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.
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Since the Hudson River School painters of the early 19th century, artists have chosen to convey the American landscape with a sense of reverence, spirituality, or personal reflection. Contemporary artists Timothy Barr, T. Allen Lawson, and Randall Exon each draw from this tradition, painting remarkable scenes of lush forests, wintery plains, and timeworn architecture of small-town and rural America.
Rather than following strictly what they observe, however, each artist refracts the landscape through a distinct lens, exploring formal issues as well as those of personal or emotional consequence.
“American Scenes,” an exhibition of paintings by Lawson, Barr, and Exon, is on view at LewAllen Galleries in Santa Fe, New Mexico, through Tuesday, June 8, 2021.
Barr, Lawson, and Exon each convey countryside vistas, mountains, forests or rivers, interpreted through the poetics of tone, light, and color. As many of their landscapes are of scenes that are partially imagined or personally significant, they gleam with a sheen of familiarity and romance that drives them beyond objective depiction. These artists’ images of stone farmhouses, barns, and clapboard houses often glow with a mood of nostalgia and mystery. Their quietly powerful works are contemporary permutations of the longstanding traditions of American landscape painting.
T. Allen Lawson’s paintings of mountains, plains, and small-town life accentuate the immaterial play of ephemeral light, shadow, and color. His paintings draw on his robust plein air practice, which incorporates his observations of the landscape but bends them past literal depiction in his studio towards a quality of metaphor. Even though his paintings are borne through specific experiences in nature, as Lawson has said, “I am not drawn to nor inspired by subject alone.” Instead, Lawson’s work gains a feeling of intimacy and timelessness from Lawson’s desire to capture on canvas the abstract, ephemeral qualities of nature.
Born in 1963 in Sheridan, Wyoming, Lawson attended the College of Santa Fe before enrolling in the American Academy of Art in Chicago and later the Lyme Academy of Fine Art in Lyme, Connecticut. He was awarded the prestigious John F and Anna Lee Stacey Grant, The Red Smith Memorial Award at the National Museum of Wildlife Art, and the Jurors’ Choice Award from the Buffalo Bill Historical Center. He returned to Wyoming in 2016, where he continues to find inspiration for his work.
Randall Exon is a mid-career representational painter whose landscapes and figurative works are filled with dream-like mystery and pastoral beauty. They evoke an alluring sense of place and people, inspiring feelings of both nostalgia and wonder. His works allude to ordinary life while expressing a sense of the extraordinary.
Exon was born in South Dakota and raised in Kansas and Oregon. He received a BFA from Washburn University and an MFA from the University of Iowa. He has been teaching at Swarthmore College since 1982, and is today the Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot Professor of Art. He has earned him recognition as a Henry Luce Scholar, was awarded the Andrew Carnegie Prize from the National Academy of Design in New York, and the Thomas Benedict Clark Prize at the 179th Annual Invitational Exhibition of Contemporary American Art, National Academy Museum of Fine Arts in New York.
Timothy Barr finds great inspiration in the landscape and serenity of rural mid-Atlantic America. His intimate paintings of stone walled farmhouses, centuries-old trees, and domestic scenes embody the solitude and grandeur of pastoral life. While he is able to capture the beauty of the countryside, many of Barr’s compositions are the products of experience and imagination, brought to life through study, patience, and his sophisticated use of light. “I’m interested in the contrast that light brings to a scene,” Barr has said. “It’s fleeting and needs to be slowed down with paint so we can love it always.” Barr’s paintings are imbued with the characteristics of Luminism, a late 19th century technique highlighting reflective waters, magnificent skies, and heavenly spotlit pastures.
Timothy Barr was born in Hamburg, Pennsylvania, where he continues to live and work. He received a BFA from the Tyler School of Fine Art at Temple University in Philadelphia. Barr spent over a decade as an engineer before becoming a professional artist at the age of 33.
View “American Scenes” through Tuesday, June 8, 2021 at LewAllen Galleries in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
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The Bear And The Bees
Pastel on national park maps
30 x 40 in.
$10,000
Available at McLarry Fine Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
In a masterful realism style, artist Lisa Gleim produces engaging wildlife storybook narratives.
“Animal interactions are captivating and bears, in particular, fascinate me. They are natural models, never short on different poses while at play and work. You could say I’m drawn to them like bees to honey!”
“People often ask about my frequent coupling of bears and birds as subjects. Do bears really hang around with birds? The answer is “yes!” For example, ravens and magpies are scavengers following hunters. And do the bears always take notice? Sometimes!” laughs Lisa.
Also, an accomplished landscape artist, Lisa draws inspiration from the low country of the east coast and the western wilderness surrounding her home studios in Atlanta and Big Sky. The Bear And The Bees from her newest, instantly popular series adds a twist: road, geological and national park maps as backgrounds. An approach which just might give a viewer a nudge to head west and a map to plot the route!
Lisa, a graduate of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, has many honors and awards. This fall What Hive We Here will be featured in The Russell Exhibition and Auction hosted by the C. M. Russell Museum. Most recently The Secret Keepers was included in the Recent Treasures: New Acquisitions exhibit at the Booth Museum. In vivid color and detail, the pastel depicts a bear and three ravens.
In explaining why the museum purchased The Secret Keepers, Seth Hopkins, executive director, said, “Our curatorial committee deemed it to be of such quality and distinction and such alignment with our mission that it belonged here in the Booth Western Art Museum’s permanent collection. Lisa’s work combines a wonderful composition, mastery of her chosen media and interaction among the subjects that invites the viewer to create their own narrative; topped off with an evocative title, it’s clearly a winner.”
“The composition and story are based on a Native American cultural belief a bear is the ‘speaker’ for all animals and for the natural world we live in, while the raven is the bearer of magic and a harbinger of messages from the cosmos,” explains Lisa.
Commenting on the same piece, Michael A. Paderewski, The Sportsman’s Gallery, Ltd. & Paderewski Fine Art President says, “Lisa’s treatment of the various textures and elements within this work of art are wonderful. From the multi-hued coat of the bear to the shimmer of the ravens’ feathering, she has captured in pastel the subtleties found in nature. I am most enamored with the triangular composition. My eyes first met the eyes of the curious bear only to fall to the raven on the bottom right. From there my eyes were led clockwise from raven to raven. It seems I was not done viewing the piece until Lisa said I was.”
Equally so, in her low country, coastal and marine pastels, there is an abundance of history, culture, wildlife, carefree living and the boating life. The often-experienced relaxed atmosphere of such scenes can be somewhat deceiving. The fields, marshes, coasts and skies are teaming with activity. This genre of Lisa’s work is represented by Cheryl Newby Gallery & Beverly McNeil Gallery.
Lisa’s work is also available at Paderewski Fine Art in Beaver Creek and Nashville, McLarry Fine Art and Courtney Collins Fine Art.
Contact Lisa at LisaGleimFineArt.com, 770.919.7719, or email [email protected]
And follow Lisa on Instagram.
From the Fine Art Connoisseur May/June 2021 Editor’s Note:
Recently I headed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, partly to catch up on exhibitions and partly because it was raining. Manhattan has been comparatively sleepy during the pandemic, so I was astonished to find a long line of people waiting patiently to visit the temporary exhibition “Alice Neel: People Come First.”
On view through August 1, this is the first retrospective devoted to Alice Neel (1900–1984) that New Yorkers have seen in 20 years. Its 100 paintings, drawings, and watercolors reveal her as one of the 20th century’s most daring painters, as well as a champion of social justice at a time when that wasn’t particularly cool.
I personally had not encountered so long a line at the Met since its blockbuster featuring the late fashion designer Alexander McQueen in 2011 — a very different affair. Though I realized some of last Sunday’s pile-up owed to the rain and to current limitations on the number of people who can be admitted safely, my heart was warmed to see everyone appreciating such a deeply humane artist — one whose art has long delighted and puzzled me.
Clinging to her idiosyncratic brand of expressionistic realism right through the heyday of abstraction and beyond, Neel made frank portraits — like the one illustrated here — that are both insightful and unsettling. We see anxiety and melancholy, but also a thrilling commitment to engaging with people of all kinds, from professors and nursing mothers to addicts and drag queens.
“For me, people come first,” Neel declared in 1950. “I have tried to assert the dignity and eternal importance of the human being.” In this year of aching disconnection — when most of us must still gaze at each other on glowing screens — the painted results of Neel’s unfiltered encounters feel especially thrilling. Even her still lifes and cityscapes ring true, completely in the moment.
If the Met had mounted the Neel retrospective two years ago, I doubt it would have resonated in quite the same way. This visit reminded me: it’s not the art that changes, it’s we who change. That’s one more reason to keep looking, keep going back to see your favorites — and also the ones you didn’t like last time. You never know when they might connect with who you are now.
Download the May/June 2021 issue here, or subscribe to Fine Art Connoisseur today so you never miss an issue.
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Fine Art Connoisseur magazine.
Thomas Eakins (1844–1916), the great realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and instructor, is closely associated with Philadelphia. But he also spent time in New Jersey, using his brush and camera to record activities he enjoyed in its marshlands, as well as the rigorous labor undertaken by its shad fishermen.
The circle of male students around Eakins included Edward Boulton of Point Pleasant, New Jersey, who later received a group of photographic prints and oil studies from Eakins and his wife, Susan. Now Boulton’s descendants have loaned these treasures to the John F. Peto Studio Museum, where curator Harry Bower has partnered with Roy Pedersen of Pedersen Galleries (Lambertville, New Jersey) to organize the first presentation anywhere about Eakins’s New Jersey works.
Particularly fascinating are the juxtapositions of Eakins’s photographs and paintings, as suggested by the pair illustrated here.
The museum is an ideal venue for this project as it was the home of Eakins’s near-contemporary John Frederick Peto (1854–1907), the renowned painter of trompe l’oeil still lifes. Adorned with Peto’s artworks and original furnishings, it stands in the historic center of Island Heights.
Thomas Eakins in New Jersey
John F. Peto Studio Museum
Island Heights, New Jersey
Through June 27, 2021
petomuseum.org
> 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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Despite two major highways being closed from the middle of Nebraska all the way to Utah due to bad winter snowstorms, the American Plains Artists (APA) Signature Show opened in mid-March at the Petrified Wood & Art Gallery (Ogallala, NE) to a large, steady crowd.
Realistic and representational artworks of the American Great Plains – the wildlife, landscape, people, and the life of the Plains – were exhibited by 22 APA Signature Members from across the U.S.A. Nationally recognized awards juror Don Dernovich awarded the following:
BEST OF SHOW: “Comfort Mood,” an oil painting by Sherry Blanchard Stuart of Scottsdale, AZ
PUBLISHER’S AWARD OF EXCELLENCE: “Mama’s Boy,” an oil painting by Judy Osburn of Norman, OK
PUBLISHER’S AWARD OF EXCELLENCE: “Silence Speaks,” a bronze sculpture by Mary Michael, of Belt, MT
PUBLISHER’S AWARD OF EXCELLENCE: “Collectibles,” an oil painting by Cheryl Roush of Midland, TX
Other awards included:
The Arrowhead Award chosen by the Petrified Wood & Art Gallery: “General’s Game,” a colored pencil artwork by Eileen Nistler of Upton, WY
The Golden Spur award chosen by the APA Signature Members: “Grand Autumn Day,” an acrylic by J. I. McElroy of Gurley, NE
A special “Ogallala” Award given by the APA: “Prairie Wind,” an oil painting by Barbara Summers Edwards of Smithfield, UT.
The APA Signature show continues through May 22, 2021. The public is invited to see this “Art of the Plains” show and is also invited to attend the ending reception on May 22. For more information please visit www.americanplainsartists.com.
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Originally trained as an architect, Chizuru Morri Kaplan (b. 1954, Japan) channels the profession’s zeal for precision and perspective into saturated renderings of worlds worth inhabiting.
Whereas architectural drawings typically propose hypothetical futures, Kaplan relishes the present and demonstrates the intense mystery and magic of our existing structures. With an architect’s eye, she extols every eave, bevel, and cornice. Buildings become subjects and sculptures come alive. Places are personas.
Hugo Galerie presents “Sous le Ciel de Paris,” a solo exhibition of the exquisitely articulated watercolors of Chizuru Morii Kaplan.
More from the organizers:
Paris, Manhattan, Venice. These are Kaplan’s paramours. She depicts them as an artist illustrates an unassuming and unnoticed glimpse of a lover: her profile, her shoulder, the curve of her neck in the rain-filtered sunlight. Kaplan transmits the allure and seduction of an intimate encounter onto a portion of architectural relief. Her paintings are portraits.
The most angular edifices become supple under her gaze. Rooftops drip and stone melts. It is like falling in love all over again with the simple reflection of your sweetheart. Grandeur leaks. Elegance seeps. Light and shadow unravel into trailing vines of vision. The artist’s partial vistas of buildings and monuments encourage viewers to imagine the entire vantage and engulf her audience. And all the while, they ripple.
Kaplan’s mastery of the watercolor medium is mesmerizing. Life becomes lithe and ledges lissom. Her works convey the accuracy of a photograph through the bubbling movement of drenching rain. Her sublime waterworlds cannot be still. They dance. And, like the best music, you lose yourself in them.
For more details about “Sous le Ciel de Paris,” please visit HugoGalerie.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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Still Life with Lemons and Silver
30 x 22 in.
Watercolor on paper, on ACM panel
$6,500, framed
Available through the artist
Matthew Bird creates vibrant still life paintings in watercolor, bringing ordinary object to life with stunning clarity. Still life painting offers the opportunity to explore different textures and colors in great detail; which is beautifully displayed in Still Life with Lemons and Silver.
An analogous color scheme is used to bring these textures to life, creating a rich and vibrant painting. Joining forces, the warm yellow hues and the various greens and blues work harmoniously as they reflect on every silver surface.
Matthew works methodically, incorporating many layers to build up rich darks and popping color. Pure watercolor is a transparent medium — no white paint is used. Areas that are white reveal the original paper surface, carefully preserved during the progression.
In the final step, the watercolor paper is mounted to ACM panel (aluminum composite material) to provide a rigid, archival surface and to flatten the painting, eliminating any warping in the watercolor process. This extensive practice is time consuming, and when done after the painting is completed, requires great care and patience so there is no risk to the painting.
Matthew Bird lives outside Baltimore, Maryland, with his wife and children, where he paints with a deep love and respect for nature and life, enjoying both portrait and still life work.
He is a Signature Member of numerous organizations, including the National Watercolor Society where he served as vice president, and his award-winning watercolor paintings have been exhibited in juried shows across the United States, as well as in Canada, China, England, Greece, Hong Kong, and Italy. His work is in a permanent museum collection as well as numerous private collections.
Visit matthewbird.com for more work by Matthew Bird, or to sign up for his e-newsletter.
And go behind the scenes via:
Facebook: Matthew Bird Studio
Instagram: @_matthewbird_
Winter Reflections
11 x 17 in.
Pastel on paper
$975 unframed
Available from the artist
Jill Stefani Wagner: “Winter Reflections was inspired by a lovely walk in a local park during an especially cold January. As a Michigan artist, I have learned to appreciate the snowy months in the Midwest almost as much as I love the beautiful spring, summer and fall days. Each season has its own unique beauty. Winter scenes suggest a more tonal approach to painting, with cooler hues and greyed down values. I especially love the abstract quality that the landscape takes on during these barren months. In this piece I played a bit with abstraction, painting a close-up view of stark trees reflected in a river.
“Whether painting landscapes, interiors or figures, my primary focus is always the light and how it affects the subject I’m trying to capture. Working in pastel and oil I approach my paintings as a sculptor would, carving out nuances of highlight and shadow.
“An avid plein air artist, I’m inspired by the American landscape and that of my beloved Italy. I find my greatest joy painting on location, taking in the atmosphere, temperature, sounds and smells, as well as the view. I participate in national plein air festivals, traveling throughout the country to capture the uniqueness of each venue. During the cold Michigan winters, I work in my studio creating larger pieces…but always, always chasing the light.”
Jill Stefani Wagner’s artwork has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions throughout the country and is included in many corporate and private collections. Her paintings have been juried into prestigious national and international oil and pastel exhibits, and have been honored with multiple awards.
One of Jill’s paintings graced the cover of PleinAir Magazine, and her work is often featured in their pages. Fine Art Connoisseur Magazine has frequently highlighted her paintings as has Pastel Journal and the French magazine, Practique des Arts. Wagner has been invited Pastel Faculty at PleinAir Magazine’s Plein Air Convention for four years and enjoys teaching workshops and mentoring other artists.
Wagner is a designated Master Pastelist in the Pastel Society of America and Master Circle in the International Association of Pastel Societies, and belongs to American Impressionist Society, Oil Painters of America, Great Lakes Pastel Society and Degas Pastel Society.
Jill Stefani Wagner graduated with a B.F.A. in painting from University of Michigan School of Art. She owned an award-winning advertising firm in Ann Arbor, Michigan, before “seeing the light” and becoming a full-time artist.
Jill’s paintings are represented in the Midwest by:
J. Petter Galleries in Saugatuck Michigan
Castle Gallery in Fort Wayne, Indiana
Fuller Art House in Sylvania, Ohio
View more paintings at www.jillwagnerart.com
Contact Jill at [email protected]
Lot’s O’ Lines
by Catherine Hillis
Watercolor
19 x 20 in.
Georgia Watercolor Society 2021 National Exhibition
2nd Place Winner
Available through:
Georgia Watercolor Society Annual Exhibition
Carrollton Center for the Arts
251 Alabama Street
Carrollton, GA 30117
April 5 – May 14, 2021
Catherine Hillis paints both en plein air and in the studio, competing nationally in plein air and watermedia events.
“Lots O’ Lines” was created from a series of photographs taken in Apalachicola, Florida, during the St. George Island Paint Out. The town is rich in subject matter and is a favorite spot for artists to paint. Even though the Florida panhandle has suffered through hurricanes, fires and economic downturns, a stubborn determination to survive is evident everywhere. These fishermen were patiently working as a team to put their lines in order before the next day’s work. Catherine finds beauty in most humble corners and especially enjoys taking a chaotic scene, such as this, and putting it in order.
Catherine has participated in the arts all her life, majoring in theatre in college and working as an actor and costume designer in her early adult years. She turned to painting when her children were young, choosing watercolor as her specialty. She paints landscapes, cityscapes, still life and figures. She teaches workshops all over the world and offers classes locally near her home studio on historic Saint Simons Island, Georgia.
Upcoming shows and events:
April 2021 Coastal Virginia Plein Air
April – June, 2021 American Women Artists Juried Online Show
April – May, 2021 Georgia Watercolor Society National Exhibition
May 2021 St. George Island Paint Out
May 2021 Pikes Peak International Watermedia Exhibition
April 23 – June 19: 44th Annual Southern Watercolor Society Exhibition, Gadsden Arts Museum
June 2021 Paint Annapolis!
July 2021 Telluride Plein Air
October 2021 New Smyrna Beach Invitational
Gallery Representation
Anderson Fine Art Gallery
www.andersonfineartgallery.com
View more of Catherine’s work: www.catherinehillis.com
Follow the artist on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.
Email Catherine: [email protected]
