Fine Art Connoisseur March/April 2022

G R E AT C O L L E C T O R S | H O R S E S | R A PH A E L | G A L L E RY WA L L S | J O H N F. PE T O

APRIL 20 22 VOLUME 19 ISSUE 2

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DOOR

COUNTY

PLEIN AIR PRESENTED BY PENINSULA SCHOOL OF ART

Events July 24-30 Online Exhibition and Sale through Aug. 14

Tara Will Carl Bretzke

The Midwest's Premier Outdoor Painting Event 35 INVITED PLEIN AIR MASTERS Hector Acuna • Marc Anderson • Olena Babak • Suzie Baker • Zufar Bikbov • Carla Bosch • Anthony Bowes Carl Bretzke • Brienne Brown • Krystal Brown • Philip Alexander Carlton • Shar Coulson Joshua Cunningham • Danny Griego • Debra Joy Groesser • Kathleen Hudson • Charlie Hunter Shelby Keefe • Mat Barber Kennedy • Christine Lashley • Laura Martinez-Bianco • Terry Miura Dan Mondloch • Jimmy Navarro • Kathie Odom • Pam Padgett • Crista Pisano • Kari Ganoung Ruiz • Jeremy Sams Brian Sindler • Steve Stauffer • William Suys • Kim VanDerHoek • Jill Stefani Wagner • Steven Walker

COMPLETE SCHEDULE OF EVENTS ONLINE

PENINSULA SCHOOL OF ART Door County, WI | 920.868.3455

www.PeninsulaSchoolofArt.org/doorcountypleinair

Michelangelo’s commentary was recorded by the Portuguese miniaturist Francisco de Hollanda (1517–1584). Image: Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564), Study for the Head of Leda (for the now-unlocated painting Leda and the Swan), 1529–30, red pencil on paper, 14 x 10 1/2 in., Casa Buonarroti, Florence

“… after much labor spent on it, it should seem to have been done almost rapidly and with no labor at all, although in fact it was not so. ”

— Michelangelo

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Mary Garrish

End of the Day Oil on Aluminum, 12x16

UPCOMING EVENTS: Plein Air Live March 9 time TBA Plein Air South Apalachicola March 14-17 Sign up pleinairsouth.wildapricot.org

www.marygarrishfineart.com marygarrish@aol.com | 321-698-4431

Angel Tree © Alan Shuptrine, watercolor on paper, 29 X 32.5 inches

423-266-4453 ALANSHUPTRINE.COM In the studio, artist Alan Shuptrine

thegallery@shuptrines.com

Nationally renowned watercolor painter and master craftsman, Alan Shuptrine, creates luminous, detailed, and dramatic paintings. His award-winning book, I Come From A Place, which he co-created with author Jennifer Pharr Davis, is available at www.alanshuptrine.com and Amazon.com.

JENNY BUCKNER

PUBLISHER

B. Er ic Rhoads bericrhoads@gmail.com Tw i t t e r : @ e r i c r h o a d s f a c e b o ok . c o m /e r ic . rh o a d s

Fine Art

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MANAGING EDITOR

Peter Tr ippi peter.trippi@gmail.com 9 17.9 6 8 . 4 4 76

Br ida Connolly bconnolly @streamlinepublishing.com 702.665.5283 CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Matthias A nderson Kelly Compton Max Gillies Daniel G rant DESIGN

A llison Malafronte David Masello Louise Nicholson Charles R askob Robinson

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Kenneth W hitne y k whitney @streamlinepublishing.com 561.655.8778 C R E AT I V E D I R EC TO R

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“Thundering Red” 36x48” oil on linen (2022)

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E D I TO R , F I N E A R T TO DAY

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Buckner Gallery | Waynesville, NC 006

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Behind the Curve 16x20 Pastel www.laurapollak.com Laurapollak.artist@gmail.com

Abstract

Realism

Sara Scribner You Can Fall Apart Later oil on aluminum 14.5”x26.5” (2022)

Narelle Zeller Self-Portrait Painting Flowers oil on canvas acm panel 20”x16” (2021)

Judith Peck Coastal Community 30”x40” (2022)

Vicki Sullivan Young Love oil on linen 56cmx45cm (2021)

www.poetsandartists.com Homeira Mortazavi Kiss on the Wind Oil on canvas 12”x16” (2022)

Alessandro Tomassetti On Our Own oil on linen panel 24”x18” (2021)

Hilary Swingle Reverie oil on acm panel 24”x12” (2022)

Sara Gallagher High Bar Pan pastel and graphite on paper 21”x21” (2022)

www.artsy.net/partner/33-contemporary

JILL BANKS

331 SE Mizner Blvd.

Boca Raton, FL 33432 Ph: 561.655. 8778 • Fa x : 561.655.616 4

Capturing Life in Oils

CHAIRMAN/PUBLISHER/CEO

AWA | WAOW | WSLP

B. Eric Rhoads bericrhoads@gmail.com Tw i t t e r : @ e r i c r h o a d s f a c e b o ok .c om /e r ic . rho a d s E X E C U T I V E V I C E P R E S I D E N T/ C H I E F O P E R AT I N G O F F I C E R Tom Elmo telmo@streamlinepublishing.com PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Nicolynn Kuper nkuper@streamlinepublishing.com DIRECTOR OF FINANCE Laura Iserman liserman@streamlinepublishing.com CONTROLLER Jaime Osetek jaime@streamlinepublishing.com S TA F F AC C O U N TA N T Nicole A nderson nanderson@streamlinepublishing.com

Good Morning Telluride oil 24x36 in

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Beauty and the Beach 20x16 in

Golden Lights oil 24x24 in

JillBanks.com

Jill@JillBanks.com 703.403.7435  jillbanks1  JillBanksStudio Subscribe and follow for happier news and fresh art 010

M A R C H / A P R I L

Copyright ©2022 Streamline Publishing Inc. Fine Art Connoisseur is a registered trademark of Streamline Publishing; Historic Masters, Today’s Masters, Collector Savvy, Hidden Collection, and Classic Moment are trademarks of Streamline Publishing. All rights reserved.

Fine Art Connoisseur is published by Streamline Publishing Inc. Any reproduction of this publication, whole or in part, is prohibited without the express written consent of the publisher.

Contact Streamline Publishing Inc. at address below.

Fine Art Connoisseur is published six times annually (ISSN 1932-4995) for $39.99 per year in U.S.A. (two years $59.99); Canada and Europe $69.99 per year (two years $99.99) by Streamline Publishing Inc., 331 SE Mizner Blvd., Boca Raton, FL 33432. Periodicals postage paid at Boca Raton, FL, and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Fine Art Connoisseur, 331 SE Mizner Blvd., Boca Raton, FL 33432.Copying done for other than personal or internal reference without the express permission of Fine Art Connoisseur is pro­hib­it­ed. Ad­dress requests for special permission to the Managing Editor. Reprints and back is­sues available upon request. Printed in the United States. Canadian publication agreement # 40028399. Canada Post: Publications Mail Agreement #40612608; Canada returns to be sent to Bleuchip International, P.O. Box 25542, London, ON N6C 6B2.

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F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M

Scottsdale Art Auction Friday & Saturday, April 8-9, 2022

Estimate: $300,000 - 500,000

Arizona Indians

25'' x 30'' Oil

Edgar Payne (1883 - 1947)

a uctioning o ver 400 w orks of i mportant a merican , w estern , w ildlife and s porting a rt 50% o f a ll l ots w ill B e s old w ith n o r eserve s till o nly 17% B uyer ’ s p remium !

17" x 17" Oil

COLOR CATALOGUE AVAILABLE $40

For more information please call (480) 945-0225 or visit www.scottsdaleartauction.com

SA AS CRTOTAUT SCDT IAOLNE

SCOTTSDALE ART AUCTION

7176 MAIN STREET • SCOTTSDALE ARIZONA 85251

• 480 945-0225

•

www . scottsdaleartauction . com

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Publisher’s Letter

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Favorite: Tug Rice on Jean- Baptiste Pater

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Allison Malafronte highlights the talents of Jordan Baker, Michiyo Fukushima, Ryan Jensen, Robert David Jinkins, and Efraïm Rodríguez.

The flourishing of contemporary realism becomes even clearer as we highlight outstanding collectors living throughout the country.

ARTISTS MAKING THEIR MARK: FIVE TO WATCH

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Off the Walls

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Classic Moment: Lawrence W. Lee

By Peter Trippi

TENAYA SIMS & CHRISTOPHER REMMERS: EVOLVING THE MYTH

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THE TIMELESS APPEAL OF HORSES

By Max Gillies

RAPHAEL: ART STAR FOR THE AGES

CELEBRATING AMERICA’S GREAT COLLECTORS

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David Gulley & Kenneth J. Paul, Jr. Pamela & David Hornik Christian Keesee Robert C. Kennedy Samuel & Alice Peralta

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THE NEW GALLERY WALL: IT’S PERSONAL

By Jane Barton

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ART IN THE WEST

By Louise Nicholson

There are at least eight great reasons to celebrate the American West this season.

JOHN F. PETO’S PAST, PRESENT & FUTURE

GREAT ART NATIONWIDE

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We survey six top-notch projects occurring this spring.

By Allison Malafronte

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MANAGE YOUR ART ON THE CLOUD

By Daniel Grant

ON THE COVER TENAYA SIMS (b. 1979), Mellifera (detail), 2021, oil and 23.5 karat gold leaf on linen, 22 x 21 in. (overall), available through Abend Gallery (Denver). For details, please see page 59.

Fine Art Connoisseur is also available in a digital edition. Please visit fineartconnoisseur.com for details.

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F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M

TIMOTHY JAMES STANDRING MARCH 21 - APRIL 11

CLAGGETT/REY GALLERY (970) 476-9350

CLAGGETTREY.COM

EDWARDS, CO

DEREK PENIX MARCH 1 - 31

Big Cottonwood Canyon, 30” x 30”, oil on canas

orning light climbs through a thin veil of M clouds, illuminating the cliffs and spires of Ghost Ranch. Painted from a plein air sketch, the awe-inspiring colors of the Southwest are captured in strokes of vibrating color.

BRAD TEARE hikes into secluded areas to

capture nature’s light and color. Magnifying essential elements, he then paints larger versions back in the studio. The process produces surprises difficult to replicate by painting from photos or imagination.

Palace Ave. Gallery • 123 West Palace Avenue Santa Fe, NM 87501 • 505.986.0440 info@manitougalleries.com

Brad Teare hiking near the Rio Chama, New Mexico.

Above: Spirit of Ghost Ranch, 30” x 30”, oil on canvas.

P U B L I S H E R ’ S

L E T T E R

REFOCUSING PRIORITIES

L

ike any entrepreneur, my “to do” list tends to run my life. Some days it’s long, other days less so, but there are always projects that get kicked down the road. And though most organizational gurus would suggest I rethink how I’m organizing my time, it seems like there are days, sometimes weeks, when that list is controlling me.

My merry-go-round tends to run around 75 mph; I don’t dare jump off or major disruption might take place. But jump off I did for a Christmas break, then for a couple of weeks under the weather, sleeping most of the time.

Typically, after a vacation or some time away, I tell my assistant, Ali, that I’m going to work less, focus more, and do more of the things I want to do. A week later, we’re back up to 75 mph and those goals get pushed aside. Each time, I tell myself, this time will be different. I’ll change.

But it really was different this time.

Whether we are ill with COVID, the flu, or just a bug, our minds immediately go to the worst-case scenario, because we have all lost friends fast and unexpectedly. One can’t help wondering, “Maybe it will be me this time.” And that’s exactly where my mind went during my little sleeping break.

Now, instead of returning to 75 mph, I’m forcing myself to make the changes I’ve

always wanted to make. Though it requires replacing myself and hiring a couple of people to take on some of my workload, it will be different this time.

There is too much still to do, and the things I’ve wanted to do just never seem to get done. Therefore, my intent is to focus on what I call legacy projects — the big dreams that will make a difference. In my case it’s mostly about art, about books that need to be written, museums to be created, newly relocated paintings to be investigated, events to be invented, paintings I’ve dreamed of making that need to be started and completed, and so much more. Most importantly, it’s not about my personal legacy. Rather, it’s about ensuring I’m doing my part to pave the way for a future in which others discover and embrace art.

What about you? What are the big dreams that would need doing if you only had a year left? What do you keep putting off? What would you regret not doing when you close your eyes that last time?

None of us can predict where this world is going and what we will face. But we can identify those legacy projects, something we can do to change the (art) world.

Of course, there is never going to be enough time. It’s really all about how we manage the time we have.

Painted by DANIEL E. GREENE (1934–2020) Publisher B. Eric Rhoads 2005, oil on canvas, 30 x 24 in.

B. ERIC RHOADS Chairman/Publisher bericrhoads@gmail.com facebook.com/eric.rhoads @ericrhoads

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COMING SOON

ILLUME GALLERY WEST PHILIPSBURG, MONTANA JULY 16, 2022

SHOW OPENS NOVEMBER 3 THROUGH NOVEMBER 17, 2022 ONLINE AND IN-PERSON

Magnificent Miniatures DECEMBER 1 THROUGH DECEMBER 31, 2022

Oh Come Let Us Adore Him ALSO SHOWING IN DECEMBER

12 WORKS OF ART DEPICTING THE NATIVITY BY MICHAEL DUDASH DECEMBER 8 THROUGH DECEMBER 24, 2022

29 WEST 200 NORTH, ST GEORGE, UT 84770 | 435-313-5008 ILLUMEGALLERYOFFINEART.COM

Anni Crouter

SAA, NWWS, NSPC&A, AFC, MSWS, ARCALM, AWS Team Spirit, 60x72, acrylic on canvas

Twisted Fish Gallery • 10443 S Bay Shore Dr • Elk Rapids, MI 49629 • twistedfishgallery.com • 231-264-0123

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cross America, retail stores and office buildings continue to empty as more consumers shop from home and professionals choose to remain working there. At the same time, artists are struggling to find affordable studio spaces in the group settings that help them inspire each other.

For better or worse, it is creativity — more than manufacturing or services — that keeps the U.S. out in front; the world looks to our visual and performing artists, designers, video gamers, and other creatives to lead the way. Yet many of these folks have been priced out of the areas where they once gathered, even as the rest of us drive past shopping malls and main streets plastered with “for rent” signs. Surely there’s a way to solve both problems simultaneously?

Yes, Virginia, there is. Recently I was glad to learn that the young Fort Lauderdale-based “vacancy management company” Zero Empty Spaces (ZES, zeroemptyspaces.com) opened its 23rd location — its first outside Florida — at the upscale Natick Mall in Massachusetts. Its newest outpost once housed the luxury fashion brand Burberry, and its next-door neighbor is a Louis Vuitton boutique. Hardly shabby, but now the 12 lucky artists moving in will pay only $4.50 per square foot, including all utilities and without having to commit to more than one month at a time. The spaces available to them range in size from 70 to 238 square feet, enough to suit every budget.

Those artist-tenants will sign up for one front-desk shift per week, allowing the facility to be open during regular mall hours. All those well-heeled shoppers can watch the art being made and will (almost certainly) buy those creations to take home. In the meantime, the artists get to connect with each other, though they need not always keep their studio doors open.

This model would not suit every artist, but it’s a promising one and should be replicated elsewhere. ZES co-founders Evan Snow and Andrew Martineau currently operate similar facilities in such Florida locations as Doral,

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Hallandale, Hollywood, Fort Lauderdale Beach, Boca Raton, Lake Worth, Palm Beach Gardens, and Sarasota. Martineau notes, “The way we plan any of our new locations is based on outreach from property owners and artists,” generally those who have heard about the ZES concept and can suggest a suitable new location. Not surprisingly, many shopping center owners have contacted ZES since it launched in 2019; now under review for viability are possible sites in Rhode Island, California, Illinois, and Virginia.

I know this model works because I grew up near the Torpedo Factory Art Center in Alexandria, Virginia, a near suburb of Washington, D.C. During the 1970s, that hulking, outmoded plant overlooking the Potomac River was reimagined by an enthusiastic band of art and preservation advocates; it remains a popular place for artists to work and browsers to learn and collect. The artistic energy emanating from a community like it grows exponentially over time, with tenants always becoming more proficient thanks to the (inevitable, healthy) mix of admiration and competition.

Due to its massive size and downtown location, the Torpedo Factory had to be either repurposed or demolished, but now every town in America is witnessing unsightly and depressing vacancies in every possible context. Please, let’s all work together — marshaling our private entrepreneurs as well as our tax and zoning authorities — to transition those empty spaces into sites of creativity.

As a reminder of how crucial an artist’s studio environment is, we have just started (on page 76) a new article category, “Studios: Where Creativity Happens.” It launches with Allison Malafronte’s fascinating article about the John F. Peto Studio Museum in New Jersey. And this issue also offers a new round of profiles highlighting the exemplary collectors of contemporary realism we so admire. It is people like them who keep our artists busy and excited, and we salute them all for buying so very well with their eyes, minds, and hearts.

F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M

TRIPPI PHOTO: FRANCIS HILLS

TWO BIRDS, ONE STONE?

RICHARD BOYER

California Street, 40” x 40”, oil on board Available at MOCKINGBIRD GALLERY, Bend, OR

www.richardboyerart.net | IG: @richard_boyer370 | rboyer37@earthlink.net

WRIT TEN BY DAVID MASELLO

F I N D E R S

K E E P E R S

TUG RICE Illustrator Photo: Deborah Lopez

La Fête Champêtre Jean-Baptiste Pater (1695–1736) c. 1732, oil on canvas, 10 x 13 in.

Collection of Tug Rice

T

ug Rice draws New Yorkers of a certain ilk engaged in the life of their city — milling at art openings, dining in private clubs, shopping on snowy days, attending costume balls. Though he is much in demand on the very cultural scene he illustrates for magazines, books, and even lines of china, Rice has never actually depicted himself. Yet the circumstances of his finding and purchasing this circa 1732 painting

by Jean-Baptiste Pater could make for an engaging series of illustrations.

Rice recalls having moved into a new Manhattan apartment, and while visiting the Kips Bay Showhouse resale shop in search of some chairs and a lamp, he found this unsigned painting for a reasonable price. “I knew the moment I saw it that it was something special,” he says. “I felt I was onto something.” As soon as Rice brought it home — secure in its ornately gilded frame, perhaps a period one — he took a photo with his phone and did a reverse Google search. He learned that he suddenly owned a valuable work

by Pater, a pupil of Watteau and revered practitioner of Rococo France’s popular fête champêtre genre, which showed people in current or historical clothing at leisure in pastoral settings. Soon, Rice discovered that the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Frick Collection, London’s Wallace Collection, and other institutions have canvases by Pater in their permanent collections.

F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M

“When I reached out to Sotheby’s to tell them, they offered to include this work in their Old Master auction without even seeing it,” Rice recalls. “Then I called Christie’s, and they, too, immediately said yes. They sent a specialist to my apartment to verify its authenticity.” At the time, Rice had only an air mattress on the floor, a microwave oven, and the newly purchased painting propped against a wall. He remembers, “The Christie’s specialist was laughing and said, ‘This kind of thing never happens’ when he learned it was discovered in a resale shop.”

While many buyers of such a piece would gladly flip it for profit, Rice felt differently. “The strangest thing happened — I fell in love with the Pater. I decided not to sell and it now hangs proudly in my apartment.” While undertaking further research on the thinly documented, short-lived artist, Rice learned that he had been an illustrator, too. “It’s fascinating to me why we respond to certain pieces and whether knowledge and history about a

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piece should make a difference in our perception of a painting’s ‘worthiness.’”

The longer Rice lived with the Pater, the more entranced he became by its painterly details — the satin of the dancing woman’s skirt, a dog being petted, the amorous couple in a corner. But it was after an accident with its frame that Rice felt further enamored with the work. “I was moving to yet another apartment and when I took it down, part of the frame broke off. I was truly devastated. As the current owner of this special thing, I felt I had let it down. When you own a piece of art or furniture, you’re a caretaker, particularly if it has a storied history. You have a responsibility to it.”

After having the frame and the painting itself restored by the noted conservator Lansing Moore, Rice confides, “I feel better that I was able to care for this object in the right way. Now that the colors are more vibrant and the regilded frame glistens, the work has been restored to its original glory.

It’s good for another hundred years.”

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American Women Artists • National Juried Museum Exhibition & Sale BREAKING THROUGH: THE RISE OF AMERICAN WOMEN ARTISTS CUSTOMS HOUSE MUSEUM & CULTURAL CENTER CLARKSVILLE, TENNESSEE March 5 - May 29, 2022 • 100+ works by AWA members all available for purchase

C H R I STI N E G R A E F E D R E W YE R AWA PR ESI DE NT / MASTE R-SIG NATURE MEMBER Crescendo Oil on Linen • 24”x 36” • christinedrewyer.com

As a landscape painter, it’s no secret that my primary inspiration comes from being in direct contact with the earth, water, and sky. The natural world is intrinsically melded with my own sense of self and speaks a language that I am comfortable and familiar with. With the current circumstances which humanity has been forced to endure collectively, it is no mistake that the changes which we are facing are influencing what I paint. Choosing to translate this dramatic vista of a cloudburst in a desert was intended to be a metaphor for how we will navigate this challenging period in our history. Hopefully, we allow it to wash through and awaken us to new growth, as the natural world demonstrates to us regularly.

Online exhibition, schedule of events, and purchasing information available at americanwomenartists.org

American Women Artists • National Juried Museum Exhibition & Sale

BREAKING THROUGH:

THE RISE OF AMERICAN WOMEN ARTISTS D I AN A R E UTE R-TW I N I N G MASTER-SIGNATUR E M EM B ER Mandolin Fused nylon, copper and nickel on aluminum base • 5.5” x 32” x 13” bronzed.net

H E ATH E R LYN N G I B S O N SI GNATURE ME MBE R

D E B B I E KO R B E L SI GNATUR E M EM B ER

Egg Noodles Oil • 18” x 18” • HLGibsonArt.com

Michael Terra cotta, mixed media • 28” x 24” x 22” • debbiekorbel.com

CUSTOMS HOUSE MUSEUM & CULTURAL CENTER CLARKSVILLE, TENNESSEE March 5 - May 29, 2022 • 100+ works by AWA members all available for purchase Online exhibition, schedule of events, and purchasing information available at www.americanwomenartists.org

KI R STE N KO KKI N MASTE R-SI GNATUR E M EM B ER Balance Dance of Regrets and Sorrows Bronze on green marble stone • 19.5” x 8” x 10.5” • kokkinsculpture.com

M OAN A P O N D E R ASSOCIATE WITH DISTINCTION Endangered Earth Bronze • 14” x 6” x 5” • pondersculpture.com

American Women Artists • National Juried Museum Exhibition & Sale

BREAKING THROUGH:

THE RISE OF AMERICAN WOMEN ARTISTS

PR AGYA G U PTA ASSOCIATE M EM B ER Time Did Fly Oil • 24” x 18” • pragyaguptastudio.com

A R LI N E M A N N ASSOCIATE WITH DISTINCTION Peace of Place Watercolor over graphite • 24” x 18” • arlinemann.com

E LAYN E KU E H LE R ASSOCIATE WITH DISTI NCTION Lily Rose Oil • 22” x 23” • ElayneKuehler.com

CUSTOMS HOUSE MUSEUM & CULTURAL CENTER CLARKSVILLE, TENNESSEE March 5 - May 29, 2022 • 100+ works by AWA members all available for purchase Online exhibition, schedule of events, and purchasing information available at www.americanwomenartists.org

AN G E LA CAM PB E LL ASSOCIATE WITH DISTI NCTION Peacefully Await Oil • 16” x 12”• angelacampbellart.com

M AR C IA H O LM E S ASSOCIATE WITH DISTINCTION Triple Folly-Artsy Gras Soft Pastel • 32” x 32” • MarciaHolmes.com

LO U I S E S O LE C KI W E I R ASSOCIATE WITH DISTI NCTION Lullaby for Earth and Sky Opus 4 Polymer Gypsum with Oils • 18”x6”x5” • louisesoleckiweir.com

American Women Artists • National Juried Museum Exhibition & Sale

BREAKING THROUGH:

THE RISE OF AMERICAN WOMEN ARTISTS

R AC H AE L M c CAM PB E LL ASSOCIATE M EM B ER Contemplating The Day Oil on cradled wood panel • 36” x 36” • rachaelmccampbell.com

B F R E E D SIG NATU R E ME MBE R It’s Always Sunny Soft Pastel • 27” x 19” • bfreedfinearts.com

P HYLLI S M ANTI K

d e Q U EVE D O

SI GNATURE ME MBE R

Forest Fountain Bronze • 10” x 8” x 9” • mantikstudio.com

PAM E LA J E N N I N G S ASSOCIATE M EM B ER Black Lives Matter Self-Portrait Oil • 24” x 18” • pamjenningsart.com

CUSTOMS HOUSE MUSEUM & CULTURAL CENTER CLARKSVILLE, TENNESSEE March 5 - May 29, 2022 • 100+ works by AWA members all available for purchase Online exhibition, schedule of events, and purchasing information available at www.americanwomenartists.org

K ATH LE E N G ALE ASSOCIATE ME MBE R Sea Of Red Acrylic • 30” x 30” • kathygaleart.com

R O S ETTA MASTE R-SI GNATURE M EM B ER BFF (Best Feline Friends) Bronze • 17.5” x 11” x 9” • rosettascupture.com

M I C H E LE U S I B E LLI SI GNATURE ME MBE R

K ATH E R I N E G R O SS FE LD ASSOCIATE M EM B ER

Picnic Bouquet Gouache • 12” x 9” • micheleusibelli.com

Home Oil • 30” x 30” • katherinegrossfeld.com

St. Joe, 30” x 30”, Oil on linen

K AT H R Y N W E I S B E R G E x p l o r i n g Te x t u r e s i n t h e P h y s i c a l Wo r l d

kathrynw eisberg.com | kw@kathr y nwe i sb e rg .c o m | 2 0 8 .6 2 7 .8 1 0 0 | G a lle ry I n q u i ri e s We lc o m e

March 25 & 26, 2022 Opening Weekend Celebration

One of the premier Western art events in the world, Night of Artists includes the viewing and sale of nearly 300 new works of painting, sculpture and mixed media by over 75 of today’s leading contemporary Western artists. The opening weekend celebration features two days of in-person events including a live auction, a “Luck of the Draw” sale, a collectors summit and more on the banks of the iconic San Antonio River Walk.

March 27 – May 8 Exhibition & Sale

For more information visit briscoemuseum.org/NOA

Teresa Elliott, Skinner, Oil on linen on aluminum panel, 33 x 36 in.

Gladys Roldán-de-Moras, Renewal, 2021, Oil on linen, 40 x 30 in.

Dali Higa

Time Travelers

60” x 48”

Together we travel From the beginning it has been No suitcases of trunks Just packs on our heads

OIL ON CANVAS

BY DALI HIGA

Simple was the day Simple solutions too What was needed was balance Too simple for us today

CALIFORNIA MUSEUM OF FINE ART www.californiamuseumoffineart.com

Pink Peonies in Glass Vase 36x36 acrylic on canvas

www.bethclaryschwier.com

AMERICAN T ONALIST S OCIET Y Fostering the Tradition and Art Form of Contemporary American Tonalism

Look for info about our upcoming show at the Salmagundi Club, NYC in 2023.

Sign up on Mary our mailing Erickson list to be the first to knowwww

Featured Artist April 2022 Helena Fox Fine Art Charleston, South Carolina

Feather Glow 18” x 36” oil on panel MaryEricksonART.com

John MacDonald

“The Long Evening, Study” 9 x 12 in. Oil on Linen Panel

www.jmacd onald.com

“Berkshire Twilight” 16 x 20 in. Oil on Aluminum

www.jmacd onald.com

Visit AmericanTonalistSociety.com or Instagram @americantonalistsociety

® 31st Annual National Exhibition & Convention Steamboat Art Museum, Steamboat Springs, CO. June 3 – August 27, 2022

Joh

M anna Harmon OPA

Charlie Hunter

Jam es

Crandall OPA

M

W

illia m T.

M PA Chambers O

Convention will be Tuesday, May 31 - Sunday, June 5 Events include wet paint competition with awards and sale, exhibitors, mystery minis & whodunit contest,

Southwest Art Magazine’s welcome reception & Pampered Paint Out, Art Trivia Night hosted by Blick Art Materials, American Art Collector Magazine’s After Party and so much more!

Demonstrations by Juror of Awards, Johanna Harmon OPAM, James Crandall OPAM, Charlie Hunter, Chula Beauregard, Raj Chaudhuri OPA, John Taft OPA, Anna Rose Bain OPA, Jane Hunt OPA.

Also included for attendees are special events with Ross King, Shannon Robinson, William T. Chambers OPAM, ShipandInsure and singer BettySoo.

Ch

ula Beauregard

R aj C

i haudhur

Joh n Taft OPA

An na R

PA ose Bain O

Ja n e

Hunt OPA

Ross King

S ha nnon Robinson

Register at: www.oilpaintersofamerica.com Open to artists, students, collectors, art lovers, and the public.

OPA membership is not required.

Betty Soo

Follow us on

Roger Dale Brown OPAM, AISM, ASMAF, ARC, PAPA

capturing the landscape with expressive realism

Drifting Down 30x40 oil on linen

will host Roger Dale Brown for the show

EXPLORING VIRGINIA’S BEAUTIFUL PIEDMONT May 21 - July 2

40 Main Street - Warrenton, VA - 540.341.7367 www.berkleygallery.com

The show will include several of Roger’s beautiful studio paintings, along with some fresh plein-air pieces. Roger will be painting the week before the show in the Virginia’s beautiful Piedmont area. Follow Berkley Gallery on FB to see if Roger will be painting in one of your favorite locations.

Paintings . Workshop Information . Gallery Representation . Book . DVD’s www.rogerdalebrown.com

ANGELA MIA DE LA VEGA STUDIOS www.delavegastudios.com

Arise

27 x 9 x 8, Bronze

The Winding Stream

Oil on board, 18" x 24"

THE ST UDIO OF

Thomas Aquinas Daly Oil paintings | Watercolors

tadaly.com | tadalystudio @ gmail.com

JEFF LEGG

24” x 24”

The Catch “Jeff is one of the great still life painters of our time” Peter Trippi, Editor-in-Chief- Fine Art Connoisseur

www.jefflegg.com

oil on panel

C O L L E C T O R S S H O W C A S E

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here are many reasons people collect art, and they’re all worthy of applause. Perhaps it’s to enliven our living spaces, to enjoy beauty or technical virtuosity, to connect with artists and others in the community, to satisfy an urge for creativity, to invest in something that will grow in value, or to feel kinship with the past.

Fine Art Connoisseur has always been devoted to celebrating the great collectors we see all around us, and also to inspiring newcomers to give it a go. In every issue we highlight the stories of those who acquire art with passion, and we are particularly excited to do this now. Why? Because when it comes to realism (or representation, or figuration — whatever you choose to call it), we are living in a golden age of art-making. There is so much talent out there, and if anything, the pandemic has only increased the productivity of artists, who usually work alone in their studios.

Whether you buy art from the articles and advertisements here in Fine Art Connoisseur, or via the many outlets available in your community and online, we hope this showcase will inspire you to enhance your collection soon.

MARGARET M. DRAKE, ASSOCIATE WAOW

Glen Rose, Texas Tu Viennes?, 12 x 12 x 6 in., bronze with stone base mdrake8955@gmail.com | 254.897.9113 www.margaretdrakestudio.com Represented by Lantern Dancer, Pagosa Springs, CO; Lost Creek Gallery, Calvert, TX; Charles Morin Fine Art, Fredericksburg, TX

TIM OLIVER, NWS, WFWS

Lubbock, Texas Bruno's Cows, 15 x 15 in., watercolor timoliverwatercolors@gmail.com | 806.548.3789 www.timoliverart.com Represented by Broadway Contemporary Fine Art Gallery, Lubbock, TX; Old Spanish Trail Art Gallery, Ft. Davis, TX; A Beautiful Mess Antiques and Gallery, Lubbock, TX

NINA COBB WALKER, SIGNATURE WAOW El Paso, Texas Aurora, 11 x 14 in., oil ninawalker63@gmail.com | 915.494.0275 www.ninacobbwalker.com Represented by Cate Zane Gallery, www.catezane.com

C O L L E C T O R S S H O W C A S E

JOHANNE MANGI

North Haven, Connecticut Borzoi 11 x 14 in., oil on linen board mangifineart@johannemangi.com 203.215.5255 www.johannemangi.com Represented by West Wind Fine Art, Walpole, NH

JOHN BUXTON

Allison Park, Pennsylvania Full Moon, 12 x 16 in., oil on linen john@buxtonart.com | 412.486.6588 | www.buxtonart.com Represented by Lord Nelson’s Gallery, Gettysburg, PA; American Legacy Fine Arts, Pasadena, CA

ELIZABETH ROBBINS

Ogden, Utah Aspen Leaves and Pumpkin Slice, 24 x 20 in., oil robbinsfineart@icloud.com | 913.744.9524 www.robbinsfineart.com Represented by Highlands Art Gallery, Lambertville, NJ; Illume Gallery, St George, UT; Wilcox Gallery, Jackson, WY

JOIN

THE MOST EXCLUSIVE

PAINTING TOUR OF RUSSIA — EVER OFFERED — WITH RUSSIA’S MOST PREEMINENT ARTISTS

“I’ve spent a lifetime making connections in Russia to share with you.”

ERIC RHOADS

A visit to the studio of internationally acclaimed artist Nikolai Blokhin

Publisher, PleinAir and Fine Art Connoisseur

PAINT RUSSIA

SEPTEMBER 15-29, 2022

Painting beside Nikolai Dubovik, a top artist from the famed Surikov Academy and one of Russia’s most important artists

Discover the mystique of Russia and its rich art history as we paint and tour the most important highlights of this grand country. We’ll start with St. Petersburg, the Jewel of Russia, with its exquisite palaces, incredible art, and a private tour of the Hermitage Museum, plus a visit to the Russian Museum and the Repin home and studio.

Paint the small villages and rich heritage of Russia, as well as the city of Moscow and its great museums.

You will have unparallelled access to the two great art schools, three great museums, and top Russian artists, plus painting and touring on most days. Imagine standing and painting iconic Russian scenery.

Don’t Just Visit Russia. Paint It. Russian icon Andrey Lyssenko will guide us through locations painted by great masters

September 15-29, 2022 PaintRussia.com

There is a lot of superb art being made these days.

This column by Allison Malafronte shines light on five gifted individuals.

JORDAN BAKER (b. 1981), Too Much Is Never Enough: Lemons, 2021, oil on canvas, 20 x 20 in., Spalding Nix Fine Art, Atlanta

Based in New York’s Hudson Valley, where artists have basked in the beauty of nature for centuries, JORDAN BAKER (b. 1981) is an emerging artist with a discerning eye focused on the world around her. Her classic still lifes, painted with keen attention to detail in the trompe l’oeil tradition, may initially look like odes to everyday objects. But beneath the surface, they started out as philosophical ruminations on important issues the artist feels compelled to explore and share.

Take, for instance, her recent Too Much Is Never Enough series, in which food in great quantities challenges our notion of excess. “I have used the visual language of traditionally composed still life painting to explore the subjective concept of good taste and the wavering line between abundance and excess,” Baker explains. “Instead of offering an ‘appropriate’ amount of various items, I have composed a still life with a classically distasteful amount of a single item. Having good taste is one way we non-verbally communicate to others that we belong to the upper class. I attempt to subvert that very subtle, invisible hierarchy by creating a painting that is in traditionally defined poor taste, yet executed in a tasteful manner.”

In Too Much Is Never Enough: Lemons, Baker is particularly curious about an abundance of lemons and their ancient symbolism. “In Dutch Baroque painting, a lemon symbolized life,” she notes. “It looks juicy and F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M

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sweet on the outside, but it’s bitter on the inside. What does it mean to have more than just one lemon to remind you of this fact? What does it mean to turn up the volume on that symbolism? Does it disappear? Become louder?”

These are not rhetorical questions; rather, this painting is intended to spark conversations among those who view it.

Baker is interested in far more than deconstructing the concept of good taste. “My work focuses on moments when I feel caught between feelings of both attraction and repulsion, specifically when it comes to matters of gender and class,” she comments. “There are times when I want to slip into the comforting familiarity of a feminine archetype, but I also find it essential to exercise feminist agency over my actions. With no clear concept of good or bad, my work attempts to expose the tension within the nuance of identity, who we are, and what we do.”

Baker was born on a naval base in Winter Park, Florida. She attended Tufts University and earned a B.F.A. in art history from Syracuse University and an M.F.A. in mixed media from SUNY Albany. She has more than a decade of experience in arts administration in New York City, including stints at Allan Stone Gallery and Phillips de Pury.

Baker is represented by Spalding Nix Fine Art (Atlanta).

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MICHIYO FUKUSHIMA (b. 1972), 927 Fifth Avenue, 2010, graphite and watercolor on paper, 29 x 21 in., New-York Historical Society Museum & Library, New York City

MICHIYO FUKUSHIMA (b. 1972) often walks the busy streets of New York at an unhurried pace, taking time to contemplate the interesting ways that light, architecture, and people combine in visually stimulating vignettes. Raised in Japan and based in Manhattan for the last 24 years, the watercolorist was originally a photographer, so it’s no surprise that an eye for composition now informs her fine art. “I was fascinated by how light and shadow create beauty,” Fukushima says of her time as a magazine photographer in Japan. “While I enjoyed creating beauty by controlling light, the art form didn’t fulfill my desire to express myself. That quest brought me to the U.S., where I began gathering the life experience and perspective I needed to enrich my artistic expression.”

While embracing the excitement, positive energy, and diversity of all the other dream chasers around her in New York City, Fukushima enrolled in a watercolor class at the National Academy School of Fine Arts to begin her journey. “It was the only class with a spot left in it,” she recalls. “Going in, I knew nothing about watercolor, but I immediately fell in love with the medium. I love how challenging it is and how the time and patience you put in yield delicate, subtle colors, and wonderful translucency. I also love the organic process. You can’t force it; you have to learn how to work with water and let go of the urge to control.”

Fukushima’s watercolor 927 Fifth Avenue is based, not surprisingly, on a sight that caught her eye while strolling through Manhattan.

“When I walked by this apartment building, I saw a beautiful reflective light warming up the shadows, as if the carved face was glowing,” the artist remembers. “I took a quick snapshot so I could work in the studio later, but that glow, that almost divine energy, was engraved in my memory so that it became the focus.”

This large work is now in the collection of the New-York Historical Society, quite an accomplishment for someone who left her country to pursue artistic dreams in America. When asked how this acquisition came about, Fukushima explains, “I sent an e-mail to the curator introducing myself, and I had several images attached for donation.

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The curator loved 927 Fifth Avenue. She pitched it at a meeting, and everyone agreed to accept it for the collection.”

These kinds of fortuitous experiences often happen to Fukushima, someone who puts a lot out into the world through both her art and her attitude. “Sometimes we forget a simple but important aspect of life: to have love in your heart for yourself and everyone around you, and to appreciate all the little things,” she writes. “Art has a powerful way of reminding us how precious our lives are. A little thing can make a great difference. That’s my principle.”

Fukushima is self-represented.

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RYAN JENSEN (b. 1985)’s zeal for life and the great outdoors comes through clearly in his enormous, energetic plein air paintings. Based in sunny Blue Lake, California, the artist travels up and down the West Coast, easel on his back and equipment in hand, searching for scenes that take his breath away. “I remember my first solo plein air mission,” the artist recalls. “I was in college in Oregon and learning about the Impressionists. I quickly found myself at the docks of Charleston on Coos Bay with a janky old easel I had bought at a thrift shop for 10 bucks. I could feel the burning in my bones as I set up on that cloudy, cold day at the water’s edge. That fire hasn’t left me since.”

Jensen’s love of art actually began several years before, as a child growing up with a painter father and graphic-designer mother. Etched in his mind are fond memories of them conferring over a drafting board in their home studio, and of his father’s paint-covered hands on the steering wheel as he drove him to school. He started sketching as a young child and never stopped, continuing to draw through high school and even while serving as a U.S. Marine on three tours of Iraq and Afghanistan in his 20s. After his honorable discharge, Jensen returned to Southwestern Oregon Community College, where he majored in fine arts and began working with color for the first time. He

learned how color can be used to create a spectrum of light effects — the hallmark of his landscape paintings today.

Light is surely the subject in Coming Home, which measures five feet high and 10 feet wide; it depicts a large ship turning toward its final destination. One might assume this is a studio work made from a plein air sketch, yet Jensen actually created it entirely on site at California’s Humboldt Bay Eureka Marina. These types of scenes, where viewers can practically feel the sun on their skin and smell the saltwater breeze, are the result of Jensen’s all-in approach and ongoing commitment to his craft. “Like that first day at the docks in Oregon, I still love the feeling of painting by the water,” Jensen says. “I’m blessed to live where I do. The bluffs that overlook the Pacific Ocean just down the road whisper to me across the marsh. Those whispers are always calling me to paint and capture the light, before the great shadow swallows the day.”

Jensen is currently developing an instructional plein air painting DVD with Streamline Publishing, available later this year.

Jensen is self-represented.

RYAN JENSEN (b. 1985), Coming Home, 2020, oil on linen, 60 x 120 in., private collection

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EFRAÏM RODRÍGUEZ (b. 1971), At Car, 2015, beech wood and melis pine wood, life-size (24 1/2 x 20 1/2 x 30 3/4 in.), available through the artist

Spanish sculptor EFRAÏM RODRÍGUEZ (b. 1971) has lived in Barcelona for most of his life and earned a degree in fine art from the University of Barcelona in 1999. His works in wood are well-known in Spain and becoming increasingly popular elsewhere in Europe and the U.S. Using a unique, time-intensive approach to sculpt idiosyncratic portraits and figures that are both truthful and embellished, Rodríguez works with a variety of woods — including cedar, linden, hazelnut, beech, walnut, oak, and pine — for his assemblages of reality and imagination.

Taken as a whole, Rodríguez’s art runs the gamut from straightforward to perplexing. At first glance, several of his wooden children and female figures look like life-size collectible figurines, almost Hummel-like in their quaintness. Others are quizzical amalgamations of people, animals, and elements of nature in unconventional poses, clothing, and costumes. Still others are industrial-looking and installation-like, defying gravity with their wire armatures, as in the Ostrich series. Children are a common subject, as their playfulness and innocence remind Rodríguez of the aspects of human nature that adults tend to leave behind.

For At Car, the artist had a realization while staring at his sleeping nephew. “In this sculpture, my nephew is holding a toy car in his

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hand while sitting inside a car,” he explains. “The seat belt confines him to a very specific place, and we can imagine him dreaming of cars while strapped in. This is part of a series in which I explore how the materiality of the medium can ‘occupy’ or fill the subject, like minerals in the fossilization process. There should be no clear delineation or boundaries between the figure and its context.”

Growing up in an artistic family (both his father and grandfather painted), Rodríguez gravitated toward fine art, yet oil was not the medium with which he felt he could fully express his visions. He was always interested in sculpture, the human figure, space, and the meaning of materials. Now, whether Rodríguez uses wood taken directly from a fallen tree or from a piece of furniture, his purpose is always focused on the original “biography,” as he calls it, of that material.

Rodríguez has created several public works and monuments in spaces around Barcelona, and his sculptures are in private collections throughout Spain. A sought-after instructor, he recently released a clay-modeling portraiture course through Domestika and has been teaching sculpture at the University of Barcelona since 2005.

Rodríguez is self-represented.

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ROBERT DAVID JINKINS (b. 1994) has a longstanding tie to the washes, and nearly abstract marks,” he explains. “The accumulation of land he portrays in his large-scale paintings of rural Wisconsin. The these layered strata of paint weaves together into detailed portraits or farm that figures prominently in his work was homesteaded by his landscapes. These layers cause the work to vibrate with an existential forebears before Wisconsin even became a state. “In 1848 my ances- intensity. From beneath this surface of accumulated marks, undertor James Hird left England a tailor and arrived in Wisconsin a farmer,” drawings peek out like skeletal structures over which the rest of the the artist shares. “His daughter married a man named Robert David painting is stretched.”

Jinkins. Over a century and a quarter later, I grew up on that same WisJinkins has been inspired by both traditional and modern art consin homestead, and my unique relationship with the land and family movements of the past. Throughout his work one finds the influence history permeates my work.” of realism, regionalism, surrealism, abstract expressionism, and more.

To say the paintings are contemplative reflections of the pastoral “Although I am a representational painter, I endeavor for my art to work Wisconsin countryside would be a gross fabrication. They are compli- on an abstract level compositionally as well as in the details,” he says. cated, sometimes slightly disturbing, depictions that mine the depths “Many of the depictions of grass in my paintings are influenced by De of deep psychological and sociological thought and observation. Take Kooning’s masterful layering of space. Asymmetry plays a decisive role, for instance Scarecrow in the Garden, a sprawling triptych wherein with elements situated on either extreme of the visual plane to engage Jinkins situates a potentially suicidal figure in the foreground with a the subject with its environment. In the end, I intend my work to form haunted landscape behind him. Or Sola Sciptura, where a young man a psychological landscape — a synthesis of Hugo van der Goes, Francis holds a Catholic missal in one hand and a 9mm pistol in the other. Bacon, and Anselm Kiefer.”

According to the artist, these paintings “suggest the impotence of vioJinkins’s paintings are on view through April 24 in the Museum lence and the superiority of prayer and reason.” He says, “I strive to of Wisconsin Art’s Wisconsin Artists Biennial 2022, and then in the find the sublime in the mundane and believe that virtually anything an Bone Creek Museum of Agrarian Art’s Agrarian Artists Under 40 show artist sees could be visual grist for painting — provided one knows and (July 15–November 6). cares for it intimately.”

Jinkins’s ambitious works are painted in acrylic with impressive technical skill and understanding. “I work in layers of hatching, loose Jinkins is self-represented.

ROBERT DAVID JINKINS (b. in

1994), the

acrylic

Scarecrow

Garden,

2019,

and

mixed

media on panel, triptych (each panel 72 x 24 in.), available

through

the

artist

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BY PETER TRIPPI

T O D A Y ’ S M A S T E R S

TENAYA SIMS & CHRISTOPHER REMMERS

EVOLVING THE MYTH

I

n Denver, Abend Gallery is presenting an exhibition of recent easel-sized paintings by two gifted artists based in Seattle, Tenaya Sims and Christopher Remmers. On view through March 25, their show’s title, Evolving the Myth: Portals

of Perception, points to the laudable longterm ambition both men harbor — to prove that today’s highly skilled realists have what it takes to create epic narrative paintings that tap into myth and legend in fresh ways and excite the imaginations of modern view-

ers. This objective was cherished by many artists until the mid-20th century, when other approaches eclipsed realism. It is only now becoming attainable again thanks to the robust revival of technical skills over the past 30 years. Interestingly, the passion that

Remmers (left) and Sims at work in the studio they share in Bellingham, Washington

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TENAYA SIMS (b. 1978), Mellifera, 2021, oil and 23.5 karat gold leaf on linen, 22 x 21 in.

TENAYA SIMS (b. 1978), Anthesis, 2021, oil on linen, 80 x 108 in.

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Traditional Oil Painting, then pursue a sixmonth online mentorship with the Montana-based figurative master Steve Huston.

Next Remmers plunged into the three-year program at Georgetown Atelier, and he has been a key member of its teaching staff since 2018. He too has been honored in ARC’s International Salon Competition, most recently in 2020 with 3rd Place in the imaginative realism category.

CHRISTOPHER REMMERS (b. 1982), Subversion, 2020, oil on canvas, 30 x 24 in.

now drives these two colleagues originated not in the world of fine art, but in the fields of video game design (Sims) and spatial design (Remmers).

Tenaya Sims (b. 1978) began his career working in the video games industry, then stepped away to earn a B.F.A. from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. After a few more years in gaming, he dedicated five years to full-time study of classical drawing and painting. He started with a year at the atelier operated by Jeffrey Watts in Encinitas, California, then four years with Juliette Aristides at her atelier within Seattle’s Gage Academy of Art. In 2008, Sims founded his own Georgetown Atelier, ultimately merging it into Gage eight years later.

Today Georgetown offers a full-time, three-year curriculum in classical realism

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that also, quite unusually, recognizes the critical role that imaginative realism plays within the classics. When he is not teaching, Sims paints and draws epic narratives and “exo scapes” (enchanted, geologically active landscape scenes) that have been rewarded with honors in the flourishing world of imaginative realism (e.g., the organization IX Arts) and the Art Renewal Center (ARC); in fact, he won Best in Show in ARC’s 12th International Salon Competition.

Four years younger, Christopher Remmers (b. 1982) enjoyed a decade of success creating immersive spaces through his own contracting company, Eden Building and Design. Having studied fine art independently and in workshops nationwide, he finally closed his business to spend a year in California with Virgil Elliott, author of M A R C H / A P R I L

UNITY IN PURPOSE One thing that connects the two men is, of course, their belief in Georgetown’s curriculum, which makes room for both a high degree of finish and loose, expressive brushwork.

Students begin by working observationally (including life models) as they learn such core subjects as constructive anatomy, value studies, perspective, and cast drawing. Next they move into the realm of invention, pursuing modules such as the “rock project”: first they draw a rock from observation by studying its visual properties (e.g., planar vs. round.). Then they draw a rock from imagination, informed by their studies of the real rock.

Georgetown’s curriculum has three phases you would expect to find there (Drawing, Painting I, and Painting II), and a final one you might not. In Professional Development, students are mentored by their instructors to build a cohesive body of work while also cultivating the “inner vision” that will ultimately distinguish them from everyone else who has learned the same technical skills they have.

Sims and Remmers are also united by their desire to stop viewers in their tracks with complex paintings that touch upon ageless human concerns. An avid reader of Carl Jung (1875–1961), the great Swiss investigator of archetypes and the unconscious mind, Remmers writes, “For as long as I can remember, I have felt deeply inspired by the grand narrative paintings of our past, as well as the great mythologies that were the impetus for their creation. How are we as artists to participate in the evolution of these universal mythologies of the human condition?

How can we use these expressions as mirrors for a deeper understanding of creativity?”

Fortunately, Remmers can answer his own questions: “My work is endeavoring toward the texture, fluidity, and grandness that I have always admired in great traditional painters from Baroque to Mannerist to Impressionist and beyond. I look for the bridges in technique as well as narrative.”

And, quite rightly for someone who is not yet 40, his questioning goes on: “How can I meld mythological narratives with modern themes of psychedelia and mysticism to convey their universality? How can I fuse realism with abstraction until the two can better convey our evolved story? Every painting is a question answered in the process and in the viewing. Evolving our collective mythology in my work is of the utmost importance.”

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CHRISTOPHER REMMERS (b. 1982), Sentinel, 2021, oil on canvas, 72 x 48 in.

unique space that matters, too. “The impact of these mural-sized paintings,” they argue, “is surely amplified by, and inseparable from, the epic surroundings within which they are displayed.”

Notice that none of the examples above is contemporary, even though we now have thousands of well-trained realists able to produce such ambitious scenes. Why is that exactly? Remmers and Sims point to a range of factors, including a lack of suitable venues, the expense and logistical challenges involved, and the endless hamster-wheel artists must run to produce smaller works that keep their rent paid and their children clothed. Getting our field to the next level is daunting, but in this era of more-moneythan-we-know-what-to-do-with (some folks in our society are richer than anyone in world history has ever been), the fact that the leap has not occurred yet is frustrating. Sims and Remmers rightly note that too many contemporary realist images display skill alone, without the meaning, story, myth, or symbolism we viewers actually crave. By contrast, I would add, streaming television programming is enjoying a golden age because much of it is well crafted and satisfying on deeper levels, too.

STAY TUNED It would unfairly distract attention from the artists’ current show to reveal here any more of their grand plans, but suffice it to say that they envision creating a cycle of epic paintings to be displayed within immersive environments that will make subtle use of light projections, ambient sound, and interactive educational elements to help viewers “journey into and beyond the artworks.”

Fundraising and location-scouting are now underway, and Sims and Remmers encourage anyone interested in learning more to contact them via their websites.

Fine Art Connoisseur congratulates them and Abend Gallery on their good work and promises to shine more light on Evolving the Myth as it continues taking shape.

All of this helps to explain why Remmers and Sims have titled their Abend show Evolving the Myth, but it’s useful to know this is also the title of a remarkable longterm initiative they are busy planning. The artists note that, every year, millions of people are inspired to travel far in order to experience grand narrative artworks displayed in museums, cathedrals, and other grand buildings. Think, for example, of the Vatican, where Raphael’s School of AthF I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M

ens measures 16 by 25 feet; or Rembrandt’s Night Watch (12 by 14 feet) at the Rijksmuseum, or the Louvre’s Liberty Leading the People painted by Delacroix. Perhaps most ambitious is Mucha’s unforgettable Slav Epic — 20 monumental canvases made between 1910 and 1928 that will someday be exhibited together in Prague.

Sims and Remmers underscore that it is not just the picture tourists come to see; it is the experience of seeing that artwork in its

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Information: abendgallery.com, georgetownatelier. com, imaginativerealism.com. To reach the artists, visit tenayasims.com and christopherremmers. com. Remmers’s painting Dancing with Duality will be offered in the upcoming Contemporary: Discoveries auction at Sotheby’s New York (sothebys. com). Bids are being accepted online March 4–16.

PETER TRIPPI is editor-in-chief of Fine Art Connoisseur.

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BY MAX GILLIES

T O D A Y ’ S M A S T E R S

THE TIMELESS APPEAL OF HORSES H

orses have played a starring role in art from its very beginnings. On the walls of the Chauvet cave complex in southern France — believed to be approximately 30,000 years old — they appear prominently among the animals these prehistoric artists recorded. And of course horses’ dynamism drives forward the procession depicted in the British Museum’s Elgin Marbles (5th century BCE), which originally adorned the Parthenon in Athens. From the Crusades and Genghis Khan to Columbus and the Wild West, horses have featured in human history every step of the way, universally revered for their speed, power, grace, intelligence, and nobility.

When we learn of horses being eaten by famine victims or dispatched to the glue factory, we are instinctively repulsed because they are not merely animals to us: they are somehow a version of our better selves, regardless of whether we have mounted one, or even touched one. Artists today are just as inspired by horses as their predecessors were.

Illustrated here are recent images that capture horses in various modes: racing, riding, galloping, hauling, pasturing, and resting. The artists represented here are sustaining mankind’s timeless love of a unique creature that will — literally — never go out of style

LEE ALBAN (b. 1948), Hazardous Crossing, 2021, oil on panel, 24 x 36 in., available through the artist

MAX GILLIES is a contributing writer to Fine Art Connoisseur.

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(CLOCKWISE) MARY ROXX BUCHHOLZ (b. 1969), Who Are You?, 2021, charcoal and graphite on gessoed acm panel, 17 3/4 x 12 in., to be offered at the Briscoe Museum’s Night of Artists this March (see page 100)

JOHN BUXTON (b. 1939), She’s a Beauty, 2018, oil on

linen, 32 x 34 in., American Legacy Fine Arts, Pasadena

ANNI CROUTER (b. 1963), Grey

Thunder, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 72 in., private collection Switchback, 2019, oil on board, 18 x 24 in., private collection

ANN GOBLE (b. 1961), The DIANE FROSSARD (b. 1962),

Spring Pasture, 2020, oil on panel, 9 x 12 in., private collection

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(CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT) CHAUNCEY HOMER (b. 1966), Full Throttle, 2021, oil on linen, 17 x 30 in., available through the artist

ANN HANSON (b. 1953), Making

Friends, 2019, oil on panel, 20 x 16 in., available through artzline.com

MARCIA

HOLMES (b. 1954), Polo—Close Work, 2009, charcoal on sanded pastel paper, 18 x 18 in., private collection

RUTH GREEN (b. 1955), The Unforgiven, 2018, bronze

(edition of 10), 8 1/4 x 4 x 5 in., available through Raoul Gallery (Santa Barbara)

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HARPER HENRY (b. 1966), Fire and Ice, 2019, oil on canvas, 36 x 24 in., private collection

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(CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT) MICHELLE V. KONDOS (b. 1965), Dust Storm, 2020, oil on linen, 36 x 48 in., private collection

BARBARA HACK (b. 1957), Mr. Darcy, 2021, oil on

canvas, 14 x 11 in., private collection

JOHANNE MANGI (b. 1953), Ready for Work, 2022,

oil on linen, 18 x 14 in., available through the artist

RANCE JONES (b. 1965), Gearin’ Up,

2018, watercolor on paper, 21 x 28 in., Forum Gallery (New York City)

CAROLYN LINDSEY

(b. 1960), Family Farm, 2020, oil on canvas, 16 x 24 in., available through the artist

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CARRIE NYGREN (b. 1955), Not a Penalty, 2020, oil on canvas, 32 x 42 in., private collection

JEFF MATHISON (b. 1950), Facing the Storm, 2016, watercolor on paper, 12 x 16 in., Rhoneymeade Arboretum & Sculpture Garden (Centre Hall, Pennsylvania)

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(CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT) RICHARD SNEARY (b. 1940), Ninety-Six, 2020, watercolor on paper, 14 x 10 in., private collection

DARIA SOLAR (b. 1976), The

Bond, 2022, oil on canvas, 27 1/2 x 23 1/2 in., available through the artist

KATHRYN

MAPES TURNER (b. 1971), Fullest Potential, 2021, conté drawing on tea-stained paper, 7 1/2 x 7 1/2 in., private collection

TAMMY TAPPAN (b. 1968), Piaffe, 2018, bronze

(edition of 18), 18 x 18 x 7 in., available through the artist and also Celebration of Fine Art (Scottsdale)

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CECY TURNER (b. 1947), Tag-Along, 2022, watercolor on paper, 12 x 17 in., private collection

BREN SIBILSKY (b. 1963), Determined Partners, 2021, clay for bronze, 16 x 35 x 9 in., available through the artist’s Atelier of Sculpture and Art (Algoma, Wisconsin)

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BY LOUISE NICHOLSON

H I S T O R I C M A S T E R S

RAPHAEL

ART STAR FOR THE AGES

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poet, art theorist, archaeologist, and writer of tracts on ancient art. And Raphael designed hundreds of compositions and objects for other painters, sculptors, and specialized craftsmen — from silver trays to bronze roundels. He was actively involved in Rome’s nascent printmaking industry, yet he made time to paint portraits of his friends. He was a deft negotiator, honing his management skills to run his multidisciplinary workshops, and also a charismatic CEO for several popes’ ambitious programs while always retaining artistic control.

Having risen like Icarus to become the preeminent artist in Rome and famous across Europe, with a palazzo and high-flying lifestyle to match, Raphael died from a fever on Good Friday, April 6, 1520 — an exit perhaps hastened by burnout. He lay in state for a day, instantly all but sanctified. The next day he became the first artist to be buried in Rome’s ancient Pantheon. Pope Leo X was devastated by his death; the art world across Europe went into shock. But, as Matthias Wivel, the National Gallery’s curator of 16th-century

rom April 9 through July 31, all art routes will lead to London’s National Gallery, where an exhibition of 90 works by Raphael, including 30 paintings, will span the Renaissance master’s brief yet astonishingly high-achieving and wide-ranging life.

Born in 1483, he died in 1520 at just 37, having changed Western art forever. His influence endures today.

This year’s show is rare in being devoted to Raphael’s whole life and to his entire production, focusing tightly on him alone with little deviation toward influencers, colleagues, or pupils. The aim is for maximum penetration into his works, minimum dilution. All of the exhibits are by Raphael himself, even if some are designs that would then be executed by others. This exceptional gathering of star pieces is possible thanks to the rich Raphael holdings in Britain, often acquired by 19th-century collectors (the National Gallery itself owns 10 paintings) and remarkable loans from around the world. Originally planned to mark the 500th anniversary of the artist’s death in 2020, it will now be part of the joy of emerging from the global pandemic.

To people who think Raphael was all about the Vatican’s stanze frescoes, the Sistine Chapel tapestries, and lots of exquisite paintings of the Virgin and Child, this show will be a revelation. He was also an architect,

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The Crucified Christ with the Virgin Mary, Saints, and Angels (“The Mond Crucifixion”) c. 1502–03, oil on poplar, 111 1/2 x 65 7/8 in., National Gallery, London, NG3943

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The Madonna and Child with St. John the Baptist and St. Nicholas of Bari (“The Ansidei Madonna”), 1505, oil on poplar, 85 1/3 x 58 1/8 in., National Gallery, London

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The Virgin and Child (“The Tempi Madonna”), c. 1507–08, oil on poplar, 29 2/3 x 20 1/3 in., Alte Pinakothek, Munich, WAF 79, photo: Scala, Florence

Although the father died when Raphael was just 11, he had already imbued the boy with his own assimilation of the prominent and fashionable artist Pietro Perugino. It shines out from the National Gallery’s own Mond Crucifixion. Painted at the behest of a wool merchantturned-banker around 1502–03, when Raphael was not yet 20, it is one of three altarpieces he made for the nearby town of Città di Castello.

Very unusually, it has kept its original frame.

Records for these commissions and payments show that Raphael was already taking charge of multi-artist projects. Using his fine-tuned drawing and compositional skills — and his growing management abilities — he directed, delegated, and collaborated with the team of artists while maintaining tight artistic control. Additionally, Raphael’s reputation was already so high that he was supplying drawings to other artists who could then, as it were, paint by numbers. The London exhibition is rich in these inventive, detailed, and finely finished drawings made throughout his life. It is in Raphael’s drawings, each one carefully worked, that his genius is truly available to enjoy.

By 1503, records confirm that Raphael was living in Perugia, home city to his muse Perugino. (One frustrating thing about Raphael is that we have little documentation of his life and just two authenticated letters.) Yet by then Perugino was spending most of his time in Florence, so it seems Raphael took center stage in Perugia and, immersed in his muse’s style and technique, won five altarpiece commissions there.

One, the Ansidei Madonna, is in the show and was clearly inspired not only by Perugino, but also by another gifted local, Luca Signorelli.

Italian paintings, explains, this “youthful, protean figure” had already “established himself in the collective consciousness with a presence that would become quintessential.”

AN EARLY START Let’s look at how this lightning-fast life ran its course. The boy Raffaello Santi, or Sanzio, was born in Urbino, a beautiful walled city (then and now) in Italy’s northeastern Marche region, renowned for its lively court of sophisticated intellectual and art patronage led by the ruling Montefeltro family. (Fully aware of his exceptional roots, Raphael would sign himself “da Urbino” throughout his life.) He began training quite young under his father, Giovanni Santi, a leading court painter and poet who informed himself about artists across Europe. From his father Raphael learned art skills and developed intellectual curiosity that he would later enrich through friends such as the author, courtier, and diplomat Baldassare Castiglione.

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FLORENCE, THEN ROME Meanwhile, Florence beckoned. Following some visits per imparare (to learn), Raphael finally moved there to absorb fully the best artistic talent by copying the greats, above all works by Leonardo and Michelangelo. In addition to red chalk, he also took up the Florentine habit of using pen and ink — the medium he chose in 1505–06 for copying the Mona Lisa, one of the earliest known copies of Leonardo’s painting and a key loan to the exhibition from the Louvre. Raphael’s style and method soon transformed, as we can see in the small-scale paintings he made in Florence, which almost all depict the Virgin and Child.

An especially fine example is the Tempi Madonna (1507–08): here the Virgin holds the child to her cheek, absorbed by her love for him, while Christ seems to have a melancholic knowledge about his inevitable future. Like most of Raphael’s Florence commissions, this was made for private enjoyment rather than for a public church space.

But it was when Raphael put this subject into the Florentine tondo format (a

The Virgin and Child with the Infant St. John the Baptist (“The Alba Madonna”), c. 1509–11, oil on wood transferred to canvas, 37 1/4 in. diameter, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1937.1.24

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Pope Julius II, 1511, oil on poplar, 42 3/4 x 31/4 in., National Gallery, London

circular painting or relief ) that he made it his own and created some of his most intimate investigations of the mother and child relationship, which would reach their culmination when he lived in Rome. One of his finest is The Alba Madonna, made in Rome c. 1509–11. Now in Washington’s National Gallery of Art, it is reunited for this exhibition with a highly finished preparatory study for the Virgin lent by the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille, France. In the painting, the Virgin calmly accepts her role while the Child gazes at St. John, the divine trio set in a misty-blue landscape suffused by a light that binds humanity with nature. It is a cosmic harmony expounded by the School of Athens philosophers Raphael studied, and whom he painted in one of the Vatican stanze. Plenty of artists explore the problems of human anxiety, but in his virgin and child paintings Raphael captures positive human aspiration, what Wivel calls “the better angels of our nature.” He says, “It’s like listening to Mozart. He makes us feel better, imagine what we could be. We need this always but especially now. Across the world, he speaks out to something fundamental.”

The call to Rome came in 1508 from the greatest patron of the age, Pope Julius II. It would lead to one of art’s most dynamic patron-artist relationships, and the blueprint for European ruler-patrons. Raphael F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M

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packed his bags, and even abandoned at least one commission. As the exhibition’s guest curators David Ekserdjian and Tom Henry write in the accompanying catalogue, “Raphael’s move to Rome was to transform his status as an artist.” Aged 25, he would soon be an art superstar and impresario.

Julius had come to the papal throne in 1503 and quickly set about realizing his vision for the papal enclave in the heart of Rome. In Vatican City he began rebuilding the massive basilica of St. Peter, while in the Vatican Palace he commissioned Michelangelo to decorate the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling and brought in a bevy of artists to decorate the papal apartments (stanze), which he moved up one floor. The first time Raphael is firmly recorded in Rome is January 13, 1509, being paid for already completing some major frescoes in the Stanza della Segnatura (1508–11), Julius’s private library. In the ensuing five centuries’ worth of debate over who designed which stanze panels and who painted what in which order, Ekserdjian and Henry confirm one thing is clear: there were lots of drawings and lots of changes, so ideas evolved during planning and execution. For this particular stanza’s Disputa wall panel, for instance, a drawing in the exhibition has an altar and host, which were absent in Raphael’s first design.

Raphael threw himself into the stanze project, rising to a new level of artistic and intellectual achievement, and also a new level of management control over the design process and delegation of work to his artists. Meanwhile, he gained a major lay patron in Rome: Agostino Chigi from Siena, who was the pope’s banker. For him he designed the Chigi Chapel in Santa Maria della Pace in the city center, broadening his scope to include architecture, sculpture, and bronze work. Chigi then commissioned a second chapel (where he would be buried) for the same church, as well as additions and decorations for the Chigi villa (today the Villa Farnesina). Raphael was now the true Renaissance designer of complete multimedia works, and the show devotes a whole section to his Chigi commissions — plans, drawings, and some bronzes. For many scholars, the stanze and the Chigi works mark the moment “Raphael became Raphael.”

In 1511, Raphael captured his remarkable papal patron with a newly grown silver beard in a portrait of tenderness, quiet power, and elderly introspection and weariness, the dominant burgundy and rich green giving it a Venetian warmth perhaps introduced to Rome by Sebastiano del Piombo. Two years later Julius died, his stanze incomplete.

Leo X (ruled 1513–21), from the Medici family of Florence, succeeded and Raphael deftly began a second remarkable patron-artist relationship. The stanze work continued. A magnificent and huge (at least 18 sheets of paper glued together) charcoal and ink preparatory cartoon for the Stanza di Eliodoro (1511–14) shows the young Moses shielding his eyes from the burning bush where God has appeared. This, or a secondary cartoon, would have been used to transfer the design to the wet fresco plaster. As is often the case with preparatory drawings, it is more expressive than the final fresco; importantly, Moses’s new vigor and bulk shows that Raphael had definitely studied Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling, unveiled on October 30, 1512.

Under Leo X’s patronage, Raphael built up a portfolio of highprofile, high-intensity jobs. First, he embarked on the next stanze, the

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Moses before the Burning Bush (for the Stanza di Eliodoro), 1514, charcoal and black chalk with heightening on paper, pricked for transfer, 54 1/3 x 55 in., Museo e Real Bosco Capodimonte, Naples, 86653

St. Cecilia with Saints Paul, John the Evangelist, Augustine, and Mary Magdalene, c. 1515–16, oil on panel, transferred onto canvas, 93 3/4 x 59 in., Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna, 577

Study for “The Alba Madonna,” c. 1509–11, verso/back, red chalk and stylus indentation on paper, 16 2/3 x 11 in., Palais des Beaux-Arts, Lille, PL456/7, photo: Jean-Marie Dautel

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Self-Portrait with Giulio Romano, 1519–20, oil on canvas, 39 x 32 2/3 in., Musée du Louvre, Paris, 614, photo © RMN-Grand Palais / Gérard Blot. Raphael appears at left.

and how detailed, specific, and complete his information had to be for the Flemish weavers to realize his intentions.

Stanza dell’Incendio (1514–17). Then, upon Bramante’s death in 1514, Leo appointed him to succeed as architect for the vast St. Peter’s project, including its multimedia interior. The following year, the pope again chose Raphael — this time to oversee the city’s thousands of antiques, the underlying aim being to find stone to re-use for the basilica. And in 1516–17 Leo had him start decorating the extensive loggia next to the Vatican Palace with a program of stucco, sculptures, and frescos of biblical stories.

Then there were the tapestries, a difficult project in a medium new to Raphael. Leo commissioned these monumental decorations to be hung on the lower parts of the Sistine Chapel walls on special occasions, the subjects to be St. Peter (the first pope) and St. Paul (the early philosopher-teacher). Raphael rose to the challenge with his characteristic total engagement and genius for invention, creating new and bold compositions that would become some of his most influential.

The designs were woven — in reverse, of course — 900 miles away in Brussels, where Pieter van Aelst ran Europe’s leading tapestry workshop. Seven of the 10 full-scale painted cartoons survive, permanently displayed at the Victoria and Albert Museum, a short ride from the National Gallery. A full set of the tapestries is kept in the Pinacoteca Vaticana, and it is one of these, the last in the cycle, that appears in the show — St. Paul Preaching at Athens. Beside it, a 3-D digital facsimile of its cartoon confirms Raphael’s triumph in composition at this scale, F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M

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MANY INTERESTS Outside papal patronage, Raphael painted some of Renaissance Europe’s finest portraits, including his friend Castiglione, and also revived the painting of altarpieces to advertise his skills to the public. Another loan coup is the sublime altarpiece of St. Cecilia painted for the church of San Giovanni in Monte in Bologna. Entirely painted by Raphael — no workshop assistants’ hands here — the patron saint of music lets drop her portable organ to listen enraptured to heavenly music. To cope with this colossal workload, Raphael upgraded his workshop into a professional company, giving management roles to capable artists, of whom Giulio Romano would emerge as the principal assistant and artistic heir.

Raphael’s innate curiosity seems unbounded.

He studied, drew, became passionate about Rome’s ancient buildings and, with Castiglione, wrote the Lettera di Raffaello a Leone X pleading for the pope to conserve Italy’s architectural heritage. He also explored printmaking, a medium well developed in northern Europe and now burgeoning in Rome. He saw (and borrowed ideas from) Albrecht Dürer’s pioneering prints and marketing entrepreneurship. The two artists even corresponded: Dürer added the date 1515 to Raphael’s gift of a study in red chalk for the Stanza dell’Incendio.

By collaborating with the printmaker Marcantonio Raimondi, Raphael spread his own influence and fame. His style became so well known that he rarely signed these prints, whether they reproduced his paintings and details in them, or his unused drawings and designs, or even new inventions such as his influential Massacre of the Innocents. After his death, prints were as important as artists’ copies for disseminating his work. Indeed, until the advent of photography, Raphael was the most published artist in Western art.

Taking the National Gallery’s phenomenal holdings as its base, this year’s Raphael exhibition pours fresh light on the extraordinary story of this almost-too-gifted Renaissance man. It makes you yearn to hop on a plane to Italy, or at least to London.

Information: nationalgallery.org.uk. And in Ohio, the Columbus Museum of Art (columbusmuseum.org) will soon present an exhibition focused on one aspect of Raphael’s genius, The Power of Renaissance Images: The Dresden Tapestries and Their Impact. On view July 15–October 30, it highlights six tapestries, on loan from Dresden’s Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, from a set woven directly from Raphael’s Vatican cartoons after his death.

LOUISE NICHOLSON is an art historian, lecturer, and writer who lived in New York and explored the U.S. for 19 years. Now living in England, she frequently visits the U.S. and India.

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BY ALLISON MALAFRONTE

S T U D I O S WHERE CREATIVITY HAPPENS

JOHN F. PETO’S PAST, PRESENT & FUTURE

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lthough his trompe l’oeil (“trick the eye”) still life paintings are owned by major museums nationwide, and although famous talents like Jasper Johns and Roy Lichtenstein have paid homage to him in their own work, John F. Peto (1854–1907) has remained relatively obscure in accounts of American art history. Perhaps that’s due, at least in part, to the fact that he avoided both the spotlight and chasing commercial trends, preferring instead the family time, artistic reflection, and spiritual replenishment he enjoyed at his year-round cottage home in Island Heights, New Jersey.

Another factor contributing to Peto’s posthumous obscurity was the wrongful attribution of many of his paintings to William M. Harnett (1848–1892), whom Peto befriended while they were studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Peto admired Harnett’s style and emulated it for a short time, which accounts for some of the confusion. But from 1949 onward, thanks to careful research by the art critic Alfred V. Frankenstein (1906–1981) and the perseverance of Peto’s only child, Helen, Peto’s name was eventually reassigned to dozens of his paintings. Since then, experts have come to acknowledge him as one of the leaders of late 19th-century America’s trompe l’oeil movement.

Peto’s legacy has been further enhanced by the preservation efforts of a team formed by Peter and Cynthia Kellogg, who until recently owned his Island Heights home.

In 2010, after a five-year, $2 million renovation, this group opened the home to the public as the John F. Peto Studio Museum. And in September 2020, the Kelloggs donated the building to the museum’s board, which is now growing the permanent collection while planning exhibitions, events, and projects that highlight Peto’s significance.

BEGINNINGS John Frederick Peto was born in Philadelphia, the first of five children in a tight-knit family with whom he always remained close. By the age of 22, he had a studio on

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Peto’s painting The Letters, n.d., oil on canvas, 12 x 9 3/4 in.

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The Queen Anne-style structure was built in 1889–91 and underwent an extensive renovation in 2005–10. More than 60 paint samples (interior and exterior) were collected to determine its original colors.

Chestnut Street near various friends and family members involved in the arts. Peto was also a musician and played the cornet in the Philadelphia Fire Department Band and at church meetings. At 23 he enrolled at the prestigious Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, just a year after Thomas Eakins was (controversially) forced to leave his post as director.

Though Peto stayed only a year, he continued submitting his paintings to the academy’s high-profile annual exhibitions.

In 1889, when he was 35, Peto and his new wife, Christine, moved to Island Heights, a summer resort town on the Jersey coast he had gotten to know while visiting two aunts there regularly. Records reveal that Peto originally moved to “The Heights” in order to open a photography studio — following in the highly regarded footsteps of an uncle — before F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M

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(LEFT) John F. Peto’s Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia (left) and Study for Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia hang above a vintage chair, heirloom blue-and-white platter, and antique side table.

(ABOVE) Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia (n.d., oil on board,

11 1/2 x 17 1/2 in.) is on loan to the museum from a private collection.

turning his full attention to painting. He designed and built a house at the corner of Cedar and Westray Avenues, then constructed a studio addition a few years later. This is where Peto spent most of the rest of his life, painting and taking photographs surrounded by the artworks and objects that inspired him, as well as his beloved wife, daughter, and two aunts.

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Peto’s painting Brass Stewing Kettle, Candlestick, and Gravy Boat (c. 1890) hangs above the original candlestick, gravy boat, and kettle that appear in it.

While Peto basked in his sanctuary, friends and colleagues such as Harnett — who often tried, and failed, to persuade Peto to travel with him — were enjoying commercial success in Philadelphia, New York City, and other major markets. Peto earned a modest income by selling his paintings to tourists or bartering them with local businesses, sometimes supplementing it by playing his cornet for the Island Heights Methodist Camp Meeting or taking in summer boarders. After his premature death from a kidney condition at 53, Christine remained in their home, taking in boarders. Later Helen — followed by her daughter Joy Peto Smiley — ran the house as a bed and breakfast. Ultimately, three generations of Petos lived there for more than a century until Joy’s passing in 2002.

STEPPING BACK IN TIME Today, when visitors arrive at Peto’s two-and-a-half-story Victorian house — located just north of the Toms River where it flows into Barnegat Bay — its rusty red and ochre façade offers few hints of the rich artistic heritage inside. During its extensive renovation (2005–10), every effort was made to return both the exterior and interior to their appearance in 1907, the year Peto died. Using family photographs, archeology, and materials analysis techniques such as paint microscopy, the team replaced older shingles with cedar shakes, demolished several add-ons, restored the original rooflines and shutters, and reconstructed the front porch.

Walking through the front door is like stepping back in time.

Throughout the 12 rooms on public view are pieces of period furniture, many original to this house; some of the actual books, candlesticks, vases, and ephemera that appear in various Peto paintings; his palette, brushes, and jars of medium; and examples from his collection of artworks and artifacts. Even the bright aqua wall color Peto selected has been replicated by analyzing a paint sample retrieved from the ceiling and then searching through more than 60 paint mixtures to find an exact match.

Then there’s the art itself, displayed throughout the first floor, which encompasses the studio, parlor, office, and kitchen. The museum’s growing collection contains 22 original Peto paintings obtained through purchase, loan, or gift. Among them are seven recent acquisitions from

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(TOP) The museum owns this photograph of Peto seated in his studio, c. 1890.

(ABOVE) Peto’s studio was re-created based on the black-and-white photo above.

Visitors can inspect his original easel, palette, jar of brushes, and bottles of medium.

a board member and from a local whose ancestors knew Peto. Various stages of the artist’s career are represented, with most emphasis on his trompe l’oeils and less on the landscapes. Rounding out the collection are several paintings by his Philadelphia-based contemporaries — such as Franklin D. Briscoe, Fred Wagner, and Emily Perkins — as well as blackand-white family photographs.

Because no photographs of the five upstairs bedrooms survive, the restoration team felt free to convert them into gallery space, where visitors now enjoy rotating exhibitions throughout the year. When asked how he selects these projects’ themes and participating artists, the museum’s “Arts & Artifacts Curator,” Harry Bower, explains that he is not limited strictly to trompe l’oeil or New Jersey. “We show both M A R C H / A P R I L

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(LEFT) The parlor’s furniture, rug, stained-glass windows, and artifacts are all original to the house. On the mantle, the portraits of Peto and his wife, Christine, were painted by Emily Perkins in 1903. The larger portrait of Christine hanging on the far wall was painted by Fred Wagner in 1913.

(RIGHT) Five former bedrooms were converted into gallery

space for the museum’s year-round schedule of exhibitions that showcase artists past and present.

regionally and nationally known artists working in genres that complement Peto’s lifelong interests, subject matter, and style,” he says.

“Recent exhibitions have included Thomas Eakins in New Jersey, The Women of Peto, and Trompe l’oeil Meets Photo Realism.”

A retired art educator as well as a fiber artist, Bower has lived in Island Heights for more than 40 years and knew Joy Peto Smiley when she ran the bed and breakfast during the 1970s. He became further interested in 1983 while exploring the National Gallery of Art’s groundbreaking exhibition Important Information Inside: The Art of John F. Peto and the Idea of Still-Life Painting in Nineteenth-Century America.

After Joy’s passing in 2002, Bower was invited to join the house’s steering committee. Two decades later he remains enthralled with Peto’s art. “He was inspired by the everyday,” Bower notes. “When you look around his home and at the paintings themselves, you see many common objects: a good book, a good pipe, and a good beer quite often show up. Sometimes I look at the bold, bright colors in his paintings and think, ‘Was he influenced by those colors because he surrounded himself with them in his home, or was it the other way around?’”

WHERE AN ARTIST CREATES REVEALS WHY Perhaps it was both. Peto may have been drawn to commonplace objects, but his penchant for vibrant, uncommon colors is evident in both the objects he chose to depict and in the palette in which he decorated his home. “Walking through its rooms offers an opportunity to experience the inspiration that Peto found every day in the profusion of lush yellows, blues, reds, and greens,” writes Valerie A. Balint in her Guide to Historic Artists’ Homes & Studios (2020). She continues, “His paintings on display reveal that the same colors often appear in his work. The combination of original furnishings, objects, and artwork against this vibrant backdrop offers unique insight into Peto’s creative process and means of expression.”

Much of Peto’s later work was marked by expressive color, along with his usual attention to light, texture, and precise technique. It also became increasingly introspective and somber: ruminations on objects with history, meaning, and a story to tell, be they weathered books, newspaper clippings, rusty violins, or official documents that once belonged to his father. (A picture-frame gilder and dealer of fire-department supplies, Peto’s father was an enduring influence throughout the artist’s life.)

Viewing artists’ work in the context of where they created it is always enlightening. The John F. Peto Studio Museum is one of 48 sites currently in the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s network of Historic Artists’ Homes and Studios (HAHS), and it’s well worth the journey to coastal New Jersey — or any other location cited in Balint’s useful HAHS guide — to experience them in person.

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“Art is the result of both a physical and mental practice, but what is displayed in a museum represents only the results,” Balint observes.

“Artists’ homes and studios help us imagine the form of this rigorous process by allowing us to see where art was actually made…. [T]hey reveal not only an artist’s process, but what in the environment inspired it. The working spaces, the objects the artists chose to surround themselves with, the books they read, and the views they regarded beyond their studio walls all inform what they created.”

LOOKING FORWARD The John F. Peto Studio Museum has some exciting expansion and exhibition plans in the works.

In 2020 its board formed a committee to explore options for restoring an abandoned green cottage on the property that had once been home to Peto’s aunts. Board president Linda Baxter notes, “Both a local engineer and architect concluded that the building was in such poor condition that it could not realistically be saved. So we commissioned architect George Thompson to design a new building of the same size, shape, and design, adding a new section in keeping with the character of the surrounding residential community.” Planning and fundraising are now underway for this facility, which will be used for additional exhibition space, children’s art classes, lectures, and events.

Construction is scheduled to start next year.

As for exhibitions, the year ahead promises to be busy. Up first is Preserving Creative Spaces: Photographs of Historic Artists’ Homes & Studios (April 2–June 5), organized by Valerie A. Balint, who manages HAHS and will give a lecture on May 13. From mid-June through mid-September the museum will present an exhibition focused on the renowned New Jerseybased still life painter Gary T. Erbe (b. 1944), curated by the artist himself and Portico New York, Inc. Being planned thereafter is Harry Bower’s next curatorial effort, Craft as Art in New Jersey.

Through these and other offerings, the John F. Peto Studio Museum epitomizes how the inspiring energy baked into an artist’s workplace can converge with enthusiastic community members to invent something far more exciting than a mere memorial: a place to experience and transmit human creativity from the past into the future.

Information: petomuseum.org; artistshomes.org ALLISON MALAFRONTE is a writer and editor based in New Jersey. All photos © Frank Parisi.

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BY DANIEL GRANT

MANAGE YOUR ART ON THE CLOUD

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al Stringer, a 64-year-old retired information technology manager who lives in Orlando, once had a perfectly straightforward way to track the particulars of the roughly 190 paintings he owns: the artist’s name, title, date, medium, size, sale receipt, photographs — that kind of stuff. He would simply place the relevant papers in a manila envelope and attach it with a wire hanger to the back of the picture frame, so that everything was together.

“Of course, in that scenario,” Stringer admits, “if a painting were to burn in a fire, so would all of the information about it.” But what actually prompted him to better organize the documentation was his loan of a painting to a friend — or was it to a relative? He cannot recall anymore, and it doesn’t matter anyway: the painting never came back because he forgot he had loaned it at all.

So, in 2014, Stringer became a client of Artwork Archive, a cloud-based collections management firm founded in 2010 that allows him to upload images, receipts, and other information about each artwork, as well as to track its location. Now if a fire or — more likely in Florida — a hurricane damages his house, he may still lose the paintings, but their details won’t disappear, enabling him to file an insurance claim more easily.

It is still very common for art collectors — perhaps including you, dear reader — to rely on memory, or file cards, or maybe an Excel spreadsheet. Fortunately, database systems for collections management have been growing in number over the past 20 years. Some are explicitly designed for commercial galleries and museums, including ArtBase, EmbARK, and FileMaker Pro. But a newer class has targeted artists and private collectors who generally have

fewer objects but still need to track what they own, where those items are located, and what may be out on loan to museums (in the case of collectors) or consigned to galleries (artists).

The databases created for galleries and museums are “complicated and difficult for most collectors to use; their learning curve is steep,” warns Suzanne Quigley, owner of Art & Artifact Services, a collections management company. Most of those professional systems offer additional fields and nomenclature specific to the needs of their customers, such as pages devoted

Hal Stringer (left) and his partner, Kevin Miller, lend their artworks regularly. Here they celebrate the opening of the exhibition Captured in Paint: Central Florida in Art at the Albin Polasek Museum & Sculpture Gardens (Winter Park).

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to invoicing (in U.S. dollars and foreign currencies), accounts payable/receivable, consignment agreements, encryption, and pie charts identifying bestselling artists and best-buying clients.

The systems created for artists and collectors have pared down that complexity, and the firms that offer them also assist subscribers in uploading information and sorting it in ways that facilitate quick usage. Most significantly, clients can access their accounts through an app on their smartphones, permitting them to see — anytime, anywhere — what they own while freeing them from their desktop computers.

WHAT’S INCLUDED Every artwork, especially those sold on the secondary market, has a paper trail. Documentation includes the artist’s name, the object’s title and creation year, size and medium, subject (landscape, for instance), when it was purchased by the current owner (preferably documented with the sale receipt), sale history (e.g., auction records), and history of ownership (“provenance”).

Also useful are photographs of the artwork (ideally showing its front and back, framed and unframed, and the artist’s signature); sculptures should be shot from various sides, including the base.

The papers may also include an insurance appraisal (best updated periodically as part of a fine art policy), an exhibition history (museum showings add prestige and value to artworks), “literature” (such as reviews, catalogues, and books about the artist/artwork), records of any conservation treatments, and finally, condition reports (ideally prepared upon purchase, when loaned to a museum, and when returned from a museum).

Claire Marmion, chief executive officer and founder of the collections management and insurance claims adjusting company Haven Art Group, recalls a fire at the home of Long Island collectors that destroyed a painting and much of its information. “The couple had bought the work at The European Fine Art Fair in Maastricht [Netherlands] during the 1980s,” she explains. “We had to ask the Belgian dealers they bought it from, ‘Do you remember an American couple that bought a painting from you 35 years ago?’ We had to try to establish they had clear title to it, and that there were F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M

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Inputting data into Artsystems’ A5 software is straightforward and intuitive.

no liens on it.” All of that research required time and money, which inevitably cut into the net settlement the owners ultimately received.

“The value of a collection is in the information” about it, declares Doug Milford, managing partner of the New York City-based collections management database Artsystems, which was founded in 1989 and now has 800 users worldwide, most of them American private collectors. If an artwork is lost, stolen, damaged, or destroyed, assembling all of that information after the fact may be difficult. If it proves impossible, the object’s value may vanish into thin air. By contrast, it costs Artsystems clients only $99 per month (for collections with fewer than 1,000 objects) or $199 per month (more than 1,000) to ensure that never happens.

This and other databases have swelled in popularity, partly because many people who advise collectors have recommended them and partly because the growing number and intensity of natural disasters associated with climate change have focused owners on the urgent need to store documentation far away from their art.

Additionally, ever more collectors enjoy their holdings in numerous locations, often making it difficult to remember where a particular piece is.

“I have one client with part of his collection in New York City, other works in the Hamptons and Aspen, and still others in a fine art storage facility,” says Mary Pontillo, national fine arts practice leader of DeWitt Stern, an insurance brokerage. She advises her clients to consider using one of these databases because “knowing what’s where can be a challenge, and listing items on a spreadsheet or Google Doc becomes unruly.”

For other collectors, having images and data available on an app is all about access. Marmion notes that many of her clients “own smart appliances, where everything is on an app.” She says, “They already know who’s at the door and what their house’s temperature is, so naturally they also want to look at their artwork when it’s not nearby. They like to show what

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they own to their friends or to other collectors. You go to art fairs, which are very social activities, and everyone is looking at each other’s phones.”

Artwork Archive makes it easy to analyze your data and run summary reports.

COSTS Just like physical storage units, these databases charge a monthly fee that may range widely based on the number of your artworks, the number of devices with which you plan to access the database, and your number of users. For instance, Artlogic charges $80 per month for single users whose collections have 1,500 or fewer pieces and who seek access through one iPad and one iPhone. That fee rises to $240 for two or more users (the collector plus a family member or collections manager) with more than 1,500 objects; they then can access the database through as many as five devices. Artwork Archive offers similar degrees of functionality for less, charging between $8 and $24 per month.

Joe Elliott, Artlogic’s director of sales and marketing, notes that 80 percent of its clients employ a collections manager, curator, or adviser; it is

those people who actually assemble the information on each artwork, scanning papers and photographs to upload to the database. Matthew Lucash, a freelance collections manager in Philadelphia, claims that “it takes weeks” to gather and upload all of the information needed for a collection of 300 objects. His fee for such a project would range between $3,000 and $5,000.

Alternatively, the database firms themselves offer an additional service that will locate and upload subscribers’ collection-related data.

As for capacity, Eric Kahan — president and founder of Collector Systems, which has been in business since 2003 — notes that his company charges $85 per month for “10 gigabytes of storage space, which is enough for most collectors.” Its $150 monthly fee addresses “the needs of certain ultra-high net

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Collector Systems accounts can be called up on a range of devices.

worth collectors who look to segregate their data. For instance, they may have several collections, such as art, cars, and jewelry, and they want their art consultant to see only the art collection.” Collector Systems has approximately 1,000 clients, half of whom are individuals, with the remainder either businesses or institutions. It offers free training and supervision to clients but charges for “registration” and “data conversion” — that is, researching and inputting information and images. That service usually starts at $1,000.

Sometimes collectors pay nothing for a database subscription because their advisers, collection managers, or insurers already have an account with that database provider and just add on their collector clients. Now at the insurance brokerage HUB International, Grace Aretsky was, until recently, a fine art account manager for DeWitt Stern, which works exclusively with Collector Systems. She notes that such firms are happy to pay for uploading the information: “It’s a tiny expense to incur if it helps us manage the collection.” Another service that firms like these offer is risk assessment, especially for clients who have valuable artworks in several homes.

“We may tell a collector that their concentration of value in one area is too great,” Aretsky explains. “They should consider moving artworks from one location to another.”

The benefits of a cloud-based collections management database seem clear, but not everyone is sold on the idea. William Fleischer, a principal at the insurance company Bernard Fleischer & Sons, says collectors do need to organize information about their holdings, but a less expensive strategy is “just to put it all on a thumb drive and keep it somewhere else.” He adds that it is important to “have a paper backup, too.” Louis Newman, director of modernism at LewAllen Galleries in Santa Fe, says that many clients “utilize an Excel spreadsheet to document their collections. It is straightforward and no one has to be trained on a new system.” He adds that these systems are “usually maintained by a personal or business assistant.”

Art & Artifact Services’ Suzanne Quigley notes how many database companies have come into existence in recent years: “Will they all survive?” she wonders. “And if one goes belly-up, what happens to the collectors’ data?”

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database subscribers “vet the contract with an outside IT professional. You want to know who owns the data — you or the company? Can you extract the data at any point? And if you terminate your relationship with a company, is the data terminated as well?” (Note: the best firms guarantee that your data belongs to you and only you.)

WHERE IS THE CLOUD ANYWAY? To be clear, “cloud-based” refers to data and applications that are administered from multiple servers in a variety of locations, as opposed to pre-cloud software that ran on just one physical server in one location. Today, if a server goes down due to hardware failure or fire, others in the cloud are ready to respond immediately. And if data or computing demands suddenly surge, multiple servers adapt to share the workload and provide good response time — referred to as “scalability.”

Nothing, of course, is 100 percent secure. Hacking does exist, requiring these service providers to patch and upgrade their software continually (and still they may get hacked). “If Visa can’t avoid hackers, I doubt these small collection management cloud companies can avoid them,” Quigley notes. Therefore, she and others who advise collectors recommend that owners regularly back up their own documentation, not only in the cloud, but also on a thumb drive and on paper stored in a safe deposit box. (Fortunately, most of these providers make downloading extremely easy.)

After all, one can never be too careful in these unusual times.

Information: artworkarchive.com, artandartifactservices.com, havenartgroup. com, artsystems.com, dewittstern.com, artlogic.net, collectorsystems.com, hubinter national.com, artinsurancenow.com DANIEL GRANT is a contributing writer to Fine Art Connoisseur, as well as the author of The Business of Being an Artist and several other books on career development for artists.

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DAVID GULLEY AND KENNETH J. PAUL, JR. David Gulley

Kenneth J. Paul, Jr.

(ABOVE RIGHT) RAYMOND (RAY) BONILLA (b. 1983), Across

the

Street

from

Mom and Dad’s, 2019, oil on panel, 12 x 24 in.

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David Gulley and Kenneth J. Paul, Jr. live in downtown Indianapolis, where David works in real estate and Ken in the airline industry. Their personal journeys to becoming art collectors were very different but now have converged to bring them much joy.

David enjoyed making art in his youth. At home his parents displayed artworks, yet the act of collecting did not become “real” until he accompanied his father to an auction around the age of 12. Previously David had not considered where art comes from, and so perhaps it’s not surprising that he started acquiring it while earning a B.F.A. degree in interior design alongside ceramists, printmakers, and other creative types. He fondly recalls “dipping into my grocery money to buy art from my equally poor friends,” pieces he still cherishes.

By contrast, Ken grew up admiring “catalogues of beautiful things” but bought only reproductions (like prints) to furnish his homes. He discovered the joy of owning original art when he met David, and their first purchase together was a painting by Melinda Spear-Huff from an Indianapolis gallery. David remembers stopping by to pay, only to learn that Ken had already bought it for him as a gift. Fortunately, such moments of mental telepathy happen to them every so often.

David and Ken expanded their collecting journey together by visiting galleries first in Indianapolis, then throughout Indiana, which has a rich artistic heritage. (The best-known “Hoosier” art comes from scenic Brown County, where a colony of landscape painters formed M A R C H / A P R I L

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in the 19th century and remains active.) The couple started meeting not only dealers but also the artists themselves, which, Ken says, “makes all the difference in our appreciation of their works.” Today they regularly attend Indiana Heritage Arts, the juried sale of traditional and representational Indiana art held every June at the Brown County Art Gallery. In 2017 they learned about this event from their friends Libby and Dan Whipple (whose collection was profiled in Fine Art Connoisseur last year), and now they underwrite one of its cash awards.

Eventually Ken and David started looking outside Indiana, mainly via the Internet, through which anyone can explore almost the entire art world. They are especially fond of Instagram, where they have F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M

AMY WERNTZ (b. 1979), Blue Scarf, 2020, oil on panel, 8 x 10 in.

noticed and met many artists, among them Juan Jr. Ramirez of Chicago and Rob Lange and Megan Aline of Charleston. “Now when we look at their art, we think of their friendship, too,” David notes. He adds that, contrary to what some say, artists do appreciate collectors’ feedback. He recalls the time TJ Cunningham was painting a study of a barn; David and Ken suggested he add animals to convey movement, an adjustment that looked great and led them to buy it.

Today the couple acquire art from various sources including artists, galleries, fairs, and festivals. A current favorite is Indianapolis’s Vining Gallery, opened recently by artist Justin Vining, and last November David explored the lively scene in Santa Fe and particularly enjoyed Meyer Gallery. Most of us have a story about something we did just before the pandemic started; for David, it was his visit with friends to California’s LA Art Show, where they F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M

admired the stands of Arcadia Contemporary and Gallery 1261.

Among the Indiana artists represented in the collection now are Mark Burkett, David Cunningham, Karen Graeser, Tim Greatbatch, Kathy Jo Houghton, Allen Hutton, Gabriel Lehman, Cheryl Anne Lorance, Jeanne McLeish, Kate Orr, Kyle Ragsdale, J. Rodney Reveal, Benny Sanders, Jerry Smith, Rita Spalding, Melinda Spear-Huff, Curt Stanfield, Stephanie Paige Thomson, Justin Vining, and Libby Whipple.

As for artists based elsewhere, they include Megan Aline, Chris Bell, Ray Bonilla, Richie Carter, Josh Clare, TJ Cunningham, Gareth Jones, David Kassan, Daniel Keys, Shawn Krueger, Kyle Ma, Stephen Mackey, Dean Mitchell, Josie Morway, Renato Muccillo, Grant Perry, Juan Jr. Ramirez, Tad Retz, Carlo Russo, Scott Ruthven, Brett Scheifflee, Sarah Sedwick, Phillip Singer, Caleb Stoltsfus, Adam

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Vinson, Steven S. Walker, Amy Werntz, Katie Whipple, and Kenneth Yarus.

David and Ken love all of their works, and though their eyes have “evolved in terms of quality,” they have not sold anything: “We bought those earlier works for a reason then and they are now part of our collecting history.” (A few items have been presented as gifts to relatives and friends.) As for so many collectors, their chief challenge is finding wall space and protecting those walls from direct sunlight. One closet, they admit, contains several paintings for which they don’t (yet) have enough room.

Pondering the state of realism today, David and Ken note that ever more artists are “finding beauty in everyday things — forms and shapes that are not conventionally beautiful.” Surely this is a sign of the field’s maturation, and we all look forward to seeing how the trend unfolds in the years ahead.

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PAMELA AND DAVID HORNIK CONRAD EGYIR (b. 1989), Unctions of the Luminaries, 2019, oil on canvas, 84 x 60 in., photo: John Wilson White, courtesy Jessica Silverman Gallery (San Francisco)

David Hornik

Pamela Hornik

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Pamela and David Hornik are based in Palo Alto, where David is a tech venture capitalist and Pamela serves on the boards of Stanford University’s Cantor Arts Center and Anderson Collection, as well as the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive. David is a commissioner of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and they both are founding members of the Institute of Contemporary Art, San Francisco.

Although they both enjoyed art in childhood and later explored New York City’s museums while living there, it wasn’t until Pamela began volunteering at the Cantor that they got “hooked” on art. For the last 15 years, they have collected contemporary figurative art and are truly enjoying the blossoming of this field, which they continue to advance through their own acquisitions, loans, and donations.

David recalls that they “began by spending weekends visiting galleries, museums, and studios. We had four small children, so we all learned to love art together. Now the kids are in their 20s, but remain passionate (and opinionated!) about art.”

Pamela says their first “real” purchase was a painting of a paper doll dress

by Michelle D’Angelo, which they spotted while vacationing on Cape Cod. “Before then,” she laughs, “it

never occurred to us that you could buy and live with art. When we returned to California, the gallery confirmed it could be shipped, so David bought it as an anniversary present for me. And Pandora’s box was opened.”

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working around the world, including Derrick Adams, Wesaam AlBadry, Alvin Armstrong, Felipe Baeza, Sophie Barber, Rafael Baron, Katherine Bernhardt, Dawoud Bey, Amoako Boafo, Liu Bolin, Linus Borgo, André Butzer, Chiachio & Giannone, Jordan Casteel, Serge Attukwei Clottey, Alex F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M

JOEL DANIEL PHILLIPS (b. 1989), Billy #5 and Billy’s Orchid, 2016, charcoal and graphite on paper, 85 x 37 in. (each sheet)

Bradley Cohen, Maia Cruz Palileo, Michelle D’Angelo, Erica Deeman, Loïc Devaux, Sam Durant, Conrad Egyir, Amir H. Fallah, Alex Foxton, Louis Fratino, Andy Freeberg, Lee Friedlander, Hope Gangloff, Rico Gatson, Andrea Geyer, Jerrell Gibbs, Nash Glynn, Georgina Gratrix, Jenna Gribbon, Chase Hall, Ania Hobson, David Hockney, Nick Hoover, Pieter Hugo, Chantal Joffe, Hayv Kahraman, Jon Key, Vojtĕch Kovařík, Jesse Krimes, Lilian Martinez, Gisela McDaniel, Yue Minjun, Zanele Muholi, Dominic Musa, Rebecca Ness, Latefa Noorzai, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Catherine Opie, Eamon Ore-Giron, Julian Pace, Zéh Palito, Sun-kyo Park, Ebony G. Patterson, Elizabeth Peyton, Joel Daniel Phillips, Jiab Prachakul, Sirli Raitma, Paula Rego, Deborah Roberts, Ruben Natal-San Miguel, Claudette Schreuders, Tschabalala Self, Amy Sherald, Jake Shiner, Lorna Simpson, John Sonsini, Billy Sullivan, Josephine Taylor, Hank Willis Thomas, Lava Thomas, Mickalene Thomas, Ray Turner, Nicola Tyson, Raelis Vasquez, Ron Veasey, Grace Weaver, Kehinde Wiley, London Williams, Sung Jik Yang, Wanxin Zhang, Christina Zimpel, and Cayce Zavaglia.

The Horniks say they “don’t have a particular approach to collecting — just buying what we love. We spend lots of time in museums discovering astounding artists we’ve never heard of,” and they also buy from galleries, fairs, and charity auctions. But the leading place the Horniks see art is Instagram: Pamela admits to being an IG addict who posts “tons” of art and admires more daily. There she has built a community, “a really lovely group of fellow art fanatics” who share their latest crushes. They include Danny First, Eric Green, Josef Vascovitz, and the owners of Panama’s Roux Collection, and they particularly enjoy gathering in person at fairs and openings.

David says he and Pamela “most enjoy buying directly from amazing young artists just getting their start. Nothing makes us happier than helping them reach the audiences they deserve. For example, we first saw the life-sized F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M

graphite portraits by Joel Daniel Phillips at a San Francisco fair, and we swiftly acquired one.

He was then living in the gritty Tenderloin district, where he got to know the local residents.

The resulting portraits of his neighbors are astoundingly lifelike and deeply empathetic.

When the opportunity arose to support a book about these artworks, we jumped at the chance.

We remain huge fans and friends of Joel, and recently we were lucky to acquire one of the paintings he is making now.”

Clearly the Horniks drill deep, but they also cast the net widely. David notes, “Our artworks reflect a real sense of a broad, inclusive world — a world in which women, people of color, LGBTQ+ folks have a voice that is celebrated.” Pamela continues, “Our collection’s overarching characteristic is that it embraces the personhood of the artists and their subjects.

Much of the art speaks to questions of citizenship, equality, and justice.”

The Horniks appreciate what “an incredible luxury it is to be able to afford more art than our walls can hold.” They go on, “What

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we love about art is its ability to engage, inspire, and excite. But that is hard for artworks to do while in storage. That’s why we regularly lend to museums, where many more people will see them. And we have been honored to donate to institutions we love as well.”

It’s also worth mentioning that the Horniks are devoted to their dog, Teddy, so Pamela has built a collection of dog art created by several of the artists listed above, as well as John Hiltunen, Susumu Kamijo, Alex Katz, Jeff Koons, Dana Schutz, David Shrigley, and David Surman. She has long been “obsessed” with Amoako Boafo’s painting of a man in a red suit holding a Jack Russell terrier. Thanks to Instagram, she developed a friendship with this Ghana-born, Viennabased artist, ultimately leading the Horniks to support his first solo museum exhibition at San Francisco’s Museum of the African Diaspora.

They don’t own that beloved painting, but say that “seeing it at the museum alongside Amoako was the next best thing.” This kind of personal connection is yet another great by-product of collecting, bringing joy to everyone involved.

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CHRISTIAN KEESEE Christian Keesee

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Christian Keesee moves frequently among his art-filled homes and offices in New York City, Oklahoma City, and Green Mountain Falls, Colorado.

Though he enjoys his work as an investor and chairman of Oklahoma’s Kirkpatrick Bank, it is philanthropy that lies closer to his heart, particularly in the arts, education, animal well-being, conservation, and preservation. “But at the very center of everything I do is arts education,” Chris explains. “I truly believe that if you can draw, you have a certain kind of power over your life. Plus, as they say, ‘There is no harm in a little beauty.’”

Chris grew up in Oklahoma City, where he “came by art naturally because it was discussed by my family over dinner — not just how it’s made, but also collecting and how museums work.” His mother, Joan Kirkpatrick, majored in art at college, and her own mother had minored in it, then cofounded the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. His father, Konrad, had shifted from real estate to become an international representative for Christie’s, so it’s unsurprising that the family’s first stop when visiting a new place was its art museum.

Chris is grateful to have inherited many fine and decorative artworks through his family, which helps explain why roughly a third of his collection is by historical artists including Cassatt, Picasso, and Henri. (He has complemented them with his own purchases of Fragonard, Bierstadt, Boudin, Fantin-Latour, Gris, and others.) He is quick to note how deeply he has been inspired by his involvement with the Frick Collection, Tate Americas Foundation, and Metropolitan

KEHINDE WILEY (b. 1977), Passing/Posing: Mugshot, 2004, oil, enamel, and acrylic on canvas, 60 x 48 in. © 2022 Kehinde Wiley / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

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JULIAN OPIE (b. 1958), Faime Walking (installed at Green Box Arts), 2016, LED double-sided monolith, 77 1/8 x 44 x 6 in., photo: Tom Kimmell, Colorado Springs © 2022 Julian Opie / Design and Artists Copyright Society (DACS), London

Museum of Art; it was Tate, for example, that familiarized him with British artists now in his collection, such as Julian Opie.

In 1989 Chris followed in his grandparents’ footsteps by founding another Oklahoma City institution, the Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center, where he remains chairman. He recently raised $30 million to construct its new building, which opened in February 2020, just in time to close for the pandemic. That unveiling, he observes, “brought my collecting full circle — from my family’s original interest in art and education to supporting new artists as they come along.” Indeed, the Center’s next show (opening March 24) highlights the Kansas-born, New York-based nature artist John Newsom (b. 1970), who has not yet had the museum retrospective he deserves.

Chris’s own collecting journey started at 13, when he spent $50 on a print of an elegant blonde lounging on a settee, originally painted

by Louis Icart (1888–1950). “She reminded me of my father’s mother, who had died young,” he explains. “And I still own it.” While at Pepperdine University, he bought a Peter Max painting, but art did not become a serious interest until he moved to Manhattan in his late 20s. There his father introduced him to the major galleries and auctioneers. He also hired Julie Maguire, who still manages his collection as well as the Brett F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M

Weston Archive, established by that great photographer (1911–1993) and acquired by Chris in 1996.

During those early New York years, Chris formed two groups of artworks. One was contemporary Canadian imagery, primarily of nature, for which he explored much of that scenic country. The other was “non-conformist” Soviet artists, who had been pushing communism’s constraints; he still relishes that scene’s excitement, as well as the thrill when his grandmother Eleanor invited the great Houston collector Dominique de Menil to see those unfamiliar pieces.

Today Chris’s collection ranges widely in style and format. Among the living artists represented are Cat Balco, Vanessa Beecroft, Dan Colen, Michael Craig-Martin, Jose Dávila, Melvin Edwards, Olafur Eliasson, Christaan Felber, Zipora Fried, Robert Gober, Christopher Makos, Julian Opie, Tomás Saraceno, Richard Serra, Judith Turner, and James Turrell. He says his acquisitions are “based on both instincts and aesthetics, and also more practical matters like the money being available and having the time to focus. There is no particular method, but I buy mainly through the leading auction houses, galleries, and fairs.”

It’s always difficult for a passionate collector to choose a favorite, but when probed, Chris gamely cites his first major purchase, Richard

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Avedon’s famous 1955 photograph Dovima with Elephants, which he calls an “icon of the intersection of fashion and art.” It hangs in his bedroom, not far from another favorite, a small painting by Jean-Honoré Fragonard.

In 2006, Chris co-founded the Green Box Arts Festival near Colorado Springs with his partner, the choreographer Larry Keigwin.

Much of its activity focuses on dance, but its grounds feature important installations such as the Opie monolith illustrated here. This June they will unveil a sky space commissioned from James Turrell. Chris notes that he and Larry recently deaccessioned almost 100 artworks; they subsequently rotated in other pieces and the new look “feels very good.”

Chris says he does not know all of “his” artists personally, and sometimes even worries that meeting them might affect his view of their art. Fortunately, he loved visiting Dan Colen’s studio in upstate New York and now they are friendly. When he spotted Christaan Felber’s work in The New York Times Magazine, he promptly “commissioned him to photograph my son, Blake, and me. Later he shot our houses in Oklahoma and New York. Relationships develop over time,” he concludes, “and that’s as it should be.”

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C O L L E C T O R P R O F I L E

ROBERT C. KENNEDY Robert C. Kennedy

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Robert C. Kennedy of Norfolk, Virginia, has assembled a significant collection of representational paintings, most of them figurative. He recalls, “From an early age, I was attracted to beauty in the visual and decorative arts. My older sister, Bev, was an amateur artist and showed me how to paint a few leaves on one of her still life scenes, but I never developed the skill further. Being from a small town in the rural Midwest, I did not even visit an art museum until I was in college.” (That was the great Art Institute of Chicago, which he still admires.)

Robert says that during college he started buying art posters, then visiting local art shows. Those experiences refined his eye, which surely also benefitted from the professional career he ultimately pursued — choosing the visual content and writing historical commentary for free educational websites that featured cartoons by Thomas Nast and other late 19th-century illustrators.

It was in the late 1990s that the Internet awakened Robert to the classical realism movement taking shape then. His first major purchase in this field was Fall, a still life painted in 2002 by Juliette Aristides, who has authored several bestselling books including Classical Painting Atelier (2008). That transformative acquisition was made at the influential San Francisco gallery founded and run by John Pence for 44 years, a place Robert rightly remembers as “extraordinary.”

Since then, he has purchased mainly from galleries and only occasionally from artists. He laughs, “Perhaps the most dramatic example of the latter

TERRY STRICKLAND (b. 1960), Voice of the Tiger, 2010, oil on canvas over panel, 33 x 32 in.

was the Norwegian artist Cornelia Hernes’s breathtakingly gorgeous Midsummer Night, which she shipped to me directly from Sweden, where she was living at the time.”

Today the contemporary artists represented in Kennedy’s collection are Kari Lise Alexander, Erin Anderson, Angela Andrieux, Juliette Aristides, Stephen Bauman, Jura Bedic, Mia Bergeron, Laurie Lee M A R C H / A P R I L

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Brom, Scott Burdick, Ali Cavanaugh, Helen Cooper, Philippe Couture, Tiffany Dae, Hunter Eddy, Eric Gibbons, Jessica Gordon, Cornelia Hernes, Solomon Isekeije, Michelle Jader, Karin Jurick, Steven J. Levin, Lacey Lewis, Susan Lyon, Anne May, Jennifer McChristian, John McClarey, Winona Nelson, Teresa Oaxaca, Tae Park, Pam Poncé, Carolyn Pyfrom, Megan Robison, John Sagartz, Travis F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M

Schlaht, Richard Thomas Scott, Sara Scribner, Kerry Brooks Simmons, June Stratton, Terry Strickland, Peter Van Dyke, Susan Werby, Katie Wilson, Anna Wypych, Ryan Wurmser, R. Scott Young, Yuzhu Zheng, and Ni Zhu. Through two decades’ experience, Robert has arrived at some helpful guidelines for collecting from which all of us can learn. He advises, “When buying what you love, make sure it will be an enduring love, not a fleeting infatuation. That’s why it’s a good idea to make decisions with your head as well as your heart.”

The key criteria are, in his own words: • The artwork should be skillfully created (design, composition, technique, etc.).

• It should compel and sustain your attention upon purchase and then over the years, eliciting a sense of transcendence beyond the mundane, even if its subject is ordinary.

• It should, in some aspect, be distinctive.

For example, even it’s a straightforward portrait, something about it should distinguish it from similar portraits.

• It should integrate into your collection, or a subset of it, without duplicating anything — or have the potential to launch a new subset.

Your overall goal should be creating a collection that has harmony without uniformity, variety without dissonance.

Robert’s directive that an artwork “compel” attention is epitomized by his somewhat circuitous acquisition of Terry Strickland’s painting Voice of the Tiger. “About a dozen years ago, I saw it on the Robert Lange Studios website and was captivated. Disappointingly, it was marked ‘sold,’ yet I couldn’t get it out of my mind. Checking back a week later, I was pleasantly surprised to learn it was now available because the other clients had backed out (to their later regret).

Ever since, Voice of the Tiger has been a central piece in my collection. Its acquisition also solidified my realization that I was developing a substantial collection and prodded more serious thinking about that fact.”

Robert’s passion is further reflected by the fact that, in recent years, he has been e-mailing artists “once their work reaches my home to express my gratitude for their talent.” Not surprisingly, they are usually charmed and respond kindly. Just for example, the Chinese-born, U.S.based artist Ni Zhu replied with video clips of Ngawang, the Tibetan monk represented in her F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M

painting. “Closer to home,” Robert adds, “I volunteer to oversee monthly art shows at a library and have developed friendships with several of the exhibiting artists.”

Looking forward, Robert is deeply encouraged by “the proliferation of high-quality ateliers and workshops, including some for young people. My teenaged niece, Erin, is a talented artist, so this is a particularly hopeful development for the field and for my family.”

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CORNELIA HERNES (b. 1979), Midsummer Night [after Arthur Rackham’s Fair Helena], 2013, oil on canvas, 35 1/3 x 23 2/3 in.

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C O L L E C T O R P R O F I L E

SAMUEL AND ALICE PERALTA Samuel Peralta

Alice Peralta

Samuel and Alice Peralta were born in the Philippines but have long resided in Toronto, where Samuel has made his name as a physicist, entrepreneur, film producer, and editor of the Future Chronicles anthologies of speculative fiction. Samuel has always loved art, as his mother, Rosario Bitanga, was their homeland’s leading female abstractionist, and his father, Jesus Peralta, a critic and playwright.

Samuel and Alice met in university and soon began attending his mother’s exhibitions.

Samuel’s first acquisition was a gouache landscape by Mauro “Malang” Santos, bought during his first year of university with part of his scholarship funds. “Amazingly, and fortunately,” he laughs, “my parents were proud of me and made up the amount I had spent.” Samuel

and Alice’s first serious purchase together was a Chagall lithograph they spotted at London’s Sims Reed Gallery; he recalls that “it opened our eyes to the possibility of curating a collection, rather than amassing individual pieces.” (The couple went on to buy several Matisse prints from Sims Reed.)

Over time the Peraltas have come to appreciate art of all kinds — realist, abstract, contemporary, historical — yet their collection focuses on “realist art with a strong narrative or symbolic subtext.” They say they are “always looking for pieces that sing to us. We ask each other, ‘Do we love it? Will we regret not acquiring it?’”

Luckily, metropolitan Toronto is home to superb galleries, auctions, fairs, and a lively arts community, and the Peraltas especially admire their

fellow collector Jeanne Banka, a fixture on the scene “who feels personal joy when she sees us go home with a new piece, and whose enthusiasm is infectious.” The couple also have strong connections to comparable sources in Montreal, Vancouver, New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, and naturally they follow developments via the Internet and magazines.

The Peraltas are quick to praise sources that have been particularly helpful. They include John Kinsella and Gisella Giacalone at Mira Godard Gallery (Toronto), Ineke Zigrossi at Abbozzo Gallery (Toronto), Kipling Gallery (Woodbridge, Ontario), Montreal’s Galerie Cosner and Galerie Claude Lafitte, KP Projects (Los Angeles), Alpha 137 Gallery (New York City), the Canadian auctioneers Cowley & Abbott, Heffels, and

HEATHER HORTON (b. 1974), Kerri Aware, 2011, oil on canvas, 18 x 36 in.

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VIKTORIA SAVENKOVA (b. 1979), Oceans, 2021, oil on wood, 15 2/5 x 21 3/4 in.

Waddingtons, and the German auctioneers Auctionata and Bassenge.

The Peraltas underscore their deep respect for the Chicago-based curator/artist Didi Menendez, who in 2010 published Samuel’s Sonnets from the Labrador (a project inspired by David Blackwood’s etchings). Menendez has introduced them to many opportunities at 33 Contemporary Gallery (Chicago), Arcadia Contemporary (New York City), RJD Gallery (Michigan), and Wisconsin’s Wausau Museum of Contemporary Art. Today the Peralta Collection includes works by Paulina Aubey, Ivonne Bess, David Blackwood, Cora Brittan, Erica Elan Ciganek, Franco Cimitan, Philip Craig, Carlos Fentanes, Tom Forrestall, Barbara Fox, Grant Gilsdorf, Maryam Gohar, Sarah Jane Gorlitz, Brianna Lee Hardie, Mercedes Helnwein, Heather Horton, Fabian Jean, Max Johnson, Susannah Martin, Didi Menendez, Janice Moorhead, Agnieszka Nienartowicz, Jamie Nye, Amy Ordoveza, Karen Pasieka, Christopher Pratt, Sean William Randall, Nadine Robbins, Paul Roorda, Viktoria Savenkova, Christina Sealey, Greg Shafley, Jeremy Smith, Jessica Smith, Allen Smutylo, Don Stinson, Takao Tamabe, Aron Wiesenfeld, and Olexander Wlasenko.

The Peraltas treasure their friendships with many of these artists. For example, SamF I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M

uel says, “We first came across Heather Horton through Abbozzo Gallery, and we immediately fell in love with her works, not only because she uses minimalist patches of color to approximate perception, but also because there’s always a story embedded in the image.”

Illustrated here is her Kerri Aware, which Samuel describes as “a study of peaceful sleep among rumpled sheets that resemble clouds.

But the work’s title, and the baseball bat in the background, provide that narrative tension that characterizes our collection. Over time we have acquired a score of Heather’s paintings, so that the story of her life has populated our walls and shelves. We have come to know her as much from the art as from our many conversations.”

In 2019, Samuel and Alice began collecting sculpture, starting with such historical Canadian realists as Bill McElcheran. They have shifted toward the magical realism of Abraham Anghik Ruben, an Inuit sculptor who has created a personal mythology inspired by early contact between the Inuit and Vikings, as well as Ralph Ingleton, Ricky Jaw, Johnny Kilabuk, and Lea Vivot.

In general, the Peraltas are delighted to observe the recent swing of art’s pendulum back toward realism and technical mastery. “Realist

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art,” Samuel notes, “is becoming more indicative of its societal context, making it a truer mirror of the world. It is also incorporating techniques of non-representation — such as pure color, line, form, juxtaposition, and randomness — that give it a more vibrant vocabulary.”

Having written about the future, it makes sense that Samuel created the Lunar Codex project (lunarcodex.com) in 2020. Its mission is to send digitized archives — of art (predominantly contemporary realism), books, poetry, music, and film — in time capsules that will remain on the Moon. This content is stored on shielded memory cards, or etched on nickel wafers, and can endure for millennia. The first two capsules will launch this summer through NASA’s Artemis program and will contain art from the Bennett Prize, California Art Club, Art Renewal Center, PoetsArtists magazine, and 33 Contemporary. (Among the content will be the Moon’s first cache of women artists, film, or music.) The third capsule will launch via SpaceX next year; after it arrives, more than 7,000 contemporary creative artists from around the world will be represented on the Moon.

Such an initiative epitomizes the Peraltas’ belief that “the best is yet to come,” something surely everyone hopes is true.

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BY JANE BARTON

BEHINDTHESCENES

THE NEW GALLERY WALL: IT’S PERSONAL

T

he phrase “staring at my four walls” has gained a whole new meaning for most of us during the past two years.

Many people are spending more time at home, especially if they have the advantage of being able to work remotely.

What we want to see every day and — in a world of constant Zoom meetings — what we want others to see behind us, feels increasingly important.

Whether you’re a serious collector with more art than you can ever hope to display, an appreciator with a small group of pieces you’ve collected with love, or a remote worker who just wants something beyond the ubiquitous bookshelf background, please read on for a

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brief history of “gallery walls” and some advice from experts to help find your own gallery wall style.

AN EVOLUTION What we now call gallery walls can be traced back centuries to the tradition of salon-style hangs. From the 17th century onward, the

WILLIAM POWELL FRITH (1819–1909), The Private View at the Royal Academy, 1881, 1883, oil on canvas, 40 1/2 x 77 in., private collection

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(ABOVE) Huniford Design Studio complemented the bold coloring and patterns of Matisse's Jazz prints with the chairs’ rich brown leather upholstery and an unusual mix of striped and floral-printed fabrics. Photo: Matthew Williams (LEFT) Still more of Matisse’s Jazz prints have been stacked on the adjacent wall.

Photo: Matthew Williams

Crowded as its walls were, the Salon was also crowded with admirers, and soon its style of dense display took off internationally. For example, this approach was embraced by London’s Royal Academy of Arts, where William Powell Frith created the painting illustrated here showing a crowd of elite art lovers admiring the packed walls of the annual Summer Exhibition.

Today, exhibition organizers worldwide still use the salon (or gallery wall) style. Whichever term you use, this approach is alive and well, especially for plein air painting events when a lot of new works are produced all at once. Many collectors today have the same problem experienced in Paris long ago: lots of art and not enough wall space to hang it. This challenge can be tackled in different ways depending on the type of art you want to display.

Paris Salon, a juried show at the Louvre featuring thousands of artworks, accepted way too many pieces, so its organizers literally filled the walls, with almost no regard for styles and subjects, in order to maximize the number that could be shown.

The most prestigious artists got their works hung at eye level (“on the line”), a perk that allowed their creations to be seen better and thus more likely purchased. Lesser-known painters were given whatever “real estate” remained: either very high up (“skied” because they were closer to the sky) or very close to the floor. Artists often relied on impressive frames to focus visitors’ attention and to distinguish their works from the others hanging all around them.

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GRID/STACKING If you have a group of works by one artist, or a mix by multiple artists in the same genre, you can design your gallery wall in a grid layout with uniform frames, sizes, and colors. For extra impact, you can even hang the pictures so they continue around the corner of the wall or onto the next closest wall. James Huniford of New York City’s Huniford Design Studio says he has “always liked salon walls because they look more interesting and pique viewers’ curiosity.” Pointing to his two adjacent walls of prints by Henri Matisse (both walls are illustrated here), he explains, “I wanted to present Matisse’s Jazz series in a way that was modern and approachable, almost like an installation. The way I’ve stacked them was inspired by Donald Judd’s stacked boxes.”

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(ABOVE) The gallery wall designed by Misha West (Modern Nest); photo: Kate Nelle

(RIGHT) Emily

Joffrion’s wall is an eclectic mix of art she has created and pieces she has collected. It’s a modern story that describes who she is. Photo: @loandbehold.atl

FREEFORM A more eclectic gallery wall can have an organic arrangement featuring a variety of original artworks, prints, photographs, and even objects. The common denominator for this approach is the collector, not the framing, coloring, medium, or imagery.

I created my own “freeform” gallery wall when I moved into a new home and wanted to surround myself with paintings I made and others’ paintings I love, objects from my travels, and good memories. I pulled more than 70 items out of moving boxes and storage, then started hanging them from the middle, radiating out. Only about 35 pieces made the first cut, but now I keep adding more over time so that the wall grows organically. The pieces don’t align in any way; they just fit together in a random puzzle style.

A key advantage to this approach is its ability to change from time to time — it is truly a living, fluid thing. I am fortunate that I can regularly hire a local handyman with a very tall ladder and lots of patience.

I call him when I’m ready to add another row or to replace some

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pieces. As soon as they arrive, visitors to my home immediately begin identifying their favorites, asking questions, and (ideally) commenting on the artworks. Since this approach isn’t precious, it is easy to take some risks, like adding an old license plate from a favorite vehicle. The wall’s content can include anything that tells your story.

A successful gallery wall inspires viewers’ curiosity, sometimes in unexpected ways. Recently my daughter uploaded to her dating M A R C H / A P R I L

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The author’s own “freeform” gallery wall

app profile a photo of herself standing before my gallery wall. She was really surprised by what a great icebreaker it proved to be. When potential dates reached out to chat, they often started by asking about the wall. They seemed genuinely curious about its artworks and even requested tips on how to hang their own collections. My daughter feels her photo may have made it easier to engage because they had something unique to respond to. Moreover, it was easy for her to respond because she had grown up with many of those paintings.

Importantly, the pieces on your gallery wall also communicate with one another; the way they are arranged makes the eye bounce from one to another in surprisingly specific ways. Each work is viewed in relation to those near it, and the gallery wall as a whole communicates something personal, even insightful, about the collector.

PERSONAL BRANDING Emily Joffrion runs her own consultancy in Atlanta creating powerful brands for businesses and other organizations. When she injured her leg and was confined to a couch for weeks, she used that time to think about her own story as “told” on her gallery wall. Joffrion explains, “The act of being grounded, looking up at this wall, slowing down to really look at these experiences in my life, satisfied something inside that has been very hungry. I realized that it wasn’t hungry for more, it F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M

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was hungry for depth of meaning.… By taking the time to reflect and surround myself with the things I care about, to curate my life experience, to curate my home, it’s an act of editing. Your life is a work of art.”

Ultimately, Joffrion sees walls as collectors’ brands, telling their stories. In planning your wall, we should ask, “What’s my message?

What am I trying to communicate with my wall and in my space?”

CELEBRATING THEMES & PAYING TRIBUTE Misha West, a designer at Modern Nest in Scottsdale, created a gallery wall for a couple who had recently moved to Arizona from the East Coast and wanted an installation that would celebrate their new life in the Southwest. West used a subtle, limited palette that reflects the desert’s coloring and gathered photographs and prints that depict cacti, horses, mountains, and other subjects related to why her clients love this region. The theme of the resulting wall could readily be called “Pride of Place.”

Just last spring, I was commissioned to create 15 paintings for a gallery wall at Senna House, a new, upscale hotel in Scottsdale. The hotel is part of Hilton’s Curio Collection, which aims to make each of its properties feel unique and specific to its setting. Senna House stands on the former site of a legendary restaurant, Don & Charlie’s, which was renowned for both its ribs and its extensive collection of

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Former Don & Charlie’s owner Don Carson stands with this article’s author, Jane Barton, before the tribute gallery wall at Senna House in Scottsdale. Barton created all 15 of its paintings.

Whether you’re contemplating a gallery wall for your home or your business, try to showcase your own passions. For instance, Dala Al-Fuwaires suggests that business owners who love to travel should reflect that interest, even if their business isn’t a travel agency.

She encourages corporate clients to think of the gallery wall as an experience “mixing and matching pieces that were collected over time.” She says, “They work together because they are telling a story. The art can be funky, classic, modern … posters, original oils, masks, wooden plaques. Experiment, keep it fluid, and make substitutions as the collection evolves.”

In this regard, Al-Fuwaires maintains that designers are often “experience managers” too.

sports memorabilia. Tyler Kent, principal of Opwest Partners, the firm that developed the hotel, wanted to honor its heritage with a gallery wall of my paintings inspired by that memorabilia — including basketball jerseys, signed baseballs, and more — as well as by iconic Arizona landscapes and desert plants. Now my 15 new paintings fill a wall constructed of sleek wooden planks that evoke the vanished restaurant’s wood-paneled walls in a thoroughly modern way.

Though my artworks focus on specific themes, the design team — including framer Faye Urlacher of Art Studio 101 and designer Dala AlFuwaires of House of Form — chose a range of frames that would help each piece stand out while uniting all 15 within the hotel’s overall style (dubbed “authentic desert modern”). I think of the result as a “tribute wall,” something that works as a large narrative and a focal point. It sparks conversation among patrons, allowing them to stop and relate to the space in a memorable way, even as it honors the past. As in a home, personal touches in a hotel or other public-facing business can make all the difference between a venue that feels generic and somewhere you want to linger.

THE BUSINESS OF GALLERY WALLS Feeling overwhelmed? Fortunately, the gallery wall phenomenon has given rise to businesses that do it all for you, acting as designer, curator, and framer. For example, Emily Joffrion hired Kate Byars, founder of Lo & Behold, who describes her work as a process of discovering and unearthing her client’s personal narrative. This can entail examining a 10-year backlog of items, culling and then choosing which pieces to display.

Byars cautions, “A wall is overdone if there is no editing at all. It’s underdone if there’s nothing personal. There is an art to framing and an art to creating the right scale. The wall should spark conversation.”

She adds that sometimes clients don’t actually recognize their own story until the wall is hung. Then comes that “aha” moment — when the story unfolds about what and who matters to them.

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FRAMING Whatever you are trying to communicate on a gallery wall, framing choices help set the tone.

Trends have changed over time, of course. At the Paris Salon, art was displayed in ornately carved gilt frames that generally resembled each other. Faye Urlacher encourages clients to try “coloring outside the lines” by mixing frame profiles and materials. Recently more clients have been saying they want to keep their existing artworks but update how they are displayed, so she selects new mats and frames to complement the clients’ new or renovated interiors. This can be considered a recycling project of sorts, giving new life to old art.

THE FUTURE OF GALLERY WALLS So, what’s the future of gallery walls? Maybe someday collectors will choose to safely store their artworks, photographs, and memorabilia in climate-controlled warehouses and just project rotating digital displays of those items on their walls at home. In that scenario, changing the displays will be as easy as pressing a button or uttering a voice command: “Alexa, I want the holiday gallery wall for my party tonight,” or, “Alexa, show my East Coast Zoom meeting wall this morning.” In fact, someday you might not even need to own the paintings projected; perhaps you will hear yourself telling Alexa, “My book club is coming tonight, so project a collection of Georgia O’Keeffe paintings.”

What’s on your gallery wall, if you have one at your home or office? If you don’t have one yet, what do you want your wall to say about you, your artistic preferences, or your space? What matters most is that — gridded or freeform, edited or excessive, themed or random — it feels just right for you. The choice is yours.

Information: huniford.com, emilyjoffrion.com, marketbymodernnest.com, opwestpartners.com, hilton.com/en/hotels/phxttqq-senna-house-scottsdale, houseofform.com, artstudio-101.com, loandbeholdhome.com JANE BARTON is an award-winning plein air and studio artist based in Arizona. Travel has taken her, and her paints, around the world; she never leaves home without her sketchbook and now teaches other artists about travel journaling. For more, visit janebartonstudio.com or @janebartonstudio.

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LOTS TO SEE & DO

ART IN THE WEST

CONSULTING NATURE AND ART HISTORY EDWARDS, COLORADO March 21–April 11 claggettrey.com

Though best known in the art world as curator emeritus at the Denver Art Museum, Timothy James Standring has never stopped painting since he took classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the late 1960s. Now Claggett/Rey Gallery, located in Edwards, Colorado, just 14 miles west of Vail, is presenting Standring’s most recent watercolors and oils in an exhibition he has titled The Long Road.

Over the past decade, the artist has focused primarily on small-scale watercolors, paying gimlet-eyed attention to the poetics this medium can express. Aspiring to sustain a balance between close observation and exuberant flourishes, he is as sensitive to his materials and techniques as he is to his recurring themes, mostly the magnificent scenery of the Rocky Mountains region. Not surprisingly for an art historian, Standring draws inspiration

from a variety of past masters, ranging from Anthony Van Dyck, John Linnell, and Edgar Degas to John Singer Sargent, Joaquín Sorolla, and Andrew Wyeth.

The recent works reflect his preference for painting with the brush’s belly rather than its point, which results in images that resemble dry brush oils on unprepared paper.

In some ways they also resemble sheets produced by Genoa’s Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (1609–1664), a master Standring has studied for years. Such heavily pigmented watercolors turn his compositions into poetic statements that sustain a life of their own.

RECONSIDERING CHARLIE RUSSELL

It only took 80 years, but was well worth the wait. A biography of the great artist-chronicler of the American West, Charles Marion Russell (1864–1926), was drafted by his widow, Nancy Cooper Russell, yet she never completed it before her death in 1940. Now two Russell experts have carefully edited her text and added sidebars, photographs, and artworks that helpfully amplify her themes.

The resulting 206-page book — Back-Tracking in Memory: The Life of Charles M. Russell, Artist: Recollections, Reflections and Personal Perspectives — was published for the C.M. M A R C H / A P R I L

JAMES

STANDRING

(b.

1950),

Rocky

watercolor on Sennelier 140 cold press paper, 4 x 9 in.

They also convey Standring’s meditative observation of the setting, which can pose a challenge while using a medium as fickle as watercolors.

For this and other reasons, Standring has recently tried painting in oils, inspired by his fellow Colorado artists Daniel Sprick, Quang Ho, and Jane Jones; all have shown him how the two mediums can complement each other.

Russell Museum by Sweetgrass Books and is distributed by Farcountry Press.

Those patient co-editors are Brian W. Dippie, a retired history professor (University of Victoria, British Columbia) who began publishing on Russell in 1973, and Thomas A. Petrie, the former board chair of the C.M. Russell Museum and the longtime Denver Art Museum trustee who helped establish its Petrie Institute of Western American Art. The fruit of their labors now offers insights that complement two works Nancy Russell did manage to publish in her lifetime: Trails Plowed Under (a 1927 collection of her late husband’s rangeland stories) and Good Medicine (a 1930 compilation of his illustrated letters).

BACK-TRACKING IN MEMORY: THE LIFE OF CHARLES M. RUSSELL farcountrypress.com Available now

F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M

TIMOTHY

Mountains Skyline from Kent, Denver, 25 December 2021,

Artist Charles M. Russell (1864–1926)

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dinner, awards luncheon, live auction, exhibition opening, and “luck of the draw” sale.

Then, from March 27 through May 8, unsold works will be available for the public to view and to purchase at fixed prices. Tickets for the opening events are available now via the museum’s website.

Located along the San Antonio River Walk, the Briscoe Western Art Museum’s main building was constructed in the 1930s as a public library. After an extensive renovation, the museum opened in 2013, and a branch of the public library still operates on the first floor. The institution is named in honor of the late Texas Governor Dolph Briscoe, Jr., and his wife, Janey Slaughter Briscoe, who envisioned a museum that would share the story of Western heritage and the remarkable people behind that story.

LUCKY 21 SAN ANTONIO briscoemuseum.org March 25–May 8

The Briscoe Western Art Museum will soon host its much-anticipated Night of Artists, a selling exhibition featuring nearly 300 new paintings, sculptures, and mixed media works by more than 75 leading Western artists. The participants include C. Michael Dudash, Teresa Elliott, Martin Grelle, George Hallmark, Donna Howell-Sickles, Joshua LaRock, Howard Post, Paul Rhymer, Gladys Roldán-de-Moras, Billy Schenck, and Michael Ome Untiedt. Their works encompass landscapes, wildlife, portraiture, and scenes of Native Americans and cowboys.

During the festive opening weekend (March 25–26), the museum will offer a range of events including a collectors summit, preview

BARRY EISENACH (b. 1952), Cat of Many Names, 2021, bronze (edition of 8), 17 x 7 x 10 in.

KWANI POVI WINDER (b. 1989), Enlightened, 2021, oil and

GO, COWGIRLS

metal leaf on linen board, 28 x 20 in.

WICKENBURG, ARIZONA westernmuseum.org March 25–September 4

Much excitement focuses on the show’s opening weekend, when patrons will enjoy a preview party, box draw sale, live auction, awards dinner, quick draw competition, and panel discussion. Ten days later, on April 5, the museum will host the Western Women of Distinction Luncheon — a new event featuring presentation of the first Elizabeth Smith Award. The museum’s executive director, Dan Finley, explains: “I have thought for a while that Cowgirl Up! should grow its local footprint because its themes of fostering, recognizing, and celebrating Western women extend beyond art and artists. I like the idea of branding Wickenburg a leader in promoting all women of the West. We have established a public nomination process for the award that is easily found on the museum’s website.”

Fine Art Connoisseur looks forward to applauding this annual award’s first winner, and indeed all of the talented women involved in Cowgirl Up!

The Desert Caballeros Western Museum is much admired for preserving and exhibiting the art and history of the Southwest and desert frontier. Seventeen years ago, it launched Cowgirl Up! Art from the Other Half of the West, an invitational exhibition and sale that — in the male-dominated field of Western art — turned the spotlight squarely on women’s perspectives.

CU! remains a leading national event for women artists, and its 17th edition will feature more than 60 emerging and established talents, selected from over 300 applicants. Their paintings, drawings, and sculptures are made in a range of techniques, styles, and mediums.

These will be available for purchase in person and online, and the proceeds will benefit both the artists and museum.

NEW MEXICO’S BRIGHTEST TAOS, NEW MEXICO papnm.org and taosmuseum.org April 5–May 15

Every year the nonprofit organization Plein Air Painters of New Mexico (PAPNM) invites its members to apply for Signature status.

First, applicants must describe and prove they have attained certain markers of professionalism and artistic excellence. This information

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is reviewed alongside their creations by four unnamed judges, who score the applications and then announce the results. The even higher tier of Master membership is awarded by invitation only.

This is the fourth year that an exhibition of Master and Signature members’ recent works will be mounted at the Taos Museum of Art & Fechin Studio, formerly home to the brilliant Russian-born artist Nicolai Fechin (1881–1955).

Each eligible artist will send one painting, which can be painted indoors or outdoors in any medium. The opening reception is set for April 9.

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BARBARA COLEMAN (b. 1956), Shadow Dancing, 2021, oil on linen panel, 12 x 16 in.

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WHY GREAT FALLS IS GREAT GREAT FALLS, MONTANA westernartweek.com March 16–20

All eyes are on Great Falls, Montana, the town of 60,000 that will come alive with art shows and artists during its 53rd Western Art Week. It was on March 19, 1864 that the Western master Charles M. Russell was born in St. Louis, and it was in Great Falls that he spent the second half of his life, and he died there in 1926.

Due to the pandemic, Western Art Week had to go virtual in 2020, and in 2021 it presented two partial editions, one in March and the other in August. Now it’s back in full force. Among its many happenings between March 16 and 20

ABIGAIL GUTTING (b. 1984), Survivors, 2021, oil on linen, 20 x 30 in., estimate $4,000–$6,000 at the March in Montana Auction

are the March in Montana Auction & Dealer Show, Out West Art Show & Sale, Legends West Art Show, Great Western Show, First Peoples Buffalo Jump State Park Annual Art Exhibit

DENISE LARUE MAHLKE (b. 1957), Above and Beyond,

LOOK UP

2021, pastel on board, 39 3/4 x 27 1/4 in.

KERRVILLE, TEXAS museumofwesternart.com April 1–July 9

The Museum of Western Art is set to open an exhibition with a truly uplifting title: The Heavens Declare! Celebrating the Glory of the Skies. These words are drawn from Psalm 19 in the Bible, which compels us to look up and take notice: “The heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaims His handiwork.”

On view will be recent sky scenes created by 10 talented artists: Phil Bob Borman, Russell Case, Laurel Daniel, Linda Glover Gooch, David Griffin, David Grossman, Michael Magrin, Denise LaRue Mahlke, Phil Starke, and John Taft.

In 2020 the show’s premise was proposed

by Mahlke, who has been busy coordinating

it alongside the museum’s executive director, Darrell Beauchamp.

The official opening reception will occur on April 9, a busy day that will also offer artist talks and tours, plus a lunchtime presentation featuring collector Tim Newton. In addition, the museum will host a monthly workshop presented by one of three participating artists — Linda Glover Gooch, Denise LaRue Mahlke, or John Taft.

Opened in 1983, the Museum of Western Art is located a short drive northwest of San Antonio in Texas’s scenic Hill Country. Its original building was designed with rugged timbers and walls that give it the air of a fortified hacienda. The 14,000-square-foot facility encompasses galleries and study spaces, as well as the 6,000-volume Griff Research Center.

Moran, Charles M. Russell, Joseph H. Sharp, and Walter Ufer.

The contemporary lots represent talents like Bill Anton, John Coleman, Martin Grelle, Ed Mell, and Kyle Polzin; also included in this category is a major piece from Howard Terpning (b. 1927).

Illustrated here is an iconic nocturne by the gifted artist Frank Tenney Johnson, who worked for a time as a cowboy in Colorado and witnessed some of the last “beef roundups” in the U.S. Later he settled in Southern California, where he painted murals, sold paintings to Hollywood moguls, and even acted in silent cowboy films.

BEST IN THE SOUTHWEST SCOTTSDALE scottsdaleartauction.com April 8–9

Returning this spring is the Scottsdale Art Auction, one of America’s leading sales of Western art. Its lots encompass every genre, from landscape and wildlife to figures and still life. The auction was founded in 2005 by Michael Frost of New York City’s J.N. Bartfield Galleries, Jack Morris of Morris Whiteside Galleries in Hilton Head, South Carolina, and Brad Richardson of Legacy Gallery in Scottsdale.

On offer are more than 400 works, made by such historical masters as Frank Tenney Johnson, William Robinson Leigh, Thomas F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M

& Sale, Western Heritage Artists–Footprints on the Trail, Studio 706 Spring Show, Wild Bunch Art Show, Celebration of Native Plains Artists Show, and Jay Contway Art Show. In addition, three exhibitions will be on view at the Paris Gibson Square Museum of Art. The primary fundraising event of the year at Great Falls’s largest art institution, the Charles M. Russell Museum, is The Russell Sale & Auction. This will not be presented until August, but rest assured the museum has several March events lined up. In addition to the Sealed Bid Sale, two events that benefit the museum will occur at a new performance venue downtown, The Newberry: singer-songwriter Tennessee Jet will perform on March 17, and two days later the public will enjoy Charlie’s Miniature Roundup, a selling show of miniature artworks created by a range of invited artists.

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FRANK TENNEY JOHNSON (1874–1939), Packing In, 1931, oil on board, 24 x 18 in., estimate $250,000–$350,000

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GREAT ART NATIONWIDE

E V E N T S P R E V I E W

NEW ART BY WOMEN BREAKING THROUGH: THE RISE OF AMERICAN WOMEN ARTISTS Customs House Museum & Cultural Center Clarksville, Tennessee americanwomenartists.org customshousemuseum.org March 5–May 29

The Customs House Museum & Cultural Center is set to host a juried selling exhibition of 124 paintings and sculptures created by members of American Women Artists (AWA). This nonprofit organization has members throughout the U.S. and (increasingly) Canada, and this is the sixth show in its campaign to have 25 museum shows over 25 years. More than 940 entries were received, from which 99 twodimensional pieces and 25 three-dimensional ones were selected, ranging in approach from representational to abstract.

Customs House exhibitions curator Terri Jordan is busy preparing the accompanying catalogue, which will contain an introduction

by Prof. Amy Von Lintel (West Texas A&M University). AWA will present its awards program online, including a grand prize of $10,000 and more than $20,000 in additional prizes of merchandise and advertising space. Also offered online will be a symposium featuring the collector-patrons Steven Alan Bennett and Dr. Elaine Melotti Schmidt, Georgia Museum of Art director William Eiland, and art historian Jann Haynes Gilmore.

AWA has offered encouragement to female artists since it emerged from the Women Artists & the West exhibition series mounted by the Tucson Museum of Art (TMA) between 1991 and 1994. Former TMA director Robert Yassin recalls that the exhibitions’ purpose was not to redefine history, but rather to provide a venue for contemporary women artists addressing Western themes. Since then, AWA has expanded beyond the Western genre to embrace both representational and abstract artists from all regions of the U.S., as well as Canada.

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The Customs House Museum and Cultural Center is Tennessee’s second largest general interest museum, featuring fine art, history, and children’s exhibits spread across 35,000 square feet. Its striking building was constructed in 1898 as a federal post office and customs house to handle the large volume of foreign mail created by Clarksville’s international tobacco business, and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. Once seen, the building is seldom forgotten, thanks to its steeply pitched roof, elaborate ornamentation, and eclectic mix of architectural styles, including Stick, Queen Anne, Italianate, Romanesque, Flemish, and Gothic.

DIANNE

MASSEY

DUNBAR

(b.

1952),

Rain

on

Windshield: Red Light, 2019, oil on panel, 30 x 30 in.

M A RMC AHY/ /AJ PU RNI EL 22 00 12 72

FFI I NN EE AA RR TT CC OO NN NN OO I I SS SS EE UU RR ·· CC O OM M

DREAMING OF TRAVEL

DIANA JENSEN (b. 1965), Aleppo 1962, 2021, oil on Mylar with reverse painting, 40 x 30 in.

DIANA JENSEN: WORLD TRAVELER / SHELTER AT HOME

slide collection and the adventures of one individual, but also a somber reflection of our collective loss of freedom during the pandemic.”

As Jensen created her series of “Where I wish I could travel” paintings, it was not her intention to duplicate the slides, but rather to visually interpret what these scenes meant to the original owner. She notes, “Seeking the truth of the past, not simply historical record, I look for hidden expressions of intimacy and human interactions among the figures in the photographs.”

The resulting works were made on Mylar using the technique of reverse painting, and they vary widely in size. The Susquehanna Art Museum will display Jensen’s installation of them for a two-month period, hopefully inspiring visitors to start planning their own travel adventures.

Susquehanna Art Museum Harrisburg, Pennsylvania susquehannaartmuseum.org April 15–June 19

Like the rest of us, the New York City artist Diana Jensen has not enjoyed the pandemic, but at least she has produced an intriguing body of work during this challenging period. She explains, “After a few feverish nights with the COVID-19 virus, an idea came to me. A few years ago, a friend gave me 27 boxes of slides found in an Asbury Park [New Jersey] thrift store. These images document one person’s world travels. I felt this was the time to immerse myself — painting images of far-flung adventures as I sheltered at home. My series is an homage to the exhaustive

EIGHT FIGURATIVE TALENTS

DORON LANGBERG (b. 1985), Sleeping 1, 2020, oil and colored pencil on linen, 96 x 80 in., collection of Kent Belden and Dr. Louis Re, photo courtesy of Yossi Milo

A PLACE FOR ME: FIGURATIVE PAINTING NOW

Gallery (New York) and Victoria Miro (London)

Institute of Contemporary Art Boston icaboston.org through September 5

Everyone agrees that figurative painting is enjoying a robust revival, so now ICA Boston curators Ruth Erickson and Anni Pullagura have organized an exhibition that highlights eight gifted practitioners they particularly admire.

Working in a range of techniques and styles, the artists featured are David Antonio Cruz (b. 1974), Louis Fratino (b. 1993), Doron Langberg (b. 1985), Aubrey Levinthal (b. 1986), Gisela

McDaniel (b. 1995), Arcmanoro Niles (b. 1989), Celeste Rapone (b. 1985), and Ambera Wellmann (b. 1982). All are American except Langberg, who is Israeli, and Wellmann, who is from Canada.

The show’s title, A Place for Me, is revealing. All eight of the artists fearlessly depict who they love — including their friends, lovers, and family members — their homes and studio spaces, and scenes of everyday life. Evoking intimacy, community, and the highly personal, these exhibitors consider, in their unique ways, how painting something or someone might register care, tenderness, fragility, empathy, or resilience.

SMALL BUT MIGHTY NATIONAL OIL & ACRYLIC PAINTERS’ SOCIETY 5TH BEST OF AMERICA SMALL WORKS NATIONAL JURIED EXHIBITION Beverly McNeil Gallery Birmingham, Alabama noaps.org and beverlymcneilgallery.com April 28–May 27

The National Oil & Acrylic Painters’ Society (NOAPS) is set to open its 5th Best of America Small Works National Juried Exhibition at Beverly McNeil Gallery in Birmingham. On view will be 175 works — all F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M

measuring 320 square inches or smaller — created by artists from around the world.

The opening week will kick off on April 27 with a plein air paint-out and competition, followed on the 28th by the awards presentation and opening reception. On April 29, master artists Paula Holtzclaw and Bill Farnsworth will demonstrate their techniques in the gallery.

NOAPS was founded 31 years ago by a group of enthusiastic artists and arts advocates including James Baumgartner, Betty Fitzgerald, Kenneth Gerardy, Martha Mitchell, William R. Mitchell, Joseph Orr, Rita Orr, Pete Peterson, Donald Ruthenberg, and Dennis T. Yates.

BILL FARNSWORTH (b. 1958), Solstice, 2021, oil on canvas, 16 x 12 in., private collection

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ART FROM THE NORTH FROM DAWN TO DUSK: NORDIC ART FROM SWEDEN’S NATIONALMUSEUM National Nordic Museum Seattle nordicmuseum.org through July 17

On view at the National Nordic Museum is From Dawn to Dusk, an exhibition of 56 paintings

by Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish artists in the permanent collection of Stockholm’s Nationalmuseum. Together these images trace the final decades of the 19th century, a period of radical development in art of the Nordic countries. They encompass scenes of everyday life, portraits, and landscapes created by such talents as Vilhelm Hammershøi, Carl Larsson, August Strindberg, Anders Zorn, and many others. The project was curated by the Nationalmuseum’s Carl-Johan Olsson and has been coordinated in Seattle by Leslie Anne Anderson.

Beginning with the paintings of Nordic artists working in the realist style dominant in 19th-century France, From Dawn to Dusk then considers those artists who spent

ALFRED BERGSTRÖM (1869–1930), Winter Scene from the Stockholm Waterfront, 1899, oil on canvas, 39 1/2 x 50 7/8 in. (framed), Nationalmuseum, gift of Ms. Birgit Rosin, 2004 (NM 7023)

time abroad and returned home to see their native countries with new eyes. This return launched a new approach to painting, particularly in the depiction of the landscape, a genre that has come to be regarded as quintessentially Nordic.

Around 1890, a national style developed.

Nature and the countryside figure prominently in turn-of-the-century Nordic art, but From Dawn to Dusk also highlights the growing interest of Nordic artists in depicting the growth and activity of modern cities.

PAINTING VIRGINIA ROGER DALE BROWN: EXPLORING VIRGINIA’S BEAUTIFUL PIEDMONT Berkley Gallery Warrenton, Virginia berkleygallery.com May 21–July 2

Berkley Gallery will soon present a show of new paintings by Roger Dale Brown, ones that focus on the scenic foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains that rise near the gallery’s home base in Warrenton, Virginia.

Born in Birmingham, Alabama, and raised in Tennessee, Brown is renowned for his teaching skills and is a leading member of the Oil Painters of America, American Impressionist Society, Cumberland Society of Painters, and American Society of Marine Artists. He is also past president of the Plein Air Painters of the Southeast.

The upcoming exhibition will feature 12 studio pieces along with fresh works that Brown will paint around the Piedmont region during the four days just before the show opens. On that big day, he will also

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demonstrate his techniques at the gallery itself.

The Piedmont is unusually rich in both history ( just for example, Thomas Jefferson’s impressive Monticello) and natural beauty, encompassing agricultural land, horse farms, rolling hills, and waterways.

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ROGER DALE BROWN (b. 1963), Drifting Down, 2022, oil on linen, 30 x 40 in.

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O F F T H E W A L L S

A RT I ST S & G A L L E R I E S

Jen Brown (b. 1978), Female Rage, 2021, oil on canvas, 20 x 20 in.

Trish Beckham (b. 1955), Weekend at the Royal Palm, 2021, oil on panel, 12 x 12 in.

born, Oregon-based artist tackles a range of provocative themes. Trained in art history rather than studio art, Brown often uses herself as a model, exploring ideas that “come from the tangled and messy relationships in my own life.” She says, “I want to understand what it means to be human, to be a woman, through my work.”

Illustrated here is Female Rage, in which Brown poses as Kali, the Hindu creator/destroyer goddess, just about to cut off her male enemy’s head.

more than 35 oil paintings titled Found: Places, Plants, and People. It features a mix of still lifes, portraits, and figures by Adra Brown, alongside cityscapes, landscapes, and seascapes by Trish Beckham.

Amanda Greive (b. 1978), Home/Body 1, 2021, oil on wood panel, 24 x 18 in.

Chicago

artsy.net/show/33-contemporary-the-breathbetween-bites/info March 1–April 1 33 Contemporary is presenting a show of Amanda Greive’s latest paintings, which she has titled The Breath Between Bites. The artist writes, “When I look back at the past two years, I feel like the words ‘consume’ and ‘consummate’ aptly describe how we spent our time.

We became consumed by a myriad of things — media streaming services, books, houseplants, the news, etc.

But we also took part in consummation … We completed projects, we ended relationships, and we yearned for an ending to the pandemic. These paintings look at how we as individuals are changing, but also how our environments are changing as a result of our choices.”

Long interested in the complex interconnections between women and nature, Greive is exhibiting a range of scenes that show women dissolving into arrangements of flowers. In the work illustrated here, for example, the model is “sitting in her living room, unapologetically transforming in front of the viewer. But her surroundings, her home, are also dissolving away.”

Most of the paintings are based on images that Greive took before the pandemic. She explains that she has been “hesitant to meet up with and photograph models, not wanting to unknowingly expose them to the virus or to be exposed.”

Seattle

Figure Ground Art Gallery is presenting the exhibition Jen Brown: Love, Sex, and War, in which the Canadian-

Gunnar Tryggmo (b. 1969), Queen, 2021, watercolor on rag paper, 26 x 26 in.

London

Jackson Hole, Wyoming

The English painter Jonathan Armigel Wade is exhibiting 35 recent oils at Osborne Studio Gallery. After a successful career as an army officer, he retired to rural Lincolnshire where he tends his garden and paints verdant landscapes and the sporting life. Not having studied art formally, Wade devised his own “curvispective” that emphasizes rural England’s low round hills and winding lanes, as well as its coasts and citizens at leisure. Housed in frames he designs and makes himself, the results abound with humor and eccentricity, betraying flashes of influence from such 1940s forerunners as Stanley Spencer, Carel Weight, Paul Nash, and Eric Ravilious.

They Move in Silence is the somewhat haunting title of a new show at Turner Fine Art. It honors the wild animals that reside in, and move through, Wyoming’s valleys — a remarkably intact ecosystem that all of us should preserve and wonder at. On view are recent watercolors

by Gunnar Tryggmo, charcoal drawings and etchings by Ray Brown, and watercolors and oils by Kathryn Mapes Turner. A portion of the proceeds will benefit the Jackson Hole Wildlife Foundation.

osg.uk.com March 29–April 16

West Palm Beach

figuregroundgallery.com March 3–April 1

F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M

Jonathan Armigel Wade (b. 1960), Free Range, 2018, oil on board, 11 1/2 x 15 3/4 in.

marywoernerfinearts.com through March 12 Mary Woerner Fine Arts has opened an exhibition of

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turnerfineart.com through March 31

On November 10 — the day before Veterans Day — the life-size sculpture Tried and True by Colorado artist Gary Alsum (b. 1957) was dedicated at the University of Central Oklahoma (UCO) in Edmond. I​n 2017 Alsum was asked by UCO’s Student Government Association and the City of Edmond Visual Arts Commission to create this Veterans’ Memorial to represent all UCO-related individuals who have served to defend

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Madison, Wisconsin chazen.wisc.edu through April 3

(LEFT) A clay maquette in Alsum’s studio (RIGHT) Tried and True as it now appears on campus; photo: Randel Shadid

our liberties, including graduates of its popular ROTC program. It was important to convey the interconnectivity of soldier and student, so Alsum depicted them back-to-back to create a single form with no negative spaces between them.

The two figures were modeled on UCO graduates who tragically died during combat: 2nd Lt. Jared Ewy of the Oklahoma Army National Guard (shown in full combat dress) and Sgt. Ryan Wood of the Army’s First Infantry Division, 26th Battalion (in student garb). The bronze sculpture measures 77 x 30 x 29 inches and was made by Alsum in collaboration with the National Sculptors’ Guild, of which he is a fellow. It was cast at Bronze Services of Loveland, the town where Alsum lives.

M USEU MS

John James Audubon’s groundbreaking publication The Birds of America has seemingly been analyzed from every angle. Yet it has not been appreciated fully through the lens of Robert Havell, Jr., who transformed Audubon’s more than 400 watercolor studies in his London shop between 1827 and 1838. There he printed the four volumes in a detailed process that necessitated tracing and etching the watercolors into copper plates.

This season at the Chazen Museum of Art (University of Wisconsin), the exhibition Seeing Audubon highlights the ongoing research of artist, printmaker, and UW–Madison professor Emily Arthur. She challenges our perception of Audubon as a singular force, suggesting instead that Havell’s mastery imparted some of the scientific acumen that underlies the images. The show includes two of the so-called double-elephant folios, named for the unprecedentedly large size of the paper on which they were printed.

and Barbara Wright Collection of works by Dow, this project features not only his art, but also the ephemera he collected on his global travels, most significantly in Japan, where he developed his pioneering theories of composition.

Andover, Massachusetts addisongallery.org through July 31

The Addison Gallery of American Art is humming with a major show of Georgia O’Keeffe’s little-known photography. Curator Gordon Wilkins has wisely complemented that exhibition with another titled Arthur Wesley Dow: Nearest to the Divine, which features paintings, prints, drawings, and photographs by the artist who forever changed O’Keeffe’s approach while teaching her at Columbia University in New York City. His radically anti-academic, mystical approach to artmaking, with its emphasis on emotion and personal vision rather than faithful representation, inspired her and many of her classmates.

Drawn almost entirely from the Addison’s George

Bob Dylan (b. 1941), Abandoned Motel, Eureka, 2015–16, acrylic on canvas, 83 7/8 x 54 1/2 in., courtesy of the artist

Miami

frost.fiu.edu through April 17 Everyone knows Bob Dylan is an accomplished musician and writer, but did you know he paints, too? On view at Florida International University’s Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum is Retrospectrum, the largest exhibition of his art ever mounted in the U.S. Created from the late 1960s through today, more than 180 paintings, drawings, ironwork, and ephemera range widely in approach and subject, from cityscapes and views of the American West to a recent series inspired by famous movie scenes. Interestingly, this project was organized by — and initially presented at — Shai Baitel, the Modern Art Museum of Shanghai.

Athens, Georgia

georgiamuseum.org through April 24

Carolina Parrot from Volume I of The Birds of America; drawn by John James Audubon (1785–1851); engraved, printed, and colored by R. Havell & Son; 1827–30; hand-colored etching and aquatint on paper; page size 39 x 26 in.; University of Wisconsin– Madison Special Collections, Thordarson Collection

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Arthur Wesley Dow (1857–1922), The Derelict, or The Lost Boat, 1916, color woodcut, 5 13/16 x 4 1/16 in., museum purchase, 2016.4.1

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Pontormo, del Sarto, Foschi. One of these names is much less of a household name when it comes to 16thcentury Italian art, right? To address that problem, the Georgia Museum of Art has organized the first exhibition devoted to Pier Francesco Foschi (1502–1567), a prolific and fashionable Florentine painter whose career fell into obscurity after his death.

Curated by Nelda Damiano, Wealth and Beauty: Pier Francesco Foschi and Painting in Renaissance Florence gathers works from museums around the world to trace his training under Andrea del Sarto, his commissions (especially portraits) from the Medici and other powerful clients, and his huge influence on other 2 0 2 2

F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M

As part of a global effort to examine the legacy of 1922, the Snite Museum of Art has partnered with the University of Notre Dame’s Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies and the O’Brien Collection in Chicago to mount the exhibition Who Do We Say We Are? Irish Art 1922/2022. Curator Cheryl Snay sought to “investigate how artists, then and now, pictured Ireland’s history and geography, how their work informs our understanding of Ireland and its people, and what questions their work raises about the use of art as a tool of nation-building.”

To do this, she has juxtaposed works by Seán Keating, Jack B. Yeats, and Paul Henry — all exhibited in Paris — alongside such contemporary talents as Patrick Graham, Hughie O’Donoghue, and Diana Copperwhite.

The project is accompanied by a fascinating catalogue, new recordings of Irish music inspired by the art, and even a virtual recreation of the 1922 show designed by Trinity College Dublin.

Meadows by curator Amanda W. Dotseth, who became its interim director last year after the untimely death of its longtime director Mark A. Roglán, who had instigated the project.

Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669), The Night Watch, 1642, oil on canvas, 143 x 172 in., Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Pier Francesco Foschi (1502–1567), Portrait of a Lady, c. 1550, oil on panel, 39 7/8 x 31 in., Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, 145 (1935.16)

Amsterdam

rijksmuseum.nl/en/stories/operation-night-watch Continuing

Florentine artists. The project is accompanied by a groundbreaking catalogue, and a version of it will move on to Florence’s Galleria dell’Accademia.

In January, the Rijksmuseum unveiled the world’s largest photograph of an artwork, its new 717-gigapixel scan of Rembrandt’s famous Night Watch. Four times sharper than the previous version published in 2020, this photo allows anyone visiting the museum’s website to zoom in on minute areas of the masterpiece’s surface.

In 2019 the Rijksmuseum’s Operation Night Watch research team began its work by placing the painting in a glass chamber that allows visitors to watch as experts undertake further studies. Conservation treatment is now underway and can also be observed on the museum’s website.

Notre Dame, Indiana sniteartmuseum.nd.edu through May 15

It was exactly a century ago that Ireland turned a crucial corner: the Irish state was founded with the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty; James Joyce’s groundbreaking novel Ulysses was published; and Paris hosted both a conference and an exhibition highlighting modern Ireland.

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617–1682), The Prodigal Son Among the Swine, 1656–65, oil on canvas, 63 5/8 x 41 1/8 in., Hispanic Society of America, New York, LA1791

Dallas

meadowsmuseumdallas.org through June 12

Lily Williams (1874–1940), Hibernia, 1916, pastel on paper, 24 1/2 x 16 3/4 in., on loan from The O'Brien Collection

F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M

The Meadows Museum is home to America’s largest collection of paintings by the 17th-century Spanish master Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, and thus a logical home for the exhibition Murillo: Picturing the Prodigal Son. The artist depicted six episodes from this famous biblical parable, all now in the collection of the National Gallery of Ireland and recently conserved.

Making their first and only visit to the U.S. this season, they are accompanied by relevant works from the Meadows’s rich collection and important loans from other institutions.

Having already been shown at Madrid’s Museo Nacional del Prado, the exhibition was organized at the

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Emilio Sanchez (1921–1999), Ty's Place, 1976, lithograph on wove paper, 22 x 30 in., Fralin Museum of Art, gift of the Emilio Sanchez Foundation, 2012.1.9

Charlottesville, Virginia

uvafralinartmuseum.virginia.edu through June 20 The Fralin Museum of Art is presenting the exhibition Open Window: Emilio Sanchez on Paper. It marks a homecoming for Emilio Sanchez (1921–1999), the Cuban-born artist who spent much of his life in the U.S., including two years at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Soon he headed to New York, which served as a launchpad for his extensive travels worldwide to investigate the effects of

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light and shadow on buildings and landscapes.

Selected by curator Laura Minton, the 21 works on view demonstrate Sanchez’s delight in the natural patterns and shadows cast by bright sunlight on façades, doors, windows, and shutters, particularly in the Caribbean, Latin America, and North America.

Steve Brown (b. 1953), While Jeff Surfs Third Point, 2021, acrylic on birch, 9 x 12 in.

Mann was intrigued by its having been painted on lapis lazuli, a precious stone that was then available only from Afghanistan. She has spent the past two decades researching the unjustly overlooked Renaissance practice of painting on stone (rather than wood or canvas), and now her groundbreaking exhibition and 320-page catalogue are ready for the spotlight.

Drawing upon loans from collections worldwide, Paintings on Stone: Science and the Sacred 1530– 1800 will feature portraits, mythological scenes, and religious images painted not only on lapis, but also marble, slate, amethyst, porphyry, alabaster, travertine, and obsidian. Developed in Rome by the Venetian painter Sebastiano del Piombo (1485–1547), this approach took hold in the 1530s and ’40s, then flourished for the next century. Early on, artists rarely left the stone uncovered, but this changed over the years.

The Saint Louis Art Museum is especially pleased to have recently bought Lamentation by Candlelight, a stone painting made by Jacopo Bassano in the 1570s.

Freshly conserved, it will make its public debut this season in the exhibition.

Americans, despite many hardships, have persevered through acts of rebellion, skillful guile, and self-willed determination.

B O OK S

Amazingly, there has never been a comprehensive monograph devoted to the great American artist George Carlson (b. 1940). Now Rizzoli New York (rizzoliusa. com) has filled that gap with a substantial and richly illustrated book, George Carlson: The American West.

Based in Idaho, Carlson is the only artist who has won the Prix de West grand prize twice, once for a bronze sculpture and once for a landscape painting.

(He is also a gifted pastelist.) Building on the visual legacy of such Western masters as Remington, Russell, Moran, and Bierstadt, Carlson makes art that is somehow both timeless and clearly of our time. Born in Elmhurst, Illinois, he studied at Chicago’s American Academy of Art, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the University of Arizona. He has been awarded an honorary doctorate of fine arts from the University of Idaho at Moscow.

The new 352-page book is generously sized at 11 by 12 inches, with most artworks getting a full-page illustration so that we can really study and admire their details and textures. Its prologue has been written by Erika Lockridge, the foreword by Art Nicholas, and the insightful essay by Todd Wilkinson.

Santa Paula, California

santapaulaartmuseum.org and californiaartclub.org through May 8 The Santa Paula Art Museum and the California Art Club have teamed up to present the exhibition En Plein Air: An Exploration of Malibu and Ventura County. Founded in Los Angeles in 1909, the club now has 13 chapters, all dedicated to contemporary-traditional fine art and its time-honored skills. This show features recent work by 32 artist-members of the Malibu/Ventura and Los Angeles chapters, all of whom were encouraged to paint outdoors — not a difficult ask in such a beautiful region.

Most of the works will be available for purchase.

Stephen Towns (b. 1980), I Am the Glory, 2020, acrylic, oil, and metal leaf on panel, 48 x 36 in., courtesy De Buck Gallery (New York City)

Greensburg, Pennsylvania thewestmoreland.org through May 8

Cavaliere D’Arpino (1568–1640), Perseus Rescuing Andromeda, c. 1593–94, oil on lapis lazuli, 7 15/16 x 6 1/8 in., museum purchase 1:2000

St. Louis

slam.org through May 15 In 2000, the Saint Louis Art Museum acquired the tiny painting from the 1590s illustrated here, Cavaliere d’Arpino’s Perseus Rescuing Andromeda. Curator Judith

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The Westmoreland Museum of American Art is presenting the exhibition Stephen Towns: Declaration & Resistance.

Guest curator Kilolo Luckett has collaborated with the Baltimore-based artist to install this display of more than 30 new figurative paintings and story quilts that examine the American Dream through the lives of Black Americans.

Using labor as a backdrop, Towns’s imagery highlights the role that Black people have played in the U.S. economy, including such fields as coal mining, agriculture, food preparation, textile production, military service, and domestic labor. Bringing this array right up to date is a section about nursing, so relevant to all of us during the pandemic. Towns highlights how African M A R C H / A P R I L

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P E T E R S W I F T DIGNITY OF WORK

D ig nity of Work - Rebar 4 8 ” by 4 8 ” Ac r yli c on c anvas

w w w.peterswif tar tstudio.com pswif t73@icloud.com

NANET TE FLUH R AWA PSA OPA

Manu, Oil on Linen, 30” x 24” Featured at the MEAMEuropean Museum of Modern Art Recipient of AWA’s Distinguished Achievement Award

Custom Portraits and Fine Art Honoring Individual, Family and Corporate Legacies

TO C O M M I S S I O N O R P U R C H A S E PA I N T I N G S W W W.N A N E T T E F LU H R .C O M | 6 31 . 32 7. 5 5 5 3 F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M

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,

WILLIAM A. SCHNEIDER

Revealing the Soul AISM, OPAM, PSA-MP, IAPS-MC

Dancing With Sunlight Oil on Linen on Panel, 30X30 Available at Illume Gallery of Fine Art St. George, UT (801) 210-2853

Please see website for blog and workshop information

WWW.SCHNEIDERART.COM

Poppy Balser ASMA, CSPWC

See more marine art works filled with radiant light at poppybalser.com Contact Poppy (902) 247-1910 p o ppy@ po ppybalser.co m

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Paula B. Holtzclaw a i s , awam , opa

Breaking Through: The Rise of American Women Artists March 5 - May 29, 2022 Customs House Museum Clarksville, TN

ANDERSON FINE ART GALLERY St. Simons, GA CHERYL NEWBY GALLERY Pawleys Island, SC HIGHLANDS ART GALLERY Lambertville, NJ HUGHES GALLERY Boca Grande, FL PROVIDENCE GALLERY Charlotte, NC Breaking Through 16 x 20 Oil

www.paulabholtzclawfineart.com

J EAN S C H WAR T Z w w w. j e a n s c h w a r t z p a i n t i n g s . c o m

Transitory 13x21 oil on linen panel

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HEATHER ARENAS AWA WAOWM

Show Me the Monet!, 30x36, oil on cradled wood

Visit www.heatherarenas.com for upcoming events and workshops. Email artist@heatherarenas.com for available work and commissions.

TRISH SAVIDES Studio and Gallery Waiting to Sail Oil 30 x 40

137 Via Naranjas Boca Raton, Florida

www.trishsavides.com trishsavides1@comcast.net

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ADRA BROWN

TRISH BECKHAM

The Unraveling, 30 x 27 in. oil on linen

Neiman Marcus, Worth Avenue, 12 x 12 in. oil on panel

3700 South Dixie Highway #7 West Palm Beach, FL 33405 561.832.3233 www.marywoernerfinearts.com

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CYNTHIA ROSEN www.cynthiarosen.com

Of Sun and Snow 36x48” oil

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LAURIE HENDRICKS

MFA

Contemporary California Impressionism

CAC Artist Member • LPAPA • AIS • OPA • NOAPS

www.lauriehendricksart.com lauriehendricksart@gmail.com 626-833-0106

Private Lessons Plein Air Workshops 2022 (Cambria: June & November, Pasadena: September) Early Sierra Spring, 12” x 16”, Oil on Linen Board

Chasing the Light en Plein Air and in the Studio

J i l l S t e f a n i Wa g n e r psa-mp

Iaps/mC

“Evening Flotilla” oil 16 x 20

jillwagnerart.com

“San Diego Harbor” oil 20 x 16

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KATHIE ODOM

KATHIEOD OM.C OM

Southern Swing, 12x20, Oil on Linen

KATHIEOD OM.C OM

MICHELLE CONDRAT

mcondrat@michellecondrat.com

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michellecondrat.com

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M A R C H / A P R I L

IG: @michellecondrat

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Robin Cheers AIS

CAPTURING THE IMPRESSION

Castle Gallery Fort Wayne, IN

Edward Montgomery Fine Art Carmel, CA

Studio/Classes/Gallery www.robincheers.com

Kitchen Blues (detail) 12x16 oil

Announcing the new book by Brian Keeler, a career-spanning collection of paintings, pastels and watercolors.

Order from northstarartgallery.com

North Star Art Gallery

743 Snyder Hill Rd., Ithaca, NY 14850 607.323.7684 www.northstarartgallery.com info@northstarartgallery.com

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Locked Down….Locked Out 16 x 20 Oil on Panel Available

J. Russell Wells

w w w. j r u s s e l l w e l l s . c o m • e m a i l: j r w@j r u s s e l l w e l l s . c o m Follow me on Instagram and Facebook

MARK MEHAFFEY

Fall’s Beginning 30x40 acrylic on canvas

To view more of Mark’s work go to: www.markmehaffeyfineart.com mehaffeyfineart@gmail.com 517-449-2935

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HOLLY BEDROSIAN

AIDA GARRITY

Member of the prestigious Salmagundi Art Club, National Arts Club, The Players Club, and The Portrait of America Society

“Hydrangeas”, 10x8, oil

Whispers of Yesterday 34” x 24”, oil

w w w. h o l l y b e d r o s i a n . c o m holly@hollybedrosian.com 603-560-5112

“Dinner Time”, 8x10, oil

Please see website for availability and purchasing

w w w. a i d a b g a r r i t y. c o m 614-832-1422 | aida.garrity@gmail.com

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Lee Alban No Compromises

www.leealban.com leealban@comcast.net The Searchers, 24” x 30”, oil on panel

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Beverly Ford Evans Sporting Art

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Wildlife

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Landscape

www.beverlyfordevans.com Original Oil Paintings Gallery Representation

Hunting

20x20 . oil on linen

CAROL STROCK-WASSON

PSA • AWA • CPP-M • IAPS-MC

Red-Winged Blackbird 48x60 pastel

Commission a Special Painting for Your Home or Business S T ROC K WAS S ON S TU DIO

F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M

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317 N Columbia • Union City, IN 47390

M A R C H / A P R I L

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carolstrockwasson.com

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937.459.6492

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The Artful Deposit Gallery

Ballerina, c. 1968 original oil on board by the late American Master, Joseph William Dawley (1936-2008), Private Collection

Celebrating our 36th Anniversary The power of the heartfelt poetry of the Neo-Renaissance painter resonates in every brushstroke.

Nik Anikis, the Neo-Renaissance Painter from Slovenia.

Luminous Flux 39.37 x 23.62 in | 100 x 60 cm Oil on canvas, 2021 Finally finished after 3 long years Learn the secrets of this masterpiece here:

www.anikis.com/luminous

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artfuldeposit.com Bordentown City, NJ Gallerist, CJ Mugavero artfuldeposit@gmail.com | (609) 298-6970

M A R C H / A P R I L

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DEBORAH SQUIER

All There Is 18x36 Pastel acm panel

squierd@bellsouth.net | 828-216-8806

www.deborahsquier.com

PAT R I C K M C G A N N O N www.pjmcgannon.com pjmcagnnon Best Figurative, NOAPS Best of America Exhibit 2021 NOAPS Signature Artist Represented by Four Corners Gallery, Bluffton SC www.fourcornersgallerybluffton.com

Linger, 12” x 16”, oil

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Reminiscence, 16” x 20”, oil

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Gary Alsum Bronze Sculpture Bringing collectors’ visions to reality in bronze for over a quarter century

74”H 44”W 34”D Commission for Our Lady of the Pines Catholic Church, Conifer, Colorado Available in limited edition

Welcome,Friends Gallery Partners: Nationalsculptorsguild.com (NSG Fellow since 1992)

Parade - 28 x 18 oil on canvas

Nicole White Kennedy Signature Member American Impressionist Society

Knoxgalleries.com

Art • Workshops • Videos

garyalsum.com gary@garyalsum.com 124

www.nicolestudio.com • nicole@nicolestudio.com M A R C H / A P R I L

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S usan Hediger Matteson Steam II Oil 20” x 16”

Mary Williams Fine Art 5311 Western Ave, Unit 112 Boulder, Colorado 80301 (303) 938-1588 info@marywilliamsfinearts.com

w w w. s u s a n m a t t e s o n . c o m

Online Art School

Atlantic Dusk, 11x14 inch oil on canvas, 2020 private collection

W W W.PATR EON.COM / DEV INMICH A ELROBERTS

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6th Annual

AIS Impressions: Small Works Showcase May 12-June 19, 2022 Wilder Nightingale Fine Art Taos, New Mexico

Juried exhibition of 170 paintings created by award winning Impressionist artists.

Awards Judge

AIS Master James Richards

AIS Members and Guests Invited to join us in Taos!

May 10/11 Two Day Workshop With James Richards AISM May 11/14

All Member Paint Out

May 12/13

Studio Tours

May 13

Demo and Critiques

May 14

Awards Reception and Wet Wall

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Serving artists since 1998 Membership | Events | Exhibitions

americanimpressionistsociety.org 231-881-7685

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MASTER AND SIGNATURE MEMBERS

Relics of the Past, 12x16, Oil, Carole Belliveau

Join Us! APRIL 9th for the Opening Reception

View award-winning art in person or online at PAPNM.ORG

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Achieve Your Artistic Potential D I S C O V E R T H E S E C R E T S O F TO P A R T I S T S HOWARD FRIEDLAND:

Painting Waterfalls in Oil ™

100%

H

oward exposes what has taken him a 40+ year career to absorb and perfect — capturing water in a beautiful and distinct way.

No matter your current skill level, you’ll find yourself admiring Howard’s talent and ability for painting raw beauty. You may even catch yourself saying, “I wish I could paint like that!”

As you study with Howard throughout this video, you’ll advance from wishing you could paint like that to actually creating the magic of moving water easily, quickly, and consistently.

All videos available to stream instantly or watch on DVD

LYN BOYER:

Wheels & Steel™

B

In detailed workshop exercises, Lyn takes you beyond the intimidation many artists feel when STREAMLINE PREMIUM ART INSTRUCTION PRESENTS WHEELS & STEEL WITH LYN BOYER EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS ERIC RHOADS AND BRYANT JACKSON PRODUCED BY JENNIFER LEPORE painting a vehicle.

Then, she DIRECTED AND PHOTOGRAPHED BY SCOT YOUNG CAMERA WORK BY TONY CARTER POST PRODUCTION

BY JOSHUA SUMMERS MUSIC BY DAVE CURLEY

BY EVE HANSEN helps you putEDITEDall you have learned ENGLISH | COLOR | 8 HOURS (485 MINUTES) | NTSC | WIDE SCREEN together as she conducts a full start-to-finish TOdemonstration ORDER VISIT STREAMLINEARTVIDEO.COM OR CALL 1-561-655-8778 of a classic 1937 Cadillac in a historic setting.

LYN BOYER | WHEELS & STEEL™

ecome a more courageous and exploratory painter by learning and practicing what Lyn teaches about painting complex subjects like the unique curves, edges, lines, glass, rust, and chrome found on vehicles.

™

Lyn Boyer: Wheels & Steel™/© 2022 Streamline Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Art Workshop Series™/© 2022 Streamline Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved. PaintTube™ is a registered trademark of Streamline Publishing, Inc. This video is protected by US and international law. Commercial, rental and other uses are prohibited. By opening this seal, you agree to this license. HOME USE LICENSE ONLY: DO NOT COPY, DISTRIBUTE, RENT, OR PERFORM. For licensing information contact: Licensing@streamlinepublishing.com or call 561-655-8778.

Cover Design™/© 2022 Streamline Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

PaintTube™ and Art Workshop Series™ are trademarks of Streamline Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Painting Image “The Caddy Demonstration” ™/© 2022 Streamline Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

HOWARD FRIEDLAND: PAINTING WATERFALLS IN OIL™, LYN BOYER: WHEELS & STEEL™, ART WORKSHOP SERIES™, LANDSCAPE MASTERS SERIES™, PAINTTUBE™, ©/™ STREAMLINE PUBLISHING, INC. 2022. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. HOME USE LICENSE ONLY: DO NOT COPY, DISTRIBUTE, RENT, OR PERFORM. FOR LICENSING INFORMATION, CONTACT 877-867-0324 OR LICENSING@STREAMLINEPUBLISHING.COM.

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ORDER TODAY at PaintTube.TV or call 877-867-0324 M A R C H / A P R I L

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d i r e c t o ry o f a d v e rt i s i n g

Women in Art COMING MAY/JUNE 2022 SELF-PORT R A ITS |

HOPE R A IL EY |

LOV ER'S EY ES |

J U LIO L A R R A Z |

Jill E. Banks Art, LTD................. 10 John Buxton Art, Inc................ 47

Alban, Lee................................ 120

Kathryn Weisberg Fine Art Studio..32

American Impressionist Society....126

Kennedy, Nicole White............. 124

American Tonalist Society....... 36

Laurie Hendricks Fine Art........ 115

American Women Artists......... 25-31

Mangi, Johanne........................ 47

Anderson Fine Art Gallery........ 14

Matteson, Susan Hediger........ 125

Anikis, Nik................................. 122

McGannon, Patrick................... 123

Arenas, Heather....................... 112

McKenna, Mark......................... 49

Armendariz, Tony..................... 44

Mehaffey, Mak.......................... 118

Balser, Poppy............................ 110

Mockingbird Gallery, Inc.......... 132

Basham, Jill.............................. 131

National Sculpture Society...... 47

Bedrosian, Holly....................... 119

North Star Art Gallery.............. 117

A RT ISTS ' L EG ACIES

% DECEMBER

Bennett Prize, The.................... 39

20 21

Beth Clary Schwier Fine Art..... 35

VOLUME 18

Boyer, Richard.......................... 22

ISSUE

D.

33 Contemporary Gallery........ 9 Alan Fetterman Fine Arts......... 19

6

Briscoe Western Art Museum.. 33 Brookgreen Gardens................ 41 Brown, Adra A.......................... 113 Brown, Roger Dale................... 38 California Museum of Fine Art.34 Cheers, Robin........................... 117 Claggett Rey Gallery................ 13

DECEMBER 2021

JuliAnne Jonker (b. 1957), In My Life (detail), 2021, charcoal on board, 18 x 24 in., available through the artist.

Condrat, Michelle..................... 116 Crouter, Anni............................ 18

FINE ART PORTFOLIO:

Customs House Museum & Cultural Center...................................... 24

Green Zones: The Natural World

Daly, Thomas Aquinas.............. 43

Portfolio Submissions Due: Tuesday, March 15

Doellinger, Mick....................... 132

de la Vega, Angela Mia............. 40 Drake, Margaret....................... 46 Drewyer, Christine................... 25

Odom, Kathie........................... 116 Oil Painters of America............ 37 Oliver, Tim................................ 46 Olmsted Gallery....................... 120 Paula Holtzclaw Fine Art.......... 111 Peninsula School of Art............ 2 Plein Air Painters of New Mexico..127 Poets & Artists.......................... 8 Pollak, Laura............................. 7 Putnam, Lori............................. 114 RJD Gallery............................... 21 Robbins, Elizabeth................... 47 Roberts, Devin Michael............ 125 Rosen, Cynthia......................... 114 Savides, Trish........................... 112 Schneider, William A................ 110 Schwartz, Jean......................... 111 Scottsdale Art Auction............. 11

Evans, Beverly.......................... 121

Shuptrine’s Gold Leaf Designs.5

Evansen, Andy.......................... 45

Sneary, Richard........................ 113

Fluhr, Nanette........................... 109

Squier, Deborah....................... 123

Garrish, Mary............................ 4

Strock Wasson, Carol............... 121

Women Artist Spotlight

Garrity, Aida............................. 119

Swift, Peter............................... 109

Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club 125th Anniversary

Gary Alsum Bronze Sculpture.. 124

Teare, Brad............................... 15

Groesser, Debra Joy................. 126

The Artful Deposit.................... 122

Hassard, Ray............................. 127

Twisted Fish Gallery................. 18

Hitt, Karen Ann......................... 48

Wagner, Jill Stefani................... 115

Holmes, Marcia........................ 29

Walker, Nina Cobb.................... 46

Illume Gallery of Fine Art......... 17

Wausau Museum Of Contemporary

Jeff Legg Studio....................... 46

Art............................................. 42

Jenny Buckner Fine Art............ 6

Wells, J. Russell........................ 118

SPECIAL SECTIONS:

Oil Painters of America (OPA)

Reserve your ad today!

Space reservation deadline: April 1, 2022

F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M

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C L A S S I C

L A W R E N C E W . L E E ( b . 1 9 4 7 ) , M e t a Tw o , 2 0 1 6 , a c r y l i c o n canvas, 48 x 48 in., collection of the artist

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Jill Basham

To the Valley 16x20 oil on linen

jillbasham.com | jillbasham2014@gmail.com Principle, Alexandria VA I Reinert, Charleston SC I Trippe, Easton MD | Crown, Blowing Rock NC I Sugarlift Gallery, NYC (online) | Olmsted Gallery (online)