Over the past decade, this Bay Area artist has built a rather large national following for her captivating urban cityscapes and powerful portraits of crows, ravens, cats, and much more. Her latest works have travelled north for a can’t-miss one-woman show.

After her studies at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, artist Lindsey Kustusch found herself needing to choose between a veterinary or fine art career. After working for some time in a nearby shelter, Kustusch discovered an artist who “broke all the rules of what I learned in school” she suggested, leading her to take the artistic plunge herself.

Today, Kustusch has amassed a large national following for her amazing paintings that blend abstraction and photorealism. The resulting works are dynamic and visually engaging, and her subjects allow the artist to explore several themes that resonate with her.

Howard/Mandville Gallery in Kirkland, Washington, is pleased to be opening on August 19 a solo exhibition of Kustusch’s recent works. On view through September 19, the exhibition features several of the artist’s well-known raven and crow paintings. “They exude this sort of wild, ancient, prehistoric spirit with an intensity and sense of drama,” the artist said. “Aesthetically, they’re stunning animals, with their perfect balance of soft and hard edges, reptilian-like talons, and shades of velvet-black feathers.”

Also on display are the artist’s incredible cityscapes — many of which are of locations in her home city of San Francisco that have struck a chord. “She uses abstracted, painterly effects to convey energy, personality, and soul,” the gallery adds. “Small doses of photorealism help viewers fill in the gaps.” The resulting works are convincing and have collectors following in flocks. The artist’s experimentation with abstraction and various kinds of mark-making create many layers that mimic atmospheres that viewers find enticing.

To learn more, visit Howard/Mandville Gallery.

This article was featured in Fine Art Today, a weekly e-newsletter from Fine Art Connoisseur magazine. To start receiving Fine Art Today for free, click here.

An acclaimed New York state gallery is celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2017 with a striking exhibition of works by the great artists that have helped propel it to success. We can’t wait to see what the next two decades look like either!

It’s been 20 years since Laura Grenning’s artistic destiny was set in motion through the friendship and guidance of Nelson H. White, who introduced her to art history, plein air painting, and the Florence Academy of Art in Italy. Since she left her career in the world of finance in Hong Kong and befriended White after a chance encounter, Grenning Gallery in Sag Harbor, New York, has grown into one of the preeminent exhibition spaces in the United States, representing many of the leading representational artists working today.

To celebrate the gallery’s 20th anniversary in 2017, Grenning is mounting an attractive exhibition featuring many of its most cherished artists that have helped established its founder’s renowned reputation. Opening August 19 and on view through September 10, the show will feature works by — among others — Ramiro, Ben Fenske, Paul Rafferty, Beth Rundquist, Ted Minoff, Maryann Lucas, Edwina Lucas, Jacob Collins, Marc Dalessio, Sarah Lamb, Melissa Franklin Sanchez, John Morfis, Anthony Ackrill, Nelson H. White, George Morton, and Stephen Bauman.

“In Florence, Grenning’s passion [for art] deepened,” says the gallery’s press release. “She took the view that the blossoming of atelier education in the US and abroad would represent this generation’s art movement, differing distinctly from the 20th century’s in philosophy and practice. These new artists heralded a return to discipline, to the canons of beauty and to the celebration of direct observation of nature. They adhere to the traditions and painterly standards found in all the great works from the Old Masters through the end of the 20th century.

“Philosophically, these artists believe that the world is in harmony, and that the artist’s job is to focus on technical skill so that they may best represent the beauty and peace they see in nature. The purpose of this is to recreate, on canvas or in clay, their truth and to share this with the viewer. This is harmonious with the 21st century’s other cultural movements of environmentalism and holistic health. The individual sees himself or herself as a small part of a bigger whole, and believes it’s their job to get their egos out of the way so that we can tune into the entire picture. The nihilism of the 20th century doesn’t hold their attention.”

Amen.

To learn more, visit Grenning Gallery.

This article was featured in Fine Art Today, a weekly e-newsletter from Fine Art Connoisseur magazine. To start receiving Fine Art Today for free, click here.

Well-known painter Francis Livingston began his artistic journey as a storyteller, which has — for the past 25 years — evolved to encompass emotion, color, and pleasing aesthetics to drive his work without any ulterior motives or influence. Where and when can you view his newest oils?

“My work is about mood and environment. But I infuse it with enough reality that people can relate to it in some way,” says prolific artist Francis Livingston, who will soon open a solo exhibition at Meyer Galleries in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Titled “Western Journeys” and opening on August 18, the forthcoming exhibition will present a number of Livingston’s latest Southwest landscapes and Native American portraits and will continue through August 24.

“Swirling brushstrokes shape Livingston’s landscapes with bold colors reminiscent of twentieth-century Fauves,” the gallery writes. “Contemplative subjects soften the compositions, as Native Americans draped in richly colored robes exist in reverence and harmony with their environment. Livingston juxtaposes organic shapes against painterly patterns with a loose hand and balanced vision, following the movement of the paint and drawing inspiration from Abstract Expressionists like Richard Diebenkorn and Franz Kline. Livingston carries this freedom of movement into his architectural subjects, often working from old photographs of adobe churches in order to capture the pueblo structure’s smooth edges and old world feel. Livingston’s southwest imagery pays homage to the Taos Society of Artists of the twentieth century, whose work he discovered as a kid at the National Cowboy Museum in Oklahoma. ‘I kept going back to those paintings,’ Livingston recalls of the Taos Founders, many of whom were also illustrators before becoming painters. ‘They were telling a story in one fashion or another with their paintings.’”

Learn more by visiting Meyer Galleries.

This article was featured in Fine Art Today, a weekly e-newsletter from Fine Art Connoisseur magazine. To start receiving Fine Art Today for free, click here.

Four dozen works by this accomplished colorist head to the walls of North Star Art Gallery through August 31. Featuring scenes in disparate locations from Ithaca, to Italy, to Pennsylvania and more, collectors don’t want to miss this artist’s impressive range.

“On the Water” is a selling exhibition on view at North Star Gallery in Ithaca, New York, through August 31. Featuring the works of artist Brian Keeler, the exhibition is an impressive display of Keeler’s skill as both a colorist and composer of engaging scenes. The show presents some four dozen works that demonstrate Keeler’s powerful expression of the drama of water in landscape scenes. The works are of scenes in disparate locations from Ithaca, to Italy, to Pennsylvania and more. The works express a range of moods of sky, water, and hills.

There is a soft long downshot on Seneca Lake at sunset … and some fabulous paintings of the Cascadilla Gorge here in Ithaca … light flaring, colors shimmering and dancing … somewhat more expressionistic works. Scullers ply the Cayuga Inlet on a July day under towering summer cumulus clouds, and there is an impressionist pastel evening on Wyalusing Creek in Pennsylvania as soft and mysterious as Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun.

To learn more, visit North Star Gallery.

This article was featured in Fine Art Today, a weekly e-newsletter from Fine Art Connoisseur magazine. To start receiving Fine Art Today for free, click here.

Works by Sergio Roffo — perhaps one of the foremost American coastal landscape painters — will soon be on display at Quidley & Company in Nantucket, Massachusetts.

For decades, Sergio Roffo has been hard at work mastering the New England coastal landscape, both near his home and farther afield. “With a solid grounding in the fundamentals of his craft,” the gallery writes, “Roffo captures the small details — the texture of dune grass, the particular quality of light of a Nantucket Harbor sunset — that bring a scene to life. Roffo is a plein air painter of the first degree; he displays a clear talent for expressing the elegance of nature through his masterful brushwork and ability to capture light and atmospheric effects.

“His intimate relationship with his subject matter — the sea, sky, beaches and boats that surround him — is evident in all of Roffo’s work. This emotional component, along with a uniformity of excellence, lends the work a greater degree of complexity, and has earned him an enthusiastic following.”

Roffo will be presenting several of his newest works at Quidley & Company, opening the evening of Friday, August 18. To learn more, visit here.

This article was featured in Fine Art Today, a weekly e-newsletter from Fine Art Connoisseur magazine. To start receiving Fine Art Today for free, click here.

The National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson, Wyoming, is celebrating 30 years of excellence this September during its annual Show & Sale. The show features a wide selection of art for sale, parties, panel discussions, and more. Details here!

There will soon be a lot going on in Jackson, Wyoming, at the National Museum of Wildlife Art (NMWA)! From Friday, September 8 through September 17, the NMWA will host its annual Western Visions Show & Sale. Although the event is met with widespread success each year, 2017 is special as the museum celebrates its 30th anniversary.

On the slate this year are several exciting events, including a Sculptor Panel Discussion with renowned sculptor Walter Matia, who will lecture on the history of animal sculpture from 1831 to 1975. Also hosted in 2017 will be a Benefactor Welcome Cocktail Party, an Artist Party, a Conversation with the Museum’s Curators Past & Present, and of course the Show & Sale.

“In honor of our 30th anniversary, the Show & Sale features artists whose work is in the Museum’s permanent collection,” the NMWA writes. All told, over 100 artists will be included in the show, representing the top wildlife artists in the world.

To learn more, visit the NMWA.

This article was featured in Fine Art Today, a weekly e-newsletter from Fine Art Connoisseur magazine. To start receiving Fine Art Today for free, click here.

On August 21, 2017, many parts of the United States will experience one of the most extraordinary natural events — a total solar eclipse. Although this is the first of its kind in 21st-century America, there have been of course been many others throughout history and around the globe that have been captured by curious artistic minds.

The Princeton University Art Museum recently opened a great exhibition in coordination with the August 21 total solar eclipse that will sweep across the United States from Washington to Georgia. “Transient Effects: The Solar Eclipses and Celestial Landscapes of Howard Russell Butler” opened on July 22 and continues through October 8.

An artist with a degree in science, Butler captured the transient moments of natural phenomena in the late 19th century. An 1876 graduate of Princeton, “Butler was focused on capturing images of the solar system through the medium of painting,” the university reports. “While Butler initially sought a career as a scientist, which included working in Thomas Edison’s lab in Menlo Park as an illustrator, he eventually pursued a career as a painter. After studying with landscape painter Frederic E. Church, he drew upon his knowledge of science to explore art through a different lens. He later founded the American Fine Arts Society, which is now known as the Arts Student League of New York.”

To learn more, visit the Princeton University Art Museum.

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Marty Kober, owner of a 500-year-old tempera painting, has spent the better part of 15 years trying to prove the panel is, in fact, a long-lost work by Renaissance genius Michelangelo. Where does he stand in 2017?

In 2011, Italian scholar and art historian Antonio Forcellino published The Lost Michelangelos — a book that details the discovery of two lost paintings that are believed to have been executed by Michelangelo. “Through a combination of careful historical research, extensive restoration and meticulous radiographic analysis, Forcellino shows that these paintings can be traced back to the studio of Michelangelo,” Polity Press suggests. “The extraordinary story calls into question the received view of Michelangelo’s work and fills in a missing piece in our understanding of one of the greatest artists of all time.”

One of these paintings, which shows a deceased Christ slumped in the lap of the Virgin flanked by two angels, belongs to Marty Kober of Rochester, New York. In fact, the painting had hung over the Kober family’s mantel for years before its owner resolved to protect the painting and investigate its history.

Unfortunately, many American experts refused to look at the painting, leading Kober to travel to Italy for restoration and investigation. “What we noticed is there are multiple changes from the underdrawings to the painting phase; a copyist would never do that,” Kober suggested. “The tempera, the layering, and the pigments are virtually the same.”

Kober has also said he has found documentation that suggests the painting was a gift from Michelangelo to one of his closest friends. Other documents supposedly trace ownership from her all the way to Kober’s great-great-grandfather’s sister-in-law.

Some art historians are convinced, including Dr. William Wallace, art history professor at Washington University and a leading authority on Michelangelo. Wallace believes the work at least comes from the master’s inner circle, even if not executed by Michelangelo himself. He says, “There’s no scientific way to determine this — it’s a matter of opinion, of numerous numbers of scholars over time, and unfortunately we just have to wait.”

Kober added, “Yeah, I’m that guy that just won’t go away — we have great institutions, the best equipment. They can look at this all over again and when you assemble all of that, the documents, the painting itself, it only can point to one thing — the great artist of all time, Michelangelo, made this.”

To learn more, visit CBS.

This article was featured in Fine Art Today, a weekly e-newsletter from Fine Art Connoisseur magazine. To start receiving Fine Art Today for free, click here.