12. LINDA NEARON (b. 1942), "Burst of Beauty," oil on canvas, 20 x 16 in., private collection
Paintings of Flowers: Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May
It begins in childhood when toddlers – moving closer to the ground than the rest of us – pick flowers in a garden or park.
Perhaps it’s their pleasing colors, or the fragrant scents, or the likelihood that Mom will be pleased with the resulting bouquet.
Whatever the reason, humans seem to be hardwired to enjoy – even cherish – flowers, so it’s no surprise that visual artists have for centuries expressed their own admiration in diverse ways.
On offer here is a profusion of blooms created in different media, sometimes seen on their own, other times set into architectural or environmental contexts.
Most of these images exult in nature’s beauty, while others are rather symbolist in their layered meanings; there are even a few reminding us that flowers’ beauty, like life itself, does not endure forever.
Enjoy this bouquet, and be sure to appreciate the “real” flowers in our nearest garden or park, too.
1. KATHY ANDERSON (b. 1945), “Hollyhocks and New Dawn Roses,” oil on canvas, 30 x 20 in., available from the artist2. JUDY CROWE (b. 1953), “China and Primroses,” oil on linen panel, 12 x 12 in., private collection3. INNA CHERNEYKINA (b. 1971), “Summer Colors,” oil on 12 x 12 in., oil on panel, Portola Art Gallery, Menlo Park, California4. THOMAS DARNELL (b. 1958), “Poppies,” oil on linen, 67 x 59 in., collection of Matt Wright and Melanie Wombwell, London5. KURT ANDERSON (b. 1958), “Roses in a Greek Vase,” oil on canvas, 36 x 24 in., private collection6. HEATHER LYNN GIBSON (b. 1970), “Buying Hydrangeas,” oil on linen, 12 x 12 in., collection of the artist7. DAVID HETTINGER (b. 1946), “A Still-Life for Adrienne,” oil on linen, 20 x 24 in., Rose Renée Fine Art8. JANE JONES (b. 1953), “Calla Lily Trompe l’Oeil I,” oil on board, 12 1/4 x 12 3/4 in., Sugarman-Peterson Gallery, Santa Fe9. MARYBETH K ARAUS (b. 1962) “Bountiful Cascade,” Oil on linen, 60 x 32 in. Private collection10. JIM McVICKER (b. 1951), “White Amaryllis,” oil on linen, 30 x 24 in., J.M. Stringer Gallery, Vero Beach, FL11. KATIE MUSOLFF (b. 1982), “Dismantled,” watercolor on paper, 12 x 10 in., private collection12. LINDA NEARON (b. 1942), “Burst of Beauty,” oil on canvas, 20 x 16 in., private collection13. GELENA PAVLENKO (b. 1969), “Rays, Irises,” oil on canvas, 20 x 28 in., Lotton Gallery, Chicago14. CAMILLE PRZEWODEK (b. 1947) “Flowers at Sunset,” Oil on panel, 8 x 10 in., Private collection (Related: How to Paint Like Monet, by Camille Przewodek)15. SARA JANE REYNOLDS (b. 1948), “Fallen Petals,” oil on canvas, 16 x 20 in., Reinert Fine Art, Charleston16. ELIZABETH ROBBINS (b. 1962) “Indian Summer,” oil on linen, 24 x 28 in., Private collection17. JAMES ANDREW SMITH (b. 1968), “The Reason for Silence,” oil on panel, 12 x 9 in., Joseph Gierek Fine Art, Tulsa
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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.
Spoonbill by Sherry Egger, Mixed media, 36 x 24 in.; Anderson Fine Art Gallery
His Master’s Vice by Tony South, Acrylic and oil on canvas, 39 x 47 in., Signed and dated 2021, (On view at the LA Art Show 1/19-23); Rehs Contemporary
Moulin Rouge by Antoine Blanchard, Oil on canvas, 13 x 18 in., Signed; Rehs Galleries, Inc.
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.
Artist, Gary Alsum with “Colorado Governor, Ralph Carr,” commission for Carr Judicial Center, Denver, Colorado. Bronze, 54” tall, 2012
What is the most interesting thing you have sculpted and why?
Most of my work in the past couple of decades has been in collaboration with individual collectors or municipal entities along with the National Sculptors’ Guild (NSG). Most of those works honor people from our past but some are intended to preserve favorite memories or activities. My favorite subjects are the figure in motion, but capturing likenesses is just as satisfying. All the commissions I am awarded are a special honor. I take the responsibility seriously with the goal of giving clients more than they expect.
Working with the NSG allows me to do what I do best — create meaningful sculpture — while they handle the logistics of scheduling, engineering, transportation, landscaping that enhances the sculpture, installation etc. Not all my sculptures are large enough to require trucks and cranes and such, but when they do, the NSG is an invaluable asset.
How do you describe success?
I feel most successful when a client is moved to tears when they first see a finished sculpture. But occasionally I create more humorous depictions – dogs driving classic cars with reckless abandon. (How else would dogs drive?) Success then is when viewers burst out in laughter. It makes for a fun mix.
Painter Erin Berrett, is inspired by the term “still life.” She states, “There’s a fundamental tension between the still and the life, isn’t there.” That is exactly what her work captures when she paints. Her objects are never completely motionless, or emotionless for that matter. They tremble. They vibrate. Those vibrations are produced not only by the construction of the object, but by the external forces exerted upon it — the angle of the light, for instance, and the perspective of the viewer.
Erin says, “I push myself to be abstract in the details while still achieving the perception of reality. When I paint, I never blend. Instead, I layer thousands of marks side-by-side, swaths of color that are then translated by the observer. Two inches of canvas viewed from a few inches away might have a hundred brush strokes that seem to form nothing, but when the piece is considered as a whole, the effect is highly representational. I love working as an artist, though I often wonder how much choice I had in the matter. I’ve always painted, from dabbling with watercolors and pastels as a child in Salt Lake City to studying abroad and earning my BFA at the University of Utah.”
The New York Figurative Show
The Salmagundi Club, New York City salmagundi.org
January 10–28, 2022
Brandon Soloff (b. 1973), “Cassandra,” 2016, oil on canvas, 31 x 25 in.
The Salmagundi Club is opening 2022 with “The New York Figurative Show,” highlighting the human form in all its permutations.
Presenting an array of works in various media, including drawings, paintings, photographs, and sculpture, this display explores the range of figurative practices thriving in artists’ studios today.
The competition was open to both Salmagundi members and non-members working worldwide, be they established or emerging.
The selections were made by members of the club’s art committee in collaboration with guest adviser Patricia Watwood.
The awards jurors will be artists Max Ginsburg and Colleen Barry, who will present a $4,000 first prize, a $1,500 second prize, a $750 third prize, and a $500 award from Vanessa Rothe Fine Art (Laguna Beach).
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MARY PETTIS (b. 1953), "Quiet Beginnings, Dance of Spring," 2017, oil on linen, 24 x 36 in., private collection
There is a lot of superb contemporary realism being made these days; this article by Allison Malafronte shines light on a gifted individual:
A painting by MARY PETTIS (b. 1953) invites us to linger and become lost in the beauty of what she has captured on canvas. She has made a name for herself in the landscape-painting community through soulful, nuanced portrayals of nature painted both outdoors and in the studio. Although the artist travels widely in search of such scenes — China, Russia, and most of Europe — she is equally satisfied with her Minnesota surroundings.
Pettis’s training began through the influence of Richard Lack’s atelier in Minneapolis and of Daniel Graves (before he founded the Florence Academy of Art in 1991). She also studied with Hungarian painter Bela Petheo (1934–2017) and was strongly influenced by Russian art as well.
Studying with the Wyoming artist Jim Wilcox, who taught her to paint wet-in-wet from life, inspired in Pettis a new passion for plein air work. Her subsequent instructors have included Kevin Macpherson, James Shoop, Zhang Wen Xin, and Jove Wang. Along the way, Pettis learned that technique alone, without contemplation and content, is empty.
A fine example of such contemplativeness is “Quiet Beginnings, Dance of Spring,” a studio piece created from a 16-x-24-inch plein air sketch. “This scene is just steps from my studio door, and it is one of my favorite motifs,” Pettis explains. “On this particular day, the warm spring air was calling the new grass through last year’s ochres so quickly I could barely keep up. I could smell the moist earth, and each time I looked, the sky became more dramatic. My humbled thoughts were ‘How can I share this extraordinary beauty without overstating it?’ All I know is that when I paint a scene close to my heart, from life, something deep inside me resonates, and I am able to recall and expand on that memory more profoundly in the studio.”
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Western Art > “Back-Tracking in Memory” by Nancy Cooper Russell tells the story of the endearing, gifted cowboy artist, Charles M. Russell.
Charles M. Russell on Monty (or Monte), Utica (1886); Photograph by Townley & Runsten, Mandan, D.T. PETRIE COLLECTION.
Nancy Cooper married Charles M. Russell in the little town of Cascade, Montana, in September, 1896. She was eighteen, effectively an orphan, and he was thirty-two, a former cowboy from a good family in St. Louis struggling to make his living as an artist. She would be by his side for the rest of his life as his wife, cheerleader, and extraordinarily capable business manager.
When he died in Great Falls, Montana in 1926, shortly after they celebrated their 30th anniversary, Charlie Russell was at the top of the heap, an American original world famous as the “Cowboy Artist.”
A few months earlier Nancy had written an acquaintance who remembered her from her hardscrabble youth in Helena, “Yes, I am, or was, the little girl you were talking about, way back in ’94. . . . I, as you know, married the only Charles Russell in the world and my life has been very full of romance, which they like to make moving pictures out of, only mine happens to be real.”
Charles M. Russell, “When Wagon Trails Were Dim,” 1919; Albert K. Mitchell Collection, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (1975.020.5) “They had a hard time crossing the Crazy Mountains, for the wagon trails were very dim and rough, and one of the horses was played out.”
She realized that with Charlie’s passing, it was up to her to keep that dream alive by keeping him alive for the public, through exhibitions showing his genius with a brush and modeling clay and through books that revealed the man behind the art: “Trails Plowed Under,” a collection of his rangeland stories; “Good Medicine,” a compilation of his inimitable illustrated letters; and a biography, “Back-Tracking in Memory,” that would tell the story of the endearing, gifted man she had known intimately for half his life.
Nancy worked on the biography until her death in 1940 without ever quite finishing it. Tom Petrie and Brian Dippie have collaborated on bringing what she did finish into print, with sidebars, photographs, and artwork to amplify her text.
“Back Tracking in Memory” is available at local bookstores and gift shops, through online retailers, or from distributor Farcountry Press at www.farcountrypress.com.
> Visit EricRhoads.com to learn about more opportunities for artists and art collectors, including retreats, international art trips, art conventions, and more
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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.
Morning Retreat by Steven Walker, Oil, 22 x 30 in.; Anderson Fine Art Gallery
Studio Sky by Walter Rane (Born 1949), Oil on panel, 48 x 36 in., Signed; Rehs Contemporary
Harlequin by Ugo Giannini (1919 – 1993), Oil on canvas, 32 x 26 in., Signed; Rehs Galleries, Inc.
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.
How did you get started and then develop your career?
Marcia Holmes: After a career as a CPA, I started experimenting by questioning my mother, who was an accomplished abstract artist in Mississippi. First using transparent layers of oil, watercolor and ink on paper, in a process of extremely loose, alla prima sessions, I added pastel as the “accent” on top and fell in love with the visceral quality, immediacy, and glorious color that remained.
Twenty-one years later, with over 16 Solo exhibitions, numerous juried award-winning pastel exhibitions, features and museum inclusions, notably, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art Louisiana Contemporary 2018 for my abstract painting; I have been awarded Eminent Pastel status with the International Association of Pastel Societies, as well as the distinction of Master Pastelist with the Pastel Society of America.
How do you find inspiration?
Totally immersed in nature I find inspiration from water reflections, exploring a feeling, energy of movement, and creatively interpreting these strong impressions as I hover between abstract expressionism and representation. Often painting larger scale impressionist landscape paintings in oil or mixed media on canvas, my desired response for a viewer in all that I do is to find a resting place of ‘grace in space’.
Picasso Paintings on View
The Art Gallery of Ontario ago.ca
through January 16, 2022
The Art Gallery of Ontario has organized the exhibition “Picasso: Painting the Blue Period.” It focuses on the paintings, works on paper, and sculpture the young Spaniard made between 1901 and 1904, when he fashioned a distinctive style by adapting the artistic lessons he had learned in Paris to the social and political climate of economically struggling Barcelona, where he lived.
The project has grown from a series of technical studies performed on several key paintings, offering new insights on their hidden compositions, motifs, and alterations, plus hitherto unknown information on Picasso’s materials and process.
The accompanying catalogue (Delmonico Books) brings art history and conservation science together in a fascinating, and still too rare, way.
The show will move on to the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., where it will be on view from February 26 through June 12.
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