Competition
Oil on canvas
36 x 36 in.
$7000 Available for purchase through the South Street Art Gallery
During her life as a painter, Nancy Tankersley has moved fluidly from portraiture to still life and figurative paintings and finally on to plein air landscapes.
“I think it is important for contemporary artists to capture the land and the people as they are today. I do not try to romanticize or invent my subjects, but I do try to show the beauty of the ordinary. People engaged in their occupations, enjoying their leisure time by eating, shopping or just strolling down a street, as well as abandoned and often overlooked landscapes … all of these are ordinary subjects, which can make extraordinary paintings. I try to paint from life as much as possible so that my work has the authenticity that comes from capturing a moment in time.”
The breath of her themes has enabled her to draw what she has learned from each and apply that knowledge with conviction in Competition. Nancy draws upon her skill with the figure in capturing the gesture of the lone waterman balanced on the edge of his skiff, performing the timeless ritual of ‘tonging” oysters from the floor of the Chesapeake Bay. The baskets of oysters and the rigging of the boat provide a motif for still life while capturing the changing hues of the water and the flatness of the landscape are pictorial elements she has captured en plein air many times in the 15 years since she settled on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.
“I’ve always enjoyed capturing the gesture of the figure and especially that of figures at work.”
In the past two decades she has explored workers of the restaurant industry, first responders, landscapers, airport workers, dancers and even cowboys! This year Nancy has been selected to be the Featured Artist at the 49th Annual Waterfowl Festival and will display watermen and women working the various industries provided by the ecology of the Chesapeake Bay.
“Eight years ago a commission to paint portraits of working watermen opened up a whole treasure chest of painting ideas!”
Nancy has recently published a book of her first figurative theme series Figures on the Beach. The book contains 64 color images of paintings from the past 25 years. On the Beach is available through her website.
Nancy’s instructional DVD, Painting Figures from Photographs, is available now. To be among the first to see new paintings and learn of events and appearances, follow Nancy on Facebook and sign up for her e-newsletter.
Patricia Watwood, “End of Days,” 2019, oil on linen, 42 x 36 in.
Patricia Watwood’s new solo show “Beauty and Terror” will be on view at Dacia Gallery in New York City, April 30–May 17. This new body of figurative paintings explores the human cycles of struggle, striving, and transformation, and the beauty and terror experienced along the way.
Patricia Watwood, “Fallen Caryatid,” 2019, oil on linen, 36 x 24 in.
From Patricia Watwood:
This work has been created over a turbulent period of my life and reflects in metaphor my own journey through trial, limitation, growth, and recommitment. It feels to me that the whole world is in the middle of a critical time of opportunity, anxiety, and crisis — writ large on a planetary level, and infinitely small in the affairs of the heart.
In my new paintings, prophets, caryatids, lonely heroes, fleshy humans, and sensual dreamers are all part of the cast of this drama where we strive to understand ourselves, transcend the known world, and call to create a new one — but sometimes crash in trying. Skies and seas swirl with smoke and debris, signaling the fragility of the human souls within. Beauty and terror herein evoke not a “Golden Age,” but perhaps the end of the game.
In this set of paintings, I played with the brushwork, level of detail, abstract geometries, and expressiveness of the handling. My aim was to open up the metaphoric range and evoke the freedom of 20th-century painting to complement my affinity for representational figuration.
Patricia Watwood, “Avatar,” 2018, oil on linen, 40 x 26 in.
During this time, this poem by Rainer Maria Rilke from The Book of Hours has been a touchstone:
God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
Then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear.
…
Flare up like a flame
And make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Patricia Watwood, “Harbinger,” 2019, oil on linen, 40 x 26 in.Patricia Watwood, “Ascending,” 2019, oil on linen, 54 x 48 in.Patricia Watwood, “Icarus,” 2019, oil on linen, 26 x 36 in.
West Fraser, “Always Something There to Remind Me,” oil on linen, 30 x 36 in.
Helena Fox Fine Art, LLC, is pleased to announce “Southern City and Landscapes” featuring Southern representational artist West Fraser.
From the gallery:
Almost 20 years after the University of South Carolina published the book Charleston in My Time, a collection of paintings by West Fraser, this artist has once again turned his easel toward the city streets of Charleston, South Carolina. To be fair, Fraser has continued to paint in and around the city of Charleston, but the paintings have been few and far between. In this time of change, West has once again taken to the streets to document vanishing Charleston — from the city streets to the coastal marshes.
Fraser has been lauded for his ability to capture the light and for creating a sense of place. “I like for the viewer of the picture to feel in the scene, on the ground, in the place. I want the viewer to feel the temperature, smell the smells.”
West Fraser, “Market 843,” Columbus St., oil on linen, 32 x 36 in.West Fraser, “Sunrise Over Rose Island,” oil on linen, 22 x 64 in.West Fraser, “Perfect Clouds,” Edisto River, oil on linen panel, 16 x 20 in.
In this latest collection, Fraser has taken his many years of painting en plein air and returned to the studio in order to expand the size of his canvases. As Southern writer Clyde Edgerton wrote of West’s work, “It’s not sentimental or pretentious in the least; because the paintings feel relaxed and alive, they seem to gently love the light in them.”
New Southern landscapes from Julyan Davis will be rounding out this exhibit.
Detail of “Sunset. Columbia Bridge” by James Lancel McElhinney.
The “O.T.W. — On the Water” project by James Lancel McElhinney began as a series of conversations between artists, rowers, and historians about the Schuylkill River as a nexus of American art, science, literature, and commerce.
Celebrating the spirit of exploration and expeditionary journal-painting, this exhibition also presents historic images in conversation with contemporary River Artists Patrick Connors, Tom Judd, Deirdre Murphy, Stacy Levy, Jacob Rivkin, and Joseph Sweeney. These artists are working in a variety of media, from intaglio printmaking and painting to video and installation, which together with picturesque engravings by historical artists celebrate a river in transition, inviting visitors to explore its banks and waters, perhaps to become part of its reclamation.
From James Lancel McElhinney:
“O.T.W. — On the Water: The Schuylkill River,” was conceived as a monographic show about my 2018 journal-painting project that explores a three-mile stretch of Philadelphia’s historic Schuylkill River as it passes through Fairmount Park from East Falls to Fairmount Water Works, beside the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
From the watercolor sketchbook of James Lancel McElhinney:
LONE OARSMAN PASSING THREE ANGELS Standing on the western shore of the river below the Dragon Boat Dock, looking southwest. Imagine being in the middle of the river, where Thomas Eakins envisioned Max Schmitt, at rest in his single scull. Passing Three Angels, a lone oarsman pulls downriver toward stone arches, the Connecting Railway BridgeLOOKING SOUTH FROM BELOW THE CONNECTING RAILWAY BRIDGE Facing northwest, sheltered by the arches of the Pennsylvania Railroad Connecting Bridge on a rainy day. Kelly Drive is to the right. A bike-trail runs beside it. Schuylkill Expressway roars behind the western bank, with MLK Drive and the Dragon Boat dock on the wooded shore beyond. A solitary rower moves downstream.LOOKING DOWNSTREAM TO COLUMBIA RAILROAD BRIDGE Marking a point halfway between Philadelphia Museum of Art and East Falls, Columbia Railroad Bridge was constructed in 1920. A grandstand for watching Schuylkill Navy regattas sits just upstream. Behind the distant tree-line is Memorial Hall. Built for the 1876 Centennial Exposition, it now houses the Please Touch Museum.LOOKING SOUTH FROM THREE ANGELS A broad esplanade on the eastern bank was created when landfill replaced pestilential wetlands. A grove of cherry trees was created from a gift to the city by Japan, honoring the sesquicentennial of American independence. Rising behind the Connecting Railway Bridge is the distant form of the Comcast Technology Center.
About the Artists
CRAIG BRUNS is chief curator at Independence Seaport Museum. He was trained as a visual artist at Tyler School of Art, Temple University. Prior to joining the museum in 1995, Bruns worked in the Philadelphia arts community as an independent curator, and as a conservation tech at Philadelphia Museum of Art.
PATRICK CONNORS looks to the Schuylkill as his muse. An erstwhile rower, classically trained in drawing and painting, for decades Connors has set up his easel along the river. Drawn to its banks and bridges, Connors re-envisions what he beholds, with a reverence for history and a timeless gaze.
TOM JUDD is celebrated for his personal, symbolic, and enigmatic imagery. In this cinematic freeze-frame, Judd imagines a Victorian woman in an antiquated bathing-costume, about to plunge into the river. Distant arches of Strawberry Mansion Bridge locate this feat on the Schuylkill River.
DANIEL KENNEDY (Exhibition designer) is visual services representative in the Education Department at Independence Seaport Museum. He is a graduate of the University of the Arts.
STACY LEVY is an international environmental artist based in Central Pennsylvania. In “Tide Field,” Levy anchored columns of brightly colored spheres along the Schuylkill estuary, which are submerged and exposed by tidal activity. Seeking locations that “provide the opportunity to make visible some of the forces at work at the site,” Levy invites the viewer to consider “how nature functions in an urban setting.”
EDMUND DARCH LEWIS was born in Philadelphia in 1835 and trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Lewis traveled through much of the northeastern United States in search of subjects, earning a strong reputation as a landscape and maritime painter. He died in Philadelphia in 1910.
JOHANN GEORG MARTINI was a German draftsman and engraver born in 1785. Little is known of his life. While he produced American scenic views, there is no evidence that he ever visited the United States. His death is reported as either 1842 or 1853.
JAMES LANCEL McELHINNEY was born and raised in the Delaware Valley and holds degrees from Tyler School of Art and Yale University. Best known for his Hudson Valley journals, and paintings of historic battlegrounds, McElhinney received a Pollock Krasner Grant in 2017. Later that year he published Hudson Highlands: North River Suite, volume one, a suite of contemporary prints in the spirit of 19th-century topographical art. His focus today is on American waterways.
DEIRDRE MURPHY received an Ecotopian Toolkit Grant from the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities and help from the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge, the University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Audubon, and Drexel University’s Academy of Natural Science to create “Mapping Movements,” an intaglio print mapping avian migration routes along the urban fringe of the lower Schuylkill Valley.
GRANVILLE PERKINS was born in Baltimore in 1830. He studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and later moved to New York, where he exhibited at the National Academy of Design. Best known for landscapes and maritime subjects, Perkins was an accomplished watercolorist who produced scenic views published in travel books such as Appletons’. He died in New York in 1895.
JACOB RIVKIN compiled Floating Archives, a series of animations based on archival photographs and drawings, to be exhibited as a public artwork on the lower Schuylkill River in September 2018. These animations were projected onto a screen suspended between two canoes traveling northward from Bartram’s Garden to the dam at the Fairmount Water Works. This film is organized spatially, reimagining the labor, leisure, and obscured histories of the waterway from 1800 to today.
JOSEPH SWEENEY based his color etching on a Schuylkill River scene he first captured in oils early one summer morning. Rowers are out on the river, just as sunlight breaks the horizon. Oarsmen’s jerseys contrast with the shadowy backdrop of the wooded far bank. Traffic sounds hum in the distance, but on the water (which had been a thoroughfare in the 18th century), a sense of calm and timelessness prevails.
GRAHAM WHITE is a visual artist and designer. Trained at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and at Tufts University, White divides his time between Manhattan and Connecticut. Graham created the sketchbook animation and designed this website.
Thomas C. Farrer, “Three Eggs,” 1868, watercolor on paper, overall: 12.7 x 25.4 cm (5 x 10 in.), framed: 26.67 x 39.37 cm (10 1/2 x 15 1/2 in.) Lent by Elizabeth Feld-Herzberg and Peter A. Feld. Photography by Eric W. Baumgartner
In celebration of the 200th anniversary of the birth of John Ruskin (1819–1900), the most influential art critic of the Victorian era, the National Gallery of Art will present more than 90 paintings, watercolors, and drawings created by American artists who were profoundly influenced by Ruskin’s call for a revolutionary change in the practice of art.
Henry Farrer, “Two Birds: Canary and Robin,” 1867, watercolor on paper, overall: 18.73 x 14.76 cm (7 3/8 x 5 13/16 in.), framed: 44.45 x 39.37 cm (17 1/2 x 15 1/2 in.) Lent by Mr. and Mrs. Stuart P. Feld. Photography by Eric W. Baumgartner
“The American Pre-Raphaelites: Radical Realists” includes a number of recently discovered works never before exhibited publicly. Ruskin’s rejection of traditional academic art and his plea for works that reflected a deep reverence for both the spiritual and scientific qualities of the natural world found a sympathetic audience in America among a group of like-minded artists, architects, scientists, critics, and collectors.
Henry Farrer, “On Whitehead, Coast of Maine,” 1875, watercolor on paper, overall: 30.48 x 46.99 cm (12 x 18 1/2 in.), Leonard and Ellen Milberg
New research, included in the exhibition catalog, reveals that the members of the Association for the Advancement of Truth in Art sought reform not only in the practice of art, but also in the broader political arena—most were abolitionists deeply engaged in the fight against slavery. Coded references to the Civil War are present in a number of exquisitely detailed landscape paintings that do not appear—at first glance—to carry symbolic meaning. Members of the group followed Ruskin’s dictum to record the natural world with strict fidelity, but they also created works that often include a rich political subtext.
Fidelia Bridges, “Calla Lily,” 1875, watercolor on paper, overall: 35.56 x 25.4 cm (14 x 10 in.), framed: 60.96 x 45.72 x 3.81 cm (24 x 18 x 1 1/2 in.) Brooklyn Museum, New York, Museum Collection FundFidelia Bridges, “Milkweeds,” 1876, watercolor on paper, image: 40.64 x 24.13 cm (16 x 9 1/2 in.), overall: 43.82 x 33.02 cm (17 1/4 x 13 in.), framed: 71.1 x 55.9 x 3.2 cm (28 x 22 x 1 1/4 in.) Proctor Collection, Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, Museum of Art, Utica Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute / Art Resource, NY
The exhibition is curated by Linda S. Ferber, museum director emerita and senior art historian at the New-York Historical Society, with Nancy K. Anderson, curator and head of the department of American and British paintings at the National Gallery of Art.
Henry Farrer, “Pink Rose,” 1874, watercolor on paper, overall: 11.75 x 26.04 cm (4 5/8 x 10 1/4 in.), framed: 30.48 x 45.09 cm (12 x 17 3/4 in.) Elizabeth Feld-Herzberg. Photography by Eric W. Baumgartner
“The American Pre-Raphaelites: Radical Realists” is on view through July 21, 2019, at the National Gallery of Art.
Private Collections is an annual event celebrating the illustrious art collectors in the Bay Area (California). All proceeds benefit Enterprise for Youth, a 50-year-old nonprofit that empowers young people to explore career opportunities and grow as professionals.
Premier tours include:
The Agrawal Collection
The Emerson Collection
The Enterline/Walker Collection
The Fraze/Loeb Collection
The Leffers/Buttgenbach Collection
The Meyer/Calas Collection
The Schreyer Collection
The Spaht Collection
The Wolfe/Brown Collection
Immediately following the tours there will be a post party and silent art auction at Simon Breitbard Fine Arts in Jackson Square. Learn more at sfprivatecollections.org.
A photo from last year’s trip to Italy, where we treated our guests to a rare private tour inside the Sistine Chapel, a privilege normally reserved for presidents, queens, and kings.
While others are waiting in long lines in the hot sun, you are privately escorted to a special private entrance, into a VIP section, for private viewings and meetings with top museum officials.
Privilege has its benefits.
Each year Fine Art Connoisseur magazine hosts an art tour in Europe, where we provide a very limited number of people a VIP art experience like no other.
Limited Access
We offer you privileged access to the world’s top experts, the best art on earth, and entry into places that even tour guides frequently don’t know exist — often private homes, private collections, private areas of museums, and special places few will ever see. We’ve visited the homes and studios of artists, living and deceased, seen private collections never shared with the public, and had experiences that cannot be re-created.
We Made National News
Last year one of our highlights included a private tour of the Sistine Chapel and the Vatican Museum, an unheard-of privilege so special that our tour made national news. Our small group of guests had a full hour in the museum after hours, avoiding crowds and having full access to properly view this important artwork.
The Land of Van Gogh
This year, Fine Art Connoisseur’s 10th Annual Art Trip will visit the land of Cezanne and Van Gogh in the South of France — Provence, St. Remy, Nice, and other areas — providing you with an unparalleled art experience that will become a lifetime memory. Our optional post-trip will visit Edinburgh, Scotland.
We would like to invite you to explore the world of art with us. It’s a very small, limited-size group of people who, like you, expect the best.
Please visit our website, explore the agenda and the dates, and, if interested, reserve your seat. We have very few seats available because of our high return rate for previous guests. If seats open up, it’s usually because of family obligations. Take advantage of these open seats this year. Because we often visit private homes, we cannot increase the size of the group, nor do we wish to make it less intimate by growing it any larger.
Christine Lafuente, “Daffodils, Creamer, and Clock,” 2018, oil on linen, 14 x 18 in.
A solo exhibition by Christine Lafuente, titled “Colors of a Day,” is on exhibit through May 4, 2019 at Somerville Manning Gallery (Delaware).
From the gallery:
Lafuente is a graduate of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and continues the tradition of painting from the life around her in its natural light. Now living and working in Brooklyn, NY, she has taught and traveled extensively, imbuing her personal artistic practice with a sense of wisdom and maturity.
In her eighth solo exhibition with Somerville Manning Gallery, Lafuente once again focuses her eye on the falling of light and color, masterfully creating objects out of these ephemeral materials. While living in Brooklyn and spending her summers in Maine, she paints both interior vignettes and landscapes that breathe with the same graceful breath. The ease of her brushstroke is at once bold and comforting, effortlessly defining a glass bottle or a daffodil or a seaside cliff.
Christine Lafuente, “Wildflowers in the Sun,” 2018, oil on linen, 10 x 10 in.Christine Lafuente, “Ranunculus, Violin, and Bottle,” 2019, oil on linen, 16 x 20 in.Christine Lafuente, “Anemones, Violin, and Thread,” 2019, oil on linen, 10 x 10 in.
Orange Hat
Oil on Claybord
14 x 18 in.
$1750 Available through the artist
Artist Donna Nyzio paints from life and knows well the working boats and coastal scenes prevalent in her work. Donna lives in Beaufort on the North Carolina Inner Banks. Beaufort, once known as “Fishtowne,” was a village for many years inhabited mainly by fisherman and whalers. Boats still abound.
“Each working boat is slightly different in design and use. In the uniqueness, each reminds me of a person. The windows are like eyes looking at you, so I paint the boats as one might a portrait, filled with an individual’s personality and story.”
Orange Hat portrays a typical coastal scene of a working man at the end of his day. Where there was chaos only moments before, the docks have grown quiet, soothing even. It is time spent cleaning and put everything in order for the next day.
From a painterly prospective, this painting composition creates an environment from solid shapes and soft brushwork to convey a relaxing atmosphere in an industrial location.
“It is a marvelous composition of interesting abstract shapes with just enough modeling to describe the scene,” said judge Steven J Levin when awarding Orange Hat an Excellence Award Winner at the 11th Biennial National Art Exhibition in Punta Gorda, Florida.
Donna uses the boats as large shapes which can be moved around a vast sea and sky to create spacial relationships, capture natural phenomena and build a story. She combines realistic images with abstract shapes and textures to create reflective and atmospheric paintings of coastal environments. Her compositions balance busy and quiet, textured and smooth, bright and faded, and provide a sense of place and history. The working watermen as subject matter has continued to grow for Donna as she observes this coastal way of life disappearing.
“I appreciate the work these guys do. In their wooden boats the owners and operators are independent, hardworking small business owners out on vast seas, under expansive skies. The scale of the surrounding environment easily dwarf the ships.”
Orange Hat was also juried into 2019 Conroe Art League 4th Annual National Invitational, Conroe, Texas, and the 2017 Laumeister Fine Art Competition, Bennington Center for the Arts, Vermont.
Donna holds a BFA in painting from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and is a 2019 Alumni Emeritus Advisor for the Clark Hulings Fund for Visual Artists, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Juried Exhibitions:
2019 Looking West: An Exhibition Highlighting Works by American Women Artists, Steamboat Art Museum, CO
2018, 2017& 2016 International Marine Art Exhibition, The Gallery at Mystic Seaport Museum, CT
2018, 2017 & 2016 Salmagundi Club Non-Members Exhibit, Salmagundi Club, NY
2018 33rd Bosque Art Classic, Bosque, TX
2018 & 2016 The WinterShow, GreenHill Center for NC Art, Invitational, Greensboro, NC
Yong Hong Zhong, “Grande Finale,” watercolor, 14 x 11 in.
A group show from four artists who all work in different mediums — Romona Youngquist, Tracy Leagjeld, Steve Hill, and Yong Hong Zhong — focuses on the four seasons.
4 Seasons Exhibit at Art on the Boulevard Gallery (Vancouver, WA) by Steven R Hill
When gallery director Kevin Weaver conceptualized this special exhibit about six months ago, with four artists (myself, Tracy Leagjeld, Romona Youngquist, and Yong Hong Zhong) using four distinctively different mediums, we all jumped at the chance to put our best seasonal work into the challenge of creating a show with a breadth of possibilities, not only in diverse subject matter, but a range of styles that brought a huge crowd to opening night, Friday, April 5. Sales have already been brisk . . . we are all working on some replacement pieces, as this exhibit hangs for two months!
Romona Youngquist, “Signs of Spring,” oil, 24 x 30 in.
We all love working with a gallery that goes way beyond just hanging artwork and doing show openings. Kevin Weaver, director, gives all 55 artists in the gallery constant challenges with well-thought-out theme shows and has built a considerable clientele of repeat gallery collectors and patrons who have come to expect “new and exciting” as the norm. It’s easy to say it but a whole other thing to actually make it happen, which he does. It doesn’t hurt that the artists in this gallery are all very accomplished and have gained solid name recognition in the art world.
Steve Hill, “Windmill Damme, Belgium,” pastel, 12 x 9 in.
I work in pastels, predominantly en plein air, and was in Croatia and Bosnia, teaching my fourth plein air workshop, when the invite arrived. “Aha! I can cover summer and fall over here,” I thought to myself, but summer had hung on to Croatia and Bosnia with a very warm, sunny grip. Luckily, we were also headed to Prague, several hundred miles north of Dubrovnik, and autumn was in full swing. Even with the magnificent city views everywhere in sight, I headed straight for the famous 14th-century Charles Bridge to paint the river, bridge, and fall colors. It did not disappoint! “Autumn Evening, Prague” and “Bridge at Mostar, Bosnia” both just sold at the gallery, as well as “Dog Creek Falls,” along Washington’s Columbia River.
Tracey Leagjeld, “Language of Spirit,” monotype, 24 x 30 in.
A high-end art gallery in Vancouver, Washington?!?, you might say. Art on the Boulevard has become exactly that. Check-out the “4 Seasons” exhibit and put your mind-set into any major-league art city in the United States. I’m betting you will find many works on the website worthy of consideration for your own collections (and note that the gallery knows how to properly package and ship).
Steve Hill, “Warm Summer Day, Mostar, Bosnia,” pastel, 11 x 14 in.Romona Youngquist, “Early Winter,” oil, 48 x 72 in.Yong Hong Zhong, “Lily Pond,” watercolor, 18 x 14 in.Tracy Leagjeld, “Fish Creek Autumn,” monotype, 19 x 24 in.
Fill your mind with useful art stories, the latest trends, upcoming art shows, top artists, and more. Subscribe to Fine Art Today, from the publishers of Fine Art Connoisseur magazine.
Immediately following the tours there will be a post party and silent art auction at Simon Breitbard Fine Arts in Jackson Square. Learn more at 
