As part of our effort to continue to help artists and art galleries thrive, we’re proud to bring you this week’s “Virtual Gallery Walk.” Browse the artwork below and click the image itself to learn more about it, including how to contact the gallery.
Want to see your gallery featured in an upcoming Virtual Gallery Walk? Contact us at [email protected] to advertise today. Don’t delay, as spaces are first come, first served, and availability is limited.
Echoes of Nature: Works by Contemporary Chinese Artists
Studio Channel Islands Gallery
Camarillo, California
studiochannelislands.org/echoes-of-nature/
through July 30, 2022
The Studio Channel Islands Gallery recently opened “Echoes of Nature: Works by Contemporary Chinese Artists,” an exhibition curated by Aihua Zhou Pearce, Ph.D., who teaches drawing at California Lutheran University. Her focus is Chinese and Chinese-American artists who depict figures and landscape, utilizing their academic training to create new forms of contemporary realist art that bridge Eastern and Western visual culture.
The show is organized around four themes. First is the new approach to figuration represented by Xu Weixin, who makes portraits of sooty-faced workers who risk their lives mining coal, and by Victor Wang, who uses rich color to evoke a sense of movement more dynamic than what we often see in traditional Chinese art. Second is a new form of landscape painting epitomized by Mao Qingyun, who prefers to work in tempera, and third is the artist Mian Situ, who researches and depicts the struggles of early Chinese immigrants in America. Finally, there is the socially engaged art of Nan Liu, who paints the lives of students on his Florida university campus, and of California professor Yu Ji, who draws with pencils to capture how Chinese men live in America today.
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We’d like to congratulate Laurie Kersey for winning Overall First Place in the April 2022 PleinAir Salon, judged by Camille Przewodek.
Here’s Kersey’s inspiration, challenges, and thoughts on the composition of “Stillness.”
Inspiration: I loved the golden glow of the sinking sun on the hillside, contrasted with the foreground in full shadow. My intention was to depict the peaceful, quiet end of day and onset of evening.
Challenges: The biggest challenge in this piece was the color and value of the horses since my reference was from multiple photos that were shot in broad daylight. I had to rely on theory and experience to convert them to the appropriate tones for that shadow area.
Composition: I used a photo reference of the background hill, created a different foreground area, and added the horses from other photos, arranging them in a composition that was balanced and created the quiet mood I was looking for.
“The first place was a well done painting,” said Przewodek. “It stood out from all the other paintings. Good composition, drawing, mood, etc. It has everything.”
In the spirit of the French Salon created by the Academie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, this annual online art competition, with 11 monthly cycles, leading to the annual Salon Grand Prize winners, is designed to stimulate artistic growth through competition. The competition rewards artists with over $33,000 in cash prizes and exposure of their work, with the winning painting featured on the cover of PleinAir Magazine.
Winners in each monthly competition may receive recognition and exposure through PleinAir Magazine’s print magazine, e-newsletters, websites, and social media. Winners of each competition will also be entered into the annual competition. The 12th Annual Awards will be presented live at the Plein Air Convention & Expo in May 2023.
The next round of the PleinAir Salon has begun so hurry, as this competition ends on the last day of the month. Enter your best art in the PleinAir Salon here.
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How do you find Inspiration?
Kim Casebeer: I find inspiration in nature in a variety of ways. It can be in the places I go near where I live, or in the places that I visit. Revisiting places near where I live, such as in “Evening at the Pond,” may seem mundane, but going back to the same places over and over again allows me to more deeply study a location. It’s when I get to know a place that I can bring more of my feelings for it into the painting, which is really at the heart of why I paint. That is why these simple places can be so wonderful to paint.
Having the opportunity to visit other locations such as the Grand Teton National Park, which inspired “Last Moments of the Day,” is also very inspiring. I plein air paint a lot when I’m visiting a location. Bringing these plein airs home gives me valuable insight when working on larger pieces. The light, shadows, wind, rain, sun, and how I felt – these are all important notes to capture and bring back to the studio. No matter if I’m painting in my backyard, or across the country, I want to elicit an emotional response from the viewer.
To see more of Kim’s work, visit:
www.kimcasebeer.com
PRIX DE WEST
National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum
Oklahoma City
nationalcowboymuseum.org/prix-de-west
Through August 7, 2022
The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum is set to launch its 50th annual Prix de West Invitational Art Exhibition & Sale, always one of the field’s highest-quality events. On display are more than 300 paintings and sculpture created by nearly 100 invited talents, including special guest artists Grant Redden and D. LaRue Mahlke. Their works depict landscapes, wildlife, figures, portraits, and momentous moments in Western history and lore.
Prix de West is the museum’s largest annual fundraiser, with last year’s revenues totaling more than $2.8 million. This year the accompanying catalogue has been expanded to include an in-depth history of the project’s first half-century.
To make reservations, see the full schedule, or arrange to bid by proxy, please visit the museum’s website.
> Visit EricRhoads.com to learn about more opportunities for artists and art collectors, including retreats, international art trips, art conventions, and more.
> Sign up to receive Fine Art Today, our free weekly e-newsletter
> Subscribe to Fine Art Connoisseur magazine, so you never miss an issue
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth Fort Worth
themodern.org
Through September 25, 2022
“Women Painting Women” is a title we see often. Now the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth is presenting its own take on this important theme through an exhibition of approximately 60 portraits created by 46 women from around the world since the late 1960s.
Chief curator Andrea Karnes says, “The pivotal narrative is how these artists use the conventional portrait of a woman as a catalyst to tell another story outside of male interpretations of the female body. They conceive new ways to activate and elaborate on the portrayal of women. Replete with complexities, realness, abjection, beauty, complications, everydayness, pain, and pleasure, the portraits connect to all kinds of women, and they make way for women artists to share the stage with their male counterparts in defining the female figure.”
To achieve these goals, the show highlights four themes. First, the body, ranging from unidealized to fantasized nudes, is seen by such artists as Alice Neel, Jenny Saville, Sylvia Sleigh, Mickalene Thomas, and Lisa Yuskavage. Next comes “Nature Personified,” in which artists like Joan Semmel, Luchita Hurtado, Susan Rothenberg, and Tracey Emin look to the mythology of woman as it relates to mother earth figures, priestesses, and goddesses, as well as to the metaphysical powers associated with being female.
The exhibition’s third section highlights “Color as Portrait,” revealing how exaggerated or dramatic usage of color and form can convey specific content about female identity, including race, gender, and archetypes. The artists represented here include Emma Amos, Faith Ringgold, Joan Brown, and Amy Sherald. Finally comes a section about selfhood, in which subtleties of gesture, posture, and setting capture the energy or presence of a sitter’s psychological (sometimes physical) state. On view here are works by Nicole Eisenman, Maria Lassnig, Elizabeth Peyton, Marlene Dumas, Jordan Casteel, and others.
“Women Painting Women” is accompanied by a 172-page catalogue published by DelMonico Books.
> Visit EricRhoads.com to learn about more opportunities for artists and art collectors, including retreats, international art trips, art conventions, and more.
> Sign up to receive Fine Art Today, our free weekly e-newsletter
> Subscribe to Fine Art Connoisseur magazine, so you never miss an issue
By David Masello
The subject was ready for its close-up. The painter Ken Goshen (b. 1988) ensured that sunlight and shadow were balanced perfectly in his Astoria, Queens, studio so as to best capture the nuances of his sitter: a torn loaf of challah bread, with its billowing, yeasty interior and shiny browned crust.
Goshen’s series of challah bread paintings epitomizes his work as a portraitist and also his adherence to techniques both classical and contemporary. “With these works,” explains the boyishly exuberant artist, “I want to combine the visual language of classical paintings with the way we look at art today. Bread has a way of influencing our associative image bank, like when you look at clouds and see faces, animals, bodies. In addition, challah has a cultural significance for me,” says Goshen, who was raised in Jerusalem but now works in New York as an artist and teacher. “Where I come from, bread brings people together. I feel an extra responsibility to paint the challah well, knowing it’s not going to be shared or consumed. I need to deliver on doing a really good painting of it.”
On Sunday afternoons, you might well find Goshen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, leading his students through drawing and sketching exercises. There he often brings them before masterworks by Ingres, Rembrandt, Velázquez, and Caravaggio. Goshen is a thoughtful and spirited teacher, urging students to look — and keep looking — at the image before them. His goal during these four-week-long sessions is to teach light and shadow: “Understanding these two elements is the most fundamental lesson of drawing — how to take something out there and put it into shapes with the correct measure and proportion.”
Goshen is also a tireless painter of people. After serving three years in the Israeli army, where there was no time for painting, he became an artist “so that I could paint all day long. I had built up a creative energy by not being able to, so now no amount of painting feels overwhelming. I could paint 12 hours a day.”
Indeed, Goshen works as long as he can, resulting in an ever-growing body of paintings that includes an eerily lifelike self-portrait hearkening back to ancient Egyptian encaustics. Now he sees another objective in the distance — “to create my own art school. I have such a passion for painting that I’m just as happy to look at students’ finished works as my own.”
> Visit EricRhoads.com to learn about more opportunities for artists and art collectors, including retreats, international art trips, art conventions, and more.
> Sign up to receive Fine Art Today, our free weekly e-newsletter
> Subscribe to Fine Art Connoisseur magazine, so you never miss an issue
As part of our effort to continue to help artists and art galleries thrive, we’re proud to bring you this week’s “Virtual Gallery Walk.” Browse the artwork below and click the image itself to learn more about it, including how to contact the gallery.
Want to see your gallery featured in an upcoming Virtual Gallery Walk? Contact us at [email protected] to advertise today. Don’t delay, as spaces are first come, first served, and availability is limited.
Richard Boyer: I had a request from Berkley Gallery in Warrenton, VA to do some more Manhattan painting for some of their clients. The owner told me they seemed to hit a chord with collectors. 2. “Taxi Ride into the City”, won the best building Award during the 9th Annual Plein Air Salon.
The inspiration for these works was from a trip we did to Manhattan just before Christmas, the rain just made the city glow.
To see more of Richard’s work, visit:
http://www.richardboyerart.net
https://www.instagram.com/richard_boyer370/
https://www.facebook.com/richard.boyer.39/
http://www.berkleygallery.com/selected-works-by-artist/richard-boyer
Johanne Mangi: Although I’m known for painting dogs, I actually paint a variety of animals, people and things. Dogs just happen to be my happy place.
These images are all new works. The Tiger is not quite finished but veeery close! Reka was a favored Tiger at the Beardsley Zoo. I’ve painted her before. The Borzoi started as my Demo at PACE22. I liked it so much, I finished it. And the roses were painted from life. I love sticking flowers in vases and moving them around painting them outside or by a window.
To see more of Johanne’s work, visit:
Website: www.johannemangi.com
Instagram: @mangijohanne
FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/johannemangifineart/
