Institute in New York. In 1996, she was the receipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her work is represented in over 300 private collections and held in public collections such as the University of Pennsylvania, Brown University, and Seattle University, among others.

Linda Stojak

Untitled (Figure 122), 2021 Oil on canvas, 61.75 x 62 inches

Elias Rivera (1937–2019)

With a successful career spanning more than half a century, Elias Rivera is a renowned Santa Febased painter. In his vibrant works inspired by Dutch and Spanish Old Master paintings, Rivera chronicles vivid scenes of urban life in New Mexico, Guatemala, Mexico, and Peru. Eloquently distilling the essence of daily life in these Indigenous communities, Rivera’s striking canvases are brimming with groups of figures bathed in radiant light and color. Born in Bronx, New York, Rivera attended the Art Students League and the School of Industrial Arts. In 1982, Rivera moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and married artist Susan Contreras. In 2004, Rivera received the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts.

Elias Rivera (1937–2019) Three Generations, n.d. Oil on canvas, 84 x 42 inches

Elias Rivera (1937–2019) Flowers of the Mind #5, 2002 Oil on canvas, 50 x 60 inches

Elias Rivera (1937–2019) Chi Chi Castenango, 1993 Oil on canvas, 48 x 72 inches

Elias Rivera (1937–2019) Shepherd, 2011 Oil on canvas, 47.75 x 36 inches