If you did not have a chance to see the outstanding new works by Kent Monkman this spring in New York City, a new opportunity waits in Santa Fe. Will you rendezvous with him?

Peters Projects in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on July 7 opened “The Rendezvous” — a solo exhibition of new works by talented painter Kent Monkman. On view through September 2, “these works are inspired by an actual time in the history of North America,” the gallery writes, “during which spring gatherings in the wilderness areas of the early to mid-nineteenth century Rocky Mountains was a period of utopia and non-violence.

“Beyond the frontier of European settlement, indigenous nations, mountain men and trappers assembled to trade goods for furs, and enjoy some revelry. These were often wild and boisterous events lasting for weeks that followed many months of isolation and deprivation during the winter. The revelers mated, fought, gambled, danced, drank to excess, and competed in various athletic competitions and games. Monkman is inspired by the style of nineteenth century western artist Alfred Jacob Miller, who attended one of these events and made drawings and paintings to document what he described as a saturnalia.”

Heavily populated with several figures in diverse costumes, Monkman’s paintings read like a well-composed onstage performance. Saturated color and strong light also aid in the sense of drama and activity in the pictures. Continuing, the gallery says, “This series of paintings features dynamic scenes of indigenous peoples, mountain men, and trappers in various scenes of revelry and interaction. The compositions draw inspiration from classical paintings such as bacchanal scenes and lamentation scenes, but gender and sexual identities are deliberately ambiguous to complicate the expected reading of this historical subject matter. As the world struggles to come to terms with new transgender identities and gender variations, the artist uses the allegory of the freedom of the American frontier to situate transgender and gender nonconformity at the edge of societal norms.”

https://vimeo.com/222862216

To learn more, visit Peters Projects.

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.

World-renowned master painter David A Leffel will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award and present an onstage demonstration in 2018. Details here!

David A Leffel will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award and present a demonstration during the opening ceremonies of the 7th Annual Plein Air Contention & Expo (PACE), to be held in Santa Fe, New Mexico, April 16-20, 2018. PACE is the largest gathering of landscape and plein air artists in the world. The award will be presented by PleinAir Publisher B. Eric Rhoads.

Leffel was born in Brooklyn in 1931, and as a young child spent years in hospitals battling a bone disease. He used this time to hone his drawing abilities, developing a passion for art. This eventually led him to enroll in Parsons School of Design, as well as Fordham University. At the Art Students League of New York, he flourished under the artist and instructor Frank Mason and ultimately taught there himself for 25 years.

In 1992 Leffel and his partner, the renowned painter Sherrie A. McGraw, moved to Taos, where their studios overlook the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Well-known to art students worldwide through his bestselling books and videos, Leffel conducts workshops throughout the country.

To learn more, visit the PleinAir Convention & Expo.

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.

In this occasional series, Fine Art Today delves into the world of portraiture, highlighting historical and contemporary examples of superb quality and skill. This week: Michelangelo Caravaggio, “The Betrayal.”

We know what you’re thinking. How can Michelangelo Caravaggio’s 1602 narrative masterpiece “The Betrayal” be featured as this week’s portraiture highlight? Indeed, Caravaggio produced little portraiture and even fewer self-portraits throughout his vexing career and life. The 1602 canvas — which today is housed in the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin — comes into play with the artist’s seemingly remarkable and complex use of embedded self-portraiture.

In contrast to autonomous self-portraiture (i.e., the artist presenting himself or herself as a singular subject), embedded self-portraits are only part of a much larger context, which in many cases is a narrative whose primary subject is the story. “The Betrayal” has been a source of great allure and mystery for scholars in light of a possible embedded self-portrait in addition to Caravaggio’s surprising non-violent approach to — and involvement in — the subject.

“The Betrayal” is one of the artist’s most dramatic and compelling scenes, with figures painted in three-quarter length, forced so close to the picture plane that his viewers must have felt their presence. Seven men are included in the painting. To the left, a beardless youth in red and green flees the scene with arms raised as his robe flows in an arch over the heads of Christ and Judas. Christ somberly leans toward the left and gazes down, hands extended in front, still clasped in prayer. Continuing toward the right, Judas and an armored soldier grasp Christ’s right shoulder, their arms forming a complementing arch to the fleeing youth’s robe, framing the heads of Christ and Judas. Two other soldiers and a figure complete the right half of the painting.

Along the right edge of the canvas, the bearded figure peering into the scene has been identified as Caravaggio himself. This figure bears a lantern, providing an artificial point of illumination. Caravaggio appears — to some — to occupy a position of moral neutrality in this scene. Looking on with an expression of curiosity, if not wonderment, Caravaggio appears to place himself as a bystander rather than a soldier tasked with arresting Christ.

Scholars have also noted the visual “pairing” between the figure identified as Caravaggio and the fleeing youth (commonly identified as Saint John the Evangelist) along the left edge of the canvas. Consider: The two figures frame the scene, with one exiting as the other enters; one sees the principal action as the other turns away and does not see; one seeks to get away while the other seeks to get close and illuminate Christ. Considering the pose and treatment, both raise their right arms and have brightly illuminated faces.

Renowned scholar Michael Fried suggested, “It is as though the ‘Betrayal’ at once represents a particular instant in the biblical narrative and evokes a multiplicity of relationships that redirect our attention away from the events in the Garden of Gethsemane toward a very different ‘narrative,’ not declarable in any straightforward way, of the painting’s production.”

If granted, it does appear as though Caravaggio’s embedded self-portrait within “The Betrayal” has a range of interpretive possibility, including theories surrounding the artist’s own spirituality and philosophy of art.

We’d love to hear your thoughts!

Learn more about this magnificent Baroque masterpiece by visiting the National Gallery of Ireland.

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.

Quietly working in her studio along the shores of the Mississippi River, artist Judith Bergerson continues to achieve profound joy by exploring the ways abstraction and representation can move the soul.

There is something calming and fulfilling when one gazes upon the beautiful multi-media works by Judith Bergerson, a feeling the artist shares during her intuitive creative process. “Often I have little idea of how a painting is going to turn out when I begin,” she says. “I love for the work to reveal itself, to evolve organically as it comes into being. I continuously play with different texture, shape, and line arrangements and compositions until I know where the work wants to go.” For Bergerson, it is precisely this process of give-and-take and visual problem met with design solution that gives her the utmost creative pleasure and serenity.

A Minnesota native, Bergerson has always been interested and fascinated by art. “I can distinctly remember when I was a little girl seeing this amazing painting by Lyonel Feininger at the institute [Minneapolis Institute of Arts], she says. “I recall loving how these tall buildings and forms would meld and interact with strong angular lines and planes of color. His inspiration really surfaces in my work.” Although she and her husband, Mark, would eventually own a custom framing business for over 30 years, Judith never lost her desire to create. Bergerson received her BFA from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, but has additionally studied at institutions all across the United States, including the California College of Arts and Crafts and the C.W. Post College of Long Island University.

Although Bergerson draws upon Feininger’s precedent, her artworks go much further, exploring the juxtaposition between representation and abstraction, each having an amazing process characterized by the methodical layering of acrylic paint, gesso, colored pencil, and found textures — among other elements. The resulting collages are exquisitely beautiful from a formal perspective, intertwining recognizable forms of trees and plants with abstract organic and geometric planes and shapes. “I enjoy that play between what is two-dimensional and three-dimensional, the oscillation between the transparent and opaque or a saturated color next to a muted tone,” says the artist.  Although she doesn’t keep count, some works could require as many as 50 layers of different media, or whatever the artist feels is necessary for a successful composition. Occasionally the design puzzle proves too much, in which case Bergerson sets the work aside and begins anew. She often has several pieces in process, the finishing touches and solutions sometimes coming quickly, while others take months, maybe years.

Asked what she hopes viewers take away from the works, Bergerson suggests, “That’s largely up to them. I want my audience to form their own relationships with the work, to bring their own subjective experiences to the piece and decide what the work means to them. I don’t necessarily want my interpretation of the piece to affect theirs. For me, that is one of the most beautiful elements of art.”

Bergerson’s “Evening Shadows” is an outstanding representative example. In a large vertical format, the viewer finds a wonderful arrangement of silhouetted trees of varying size and color that are layered and overlapped in a way to suggest spatial depth. One’s eyes play among what the brain interprets as foreground, middle, and background. Toward the bottom of the canvas, a group of birds stand perched on a strong horizontal line, a line that is repeated, moving up the center of the image. Quick consideration of the work offers the impression of pure abstraction, but closer and extended observation reveals representational forms. A common motif in Bergerson’s oeuvre can also be detected toward the upper right of the canvas, barely visible among the treetops: a perfect circle.

Future works will undoubtedly continue to play with a variety of media, but Bergerson says she’s looking forward to exploring drawing more in her works. “Rather than being paintings with drawing media and other collaged materials, I’m interested in exploring drawings with painting media,” she says. “Perhaps that could lead to more representation in my work — who knows?” Whatever they may be, she can rest assured that there will be many eagerly waiting and watching.

Bergerson is a signature member of the National Collage Society; her works can be found at Art Beat Gallery in Hayward, Wisconsin, Up North Gallery in Lindstrom, Minnesota, and Clay Bay Gallery in Door County, Wisconsin.

To learn more, visit Judith Bergerson.

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 World Wars had such an impact on culture and the visual arts that historians use them as a categorical benchmark — “pre- and post-war.” In just a few weeks, the Metropolitan in New York aims to explore the impact of World War I on the visual arts through this gripping exhibition.

On July 31, the Metropolitan Museum in New York City will open a disturbingly beautiful exhibition aimed at detailing the major impact that war — specifically World War I — had on the visual arts. On view through January 7, “World War I and the Visual Arts” is a moving exploration into how early 20th-century artists both reacted to and represented the horrors of modern warfare. According to the museum, “The works on view will reflect a variety of responses, ranging from nationalist enthusiasm to more somber reflections on the carnage and mass devastation that resulted from the war.”

Among the artworks included in the exhibition are prints, drawings, photographs, paintings, illustrated books, posters, periodicals, trading cards, and sculpture. Continuing, the Met writes, “[The exhibition] will reveal how artists — including Otto Dix, Fernand Léger, George Grosz, Käthe Kollwitz, C.R.W. Nevinson, Gino Severini, and Edward Steichen — reflected a myriad of styles, approaches, ideologies, and mediums in response to the war. Among the styles represented are Cubism, Dada, Futurism, Expressionism, New Objectivity, and Vorticism.

“Like their countrymen, many artists, writers, and intellectuals initially welcomed the war for a range of reasons — some because of nationalist sentiments, others due to a naïve desire to experience an adventure they assumed would be over in a few months, and still others because of a mistaken belief that, after this final conflict, a more peaceful, spiritual, and anti-materialist era would begin. Numerous artists experienced combat firsthand, either as soldiers, medics, or war artists documenting life at the front; many suffered severe injuries and some even death. As the reality of the war became apparent, several figures changed their positions to express fierce condemnation, mournful regret, or pacifist sentiments.”

To learn more, visit the Metropolitan.

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.

Gerald Peters Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, opens this weekend a tantalizing exhibition of remarkable landscapes by Spaniard Peter de la Fuente. What is the skilled watercolor and tempera painter up to these days? Brilliance.

Friday, July 14 at Gerald Peters Gallery in Santa Fe marks the opening of an anticipated solo exhibition of watercolors and tempera paintings by acclaimed artist Peter de la Fuente. In conjunction with the National New Deal Preservation Association, the artist and gallery will also host a public lecture on Saturday, July 15.

“Born in Seville, Spain in 1959,” the gallery writes, “de la Fuente and his family relocated to his mother’s home of New Mexico just four years following. De la Fuente continues to live and work in New Mexico, dedicated to preserving and furthering his family’s legacy in the arts.

“Disenchanted with traditional art academies, de la Fuente turned to his family for formal training. As the son of Carol Hurd Rogers and grandson of Henriette Wyeth and Peter Hurd, de la Fuente had the unique opportunity to study and develop his skills under the guidance of the Wyeth/Hurd family. Building on these traditions, de la Fuente paints landscapes uninterrupted by either human or animal life. Working in egg tempera, de la Fuente focuses on the detail and luminosity of his paintings to impart the works with a sense of place. Less concerned with photorealism, de la Fuente instead chooses to capture the character of a given setting, to capture the mood and feeling of scene.”

The artist himself suggests, “I try to evoke a sense of place. I paint the places I love. I want the viewer to feel the landscape of New Mexico — so that they can step into the painting, with a sense of familiarity; perhaps the feeling of having been there before…”

The exhibition, titled “Cuentos,” will hang through September 30. To learn more, visit Gerald Peters 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.

A beautiful array of fresh landscape paintings by this female master are currently hanging through August 1 in an esteemed Colorado gallery. Will you be a lucky viewer?

Award-winning artist Dinah Worman is currently showcasing several of her newest landscapes at Ann Korologos Gallery in Basalt, Colorado, during “America at Heart: From Above.” On view through August 1, the solo show is a continuation of Worman’s “exploration into stacked landscape compositions as well as works that give the viewer an up-close perspective of what lies within the landscape,” the gallery reports. “Light filters through the trees and streams and between the clouds. [Worman] is able to retain this vitality because she is continually renewing her vision.”

Discussing her work, Worman notes, “I work to press beyond method and into a flow of creative instinct; using pastel, oil, acrylic, or printmaking to express myself with unusual compositions and expanding vision. My interpretation is more important to me than the object itself. You realize that your wisdom is coming from some subconscious place rather than from copying something else. I want to do work that, though rooted in reality, is more and more conceptual.”

To learn more, visit Ann Korologos 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.

More than 40 top artists from around the country are currently featured during this must-see summer salon in Wisconsin. Who and where? Details here.

Tory Folliard Gallery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is currently exhibiting a diverse selection of artworks by over 40 top-tier artists. On view since July 7 and continuing through September 9, “The Salon Show” will soon host Artist Talks on Gallery Day, July 22 at 4 p.m.

“The Salon Show” at Tory Folliard is the gallery’s largest annual exhibition and showcases painting, photography, and sculpture. Exhibiting artists in 2017 include Rodger Bechtold, Mary Bero, Craig Blietz, Mark Brautigam, Derrick Buisch, Jessica Calderwood, Mark Chatterley, Robert Cocke, Marion Coffey, Terrence Coffman, Laura Dronzek, Andy Fletcher, Mark Forth, Ben Grant, Harold Gregor, Gerit Grimm, Doug Hatch, Kathy Hofmann, Ron Isaacs, Keith Jacobshagen, Mary Jones, Clare Malloy, Nancy Mladenoff, Mark Mulhern, Charles Munch, Katie Musolff, Dennis Nechvatal, William Nichols, Michael Noland, Melanie Parke, Bill Reid, Jan Serr, Elizabeth Shreve, Brook Slane, Trina May Smith, Claire Stigliani, Fred Stonehouse, Paula Swaydan Grebel, Richard Taylor, Stephanie Trenchard, Tom Uttech, and Mary Alice Wimmer.

Learn more by visiting Tory Folliard.

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.