Landscape painting of the Grand Canyon
Peter A. Nisbet (b. 1948), "Sunburst, Grand Canyon," 2019, oil on canvas, 38 x 54 in., Meyer Gallery (Santa Fe) 

From the Fine Art Connoisseur January/February 2023 Editor’s Note:

The Future Beckons

Most readers move through this magazine from front to back, so it’s customary to read Eric Rhoads’s Publisher’s Letter before my Editor’s Note.

Fine Art Connoisseur JanFeb 2023 cover
On the Cover: Andrea Kowch (b. 1986), “Expectation,” 2019 (detail), acrylic on canvas, 10 x 10 in., private collection.

In this issue, Eric has shared the fascinating backstory of how he came to love art and how this magazine came to exist 20 years ago. It’s poignant to be reminded how few ateliers there were then, and how relatively rare it was to find great contemporary realist art in galleries, not to mention online.

Fortunately, all of that has changed for the better, and now the Fine Art Connoisseur team is — as Eric noted — looking forward to the next 20 years, helping artists and collectors flourish even more. Milène J. Fernández’s eight-page-long article (see pages 73–80 of this issue) offers an insightful snapshot of today’s realist scene from her informed vantage, filled with names and venues that will surely intrigue you, if you don’t know them already.

But you know what? I could actually have invited four or five more distinguished observers like Milène to write similar articles, and those folks would probably have come up with hundreds more names and venues to admire! Because every true artist is unique — and thus not really in “competition” with any other artist — and because we live in such a huge country, we are blessed to have thousands and thousands of gifted realists out there to admire and cover in this magazine. The talent pool was not nearly so wide and deep 20 years ago, so its growth is truly cause for celebration.

When friends ask which part of this magazine makes my heart skip a beat, I usually demur, replying that it’s a bit like naming your favorite child. When pressed, though, I admit that it’s the Five to Watch profiles written (brilliantly) by Allison Malafronte in every issue. Why? Because most of these artists are unfamiliar to our readers (“emerging”) and, in some cases, young enough to still be finding their mature voices. Over my nearly 17 years as editor-in-chief, it has been personally gratifying to see their careers evolve and blossom, and sometimes even to learn later that our profile contributed directly to their professional growth. Any field will eventually collapse if it does not have gifted practitioners entering it, and I am glad to confirm that realist art in America today has plenty of fresh talent on the rise.

Of course, Americans have always loved the new, so it’s a thrill to see some emerging realists suddenly getting represented by power-house “cutting-edge” galleries and included in “contemporary” museums’ exhibitions and acquisition lists. That has been a long time coming, and it’s still not as good for realists as it is for (say) conceptualists, but it’s definitely going in the right direction.

Caution: the cutting-edge contemporary market is a fickle, fashion-led place, so one never knows when the wind might turn. For this and other good reasons, it’s essential that we all keep buying the realist artworks we admire, showing them to our friends and colleagues, encouraging our museums and other community venues to show them, urging local galleries to sell them, patronizing the ateliers where the training occurs, and generally cheerleading the artists themselves. What you do as a collector — as a Fine Art Connoisseur — really does matter, even if you can’t always see the results right now.

Thank you for supporting this art and these artists, and please keep doing so. We are all definitely moving forward, and the path ahead looks very promising.

What are your thoughts? Share your letter to the Editor below in the comments.

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