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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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.
Drawings by Dan Thompson > “Upright: Adventures in Teaching”
Daughtrey Gallery, Hillsdale College
Hillsdale, Michigan
https://www.hillsdaleart.org/exhibits
through March 22, 2024
The renowned artist and educator Dan Thompson has opened a unique selling exhibition both online and in person at Hillsdale College in south central Michigan. Upright: Adventures in Teaching features 32 of his drawings in graphite or red chalk, primarily figures and portraits taken from life or memory, some during teaching demonstrations and others during Thompson’s private investigations.
Opened with a preface by fellow artist Jon deMartin, the exhibition catalogue can be downloaded for free from danthompsonart.com, and all works in it are for sale with no gallery markups.
Born in Alexandria, Virginia, Thompson graduated from the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C., and then earned his M.F.A. from the Graduate School of Figurative Art at the New York Academy of Art (NYAA). He has been involved in NYAA ever since, but has also co-founded two schools in New York City: the Grand Central Academy of Art (2006) and Janus Collaborative School of Art (2008). Thompson has held leadership posts at Studio Incamminati in Philadelphia and taught at such diverse institutions as the Art Students League of New York, National Academy School, and Parsons.
View more fine art gallery exhibitions here at FineArtConnoisseur.com.
The UBS Art Collection has opened an exhibition of etchings and paintings by the acclaimed British artist Lucian Freud (1922-2011) at the UBS Art Gallery in New York. The exhibition brings together 45 exemplary works by Freud, representing one of the Collection’s notable pockets of depth, and marks the first time this group has been displayed in the United States or anywhere outside of a museum setting.
The UBS Art Gallery is a public art space that provides an opportunity to discover works from the UBS Art Collection. Located in the lobby of UBS’s New York headquarters at 1285 Avenue of the Americas, the exhibition is free and open to the public Monday through Friday, 7:00 am to 6:00 pm, through the Spring of 2024 (contact before you go to confirm dates).
More from the organizers:
Lucian Freud is considered one of the most distinguished artists of the last century and the greatest portraitist of his time. His works are known for their psychological penetration and unsparing realism, which redefined public understanding of portraiture. In addition to a large body of the artist’s late etchings encompassing landscapes, portraits, and nudes, the exhibition will also feature two compelling oil paintings—Double Portrait (1988–90) and Head of a Naked Girl (1999)—that are representative of his expressive style.
“We are pleased to share with the public this exceptional body of work, which defies perceived norms of corporate collecting,” said Mary Rozell, Global Head of the UBS Art Collection. “Like most of Freud’s oeuvre, the artworks on display are uncompromising and challenging to view, and we hope they will spark both conversation and introspection.”
The UBS Art Collection is one of the world’s most significant corporate collections of contemporary art with over 30,000 artworks by influential artists of our time, including more than 50 works by Freud. These works were the subject of dedicated museum exhibitions at renowned international institutions, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek (2017) and the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin (2015).
Born in Berlin in 1922, Freud was the grandson of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. At the age of ten, his family immigrated to London to escape the forces of National Socialism and Freud became a British subject in 1939. He studied briefly at the Central School of Art, then went on to attend the East Anglian School of Painting and Goldsmith’s College. While his early work is influenced by German painters and even Surrealism, by 1960 Freud settled into his own distinctive style. He was a key figure in the School of London, a group who pursued a unique form of figuration, even as conceptual art and minimal art dominated the scene.
While Freud has been most widely recognized as a painter, etchings are an integral part of his practice. The etchings on display span an 18-year period from 1982 to 2000, a prolific phase in Freud’s graphic work. The artist’s process was as unorthodox as his approach to his subjects. Freud would position the copper etching plate upright on an easel, like a canvas, creating his impressions while standing. While the subjects of his prints often relate to certain paintings, the etchings were not derivative but created from life during extended sittings. His etchings are thus as intimate as his paintings, their linear constructions and croppings only heightening the sense of inherent tension. Presented alongside a substantial number of his works as context, these pieces inspire introspection.
A catalogue documenting the full slate of works by Freud in the UBS Art Collection titled Lucian Freud: Closer. UBS Art Collection, was published in 2017 and is available at bookstores and online retailers.
For more information, please visit ubs.com/global/en/our-firm/art/ubs-art-gallery.
The Hilbert Museum opens February 23, 2024, to the public after an ambitious three-year expansion that tripled the gallery and other space available for one of the world’s largest collections of California art and largest private collections of Disney art.
At 22,000 square feet, the Hilbert Museum in Orange, California, directly opposite the Orange Metrolink train station, is now Orange County’s largest art museum offering galleries dedicated to paintings, illustrations, and other art that tell the unique California story.
Nine opening shows showcase early scenes of Los Angeles and Southern California life; Disney movie art and original animation cells; and special exhibitions dedicated to Orange County, Norman Rockwell, and celebrated Southern California painter and mosaic artist Millard Sheets, whose 40-ft. x 16-foot “Pleasures Along the Beach” mosaic from 1970 was fully restored and installed on the museum’s façade earlier this month.
Visitors to The Hilbert Museum of California Art at Chapman University will now find a striking new two-building ensemble offering 26 galleries for rotating displays of the more than 5,000 oils, watercolors, illustrations, drawings, pieces of movie production art, and more in the growing Hilbert Collection.
Founded through the ongoing generosity of art patrons and philanthropists Mark and Janet Hilbert, it holds the distinction of being the only museum in the world committed to tracing the rich, iconic history of the Golden State from the 1900s to the present through works by leading California Scene artists and Hollywood studio artists and animators.
View more museum announcements here at FineArtConnoisseur.com.
Fueled by an overactive imagination and insatiable curiosity, Brosio offers a glimpse into his perceptions of reality. Employing cinematic and dioramic elements, he invites the viewer to a world that plays the artificial, the authentic, and the perceived against one another. Synesthesia plays an interesting role in Brosio’s artistic process, intertwining sensory information with a stream-of-consciousness approach to the concepts.
John Brosio: American Games
Arcadia Contemporary, New York City
February 24 – March 10, 2024
arcadiacontemporary.com
More from the organizers:
John Brosio (b.1967) was raised in Southern California and later earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of California at Davis in 1991. Brosio’s artistic journey, originally a pursuit of film and special effects, shifted under the painting guidance of Wayne Thiebaud and Richard Bunkall.
Originally recognized for his paintings of tornados, Brosio spent three seasons “storm chasing” out of Texas. His art reflects life’s chaotic duality, capturing the simultaneous energies of new life and imminent death.
Influenced by cosmology, he finds joy in the notion that among scientists it is currently accepted that the universe might very well be a hologram. Indeed, beyond the subject matter, Brosio sees both reality and painting as little more than an orchestration of relationships.
His extensive exhibition history includes solo shows in California and New York, along with a notable survey at the National Academy of Sciences Museum in Washington D.C. in 2008.
A favorite artist of Hollywood and Sci Fi’s creative community, collectors of Brosio’s paintings include film director J.J. Abrams, Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl, and “Hellboy” creator Mike Mignola. Of late, musician Wolfgang Van Halen featured one of Brosio’s paintings for the cover of his latest album, “Mammoth II.”
“American Games” will be on view from February 24 – March 10, 2024, with an opening reception February 24, 4-6pm at Arcadia’s Soho Gallery located 421 W. Broadway New York, NY 10012.
View more fine art gallery exhibitions here at FineArtConnoisseur.com.
Art Collection Profile > Samuel and Alice Peralta were born in the Philippines but have long resided in Toronto, where Samuel has made his name as a physicist, entrepreneur, film producer, and editor of the Future Chronicles anthologies of speculative fiction. Samuel has always loved art, as his mother, Rosario Bitanga, was their homeland’s leading female abstractionist, and his father, Jesus Peralta, a critic and playwright. Samuel and Alice met in university and soon began attending his mother’s exhibitions.
Samuel’s first acquisition was a gouache landscape by Mauro “Malang” Santos, bought during his first year of university with part of his scholarship funds. “Amazingly, and fortunately,” he laughs, “my parents were proud of me and made up the amount I had spent.” Samuel and Alice’s first serious purchase together was a Chagall lithograph they spotted at London’s Sims Reed Gallery; he recalls that “it opened our eyes to the possibility of curating a collection, rather than amassing individual pieces.” (The couple went on to buy several Matisse prints from Sims Reed.)
Over time the Peraltas have come to appreciate art of all kinds — realist, abstract, contemporary, historical — yet their collection focuses on “realist art with a strong narrative or symbolic subtext.” They say they are “always looking for pieces that sing to us. We ask each other, ‘Do we love it? Will we regret not acquiring it?’”
Luckily, metropolitan Toronto is home to superb galleries, auctions, fairs, and a lively arts community, and the Peraltas especially admire their fellow collector Jeanne Banka, a fixture on the scene “who feels personal joy when she sees us go home with a new piece, and whose enthusiasm is infectious.” The couple also have strong connections to comparable sources in Montreal, Vancouver, New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, and naturally they follow developments via the Internet and magazines.
The Peraltas are quick to praise sources that have been particularly helpful. They include John Kinsella and Gisella Giacalone at Mira Godard Gallery (Toronto), Ineke Zigrossi at Abbozzo Gallery (Toronto), Kipling Gallery (Woodbridge, Ontario), Montreal’s Galerie Cosner and Galerie Claude Lafitte, KP Projects (Los Angeles), Alpha 137 Gallery (New York City), the Canadian auctioneers Cowley & Abbott, Heffels, and Waddingtons, and the German auctioneers Auctionata and Bassenge.
The Peraltas underscore their deep respect for the Chicago-based curator/artist Didi Menendez, who in 2010 published Samuel’s Sonnets from the Labrador (a project inspired by David Blackwood’s etchings). Menendez has introduced them to many opportunities at 33 Contemporary Gallery (Chicago), Arcadia Contemporary (New York City), RJD Gallery (Michigan), and Wisconsin’s Wausau Museum of Contemporary Art.
Today the Peralta Collection includes works by Paulina Aubey, Ivonne Bess, David Blackwood, Cora Brittan, Erica Elan Ciganek, Franco Cimitan, Philip Craig, Carlos Fentanes, Tom Forrestall, Barbara Fox, Grant Gilsdorf, Maryam Gohar, Sarah Jane Gorlitz, Brianna Lee Hardie, Mercedes Helnwein, Heather Horton, Fabian Jean, Max Johnson, Susannah Martin, Didi Menendez, Janice Moorhead, Agnieszka Nienartowicz, Jamie Nye, Amy Ordoveza, Karen Pasieka, Christopher Pratt, Sean William Randall, Nadine Robbins, Paul Roorda, Viktoria Savenkova, Christina Sealey, Greg Shafley, Jeremy Smith, Jessica Smith, Allen Smutylo, Don Stinson, Takao Tamabe, Aron Wiesenfeld, and Olexander Wlasenko.
The Peraltas treasure their friendships with many of these artists. For example, Samuel says, “We first came across Heather Horton through Abbozzo Gallery, and we immediately fell in love with her works, not only because she uses minimalist patches of color to approximate perception, but also because there’s always a story embedded in the image.”
Illustrated here is her “Kerri Aware,” which Samuel describes as “a study of peaceful sleep among rumpled sheets that resemble clouds. But the work’s title, and the baseball bat in the background, provide that narrative tension that characterizes our collection. Over time we have acquired a score of Heather’s paintings, so that the story of her life has populated our walls and shelves. We have come to know her as much from the art as from our many conversations.”
In 2019, Samuel and Alice began collecting sculpture, starting with such historical Canadian realists as Bill McElcheran. They have shifted toward the magical realism of Abraham Anghik Ruben, an Inuit sculptor who has created a personal mythology inspired by early contact between the Inuit and Vikings, as well as Ralph Ingleton, Ricky Jaw, Johnny Kilabuk, and Lea Vivot.
In general, the Peraltas are delighted to observe the recent swing of art’s pendulum back toward realism and technical mastery. “Realist art,” Samuel notes, “is becoming more indicative of its societal context, making it a truer mirror of the world. It is also incorporating techniques of non-representation — such as pure color, line, form, juxtaposition, and randomness — that give it a more vibrant vocabulary.”
Having written about the future, it makes sense that Samuel created the Lunar Codex project (lunarcodex.com) in 2020. Its mission is to send digitized archives — of art (predominantly contemporary realism), books, poetry, music, and film — in time capsules that will remain on the Moon. This content is stored on shielded memory cards, or etched on nickel wafers, and can endure for millennia. After it arrives, more than 7,000 contemporary creative artists from around the world will be represented on the Moon.
Such an initiative epitomizes the Peraltas’ belief that “the best is yet to come,” something surely everyone hopes is true.
View more artist and collector profiles here at FineArtConnoisseur.com.
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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***
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.
Shan Fannin is an internationally acclaimed artist known for her vibrantly colored, and imaginatively realistic canvases of the world’s most beloved vehicles.
More from the organizers:
Shan was featured throughout 2023 at The Kessler Collection’s Grand Bohemian Galleries in the southern United States. Her solo exhibition in Saint Augustine will stun with large-scale, originals of her planes, trains, motorcycles, and automobiles. Shan’s unique combination of 90% realism with 10% abstraction is the winning combination that brings these vintage vehicles to life.
March 2024 Art Exhibition Details:
Friday, March 1, 5:30-8:00pm: Shan Fannin Artist Reception
Saturday, March 2 and Sunday, March 3, 10:00-5:00pm: Solo Exhibition
All events are free and open to the public.
Location: The Grand Bohemian Gallery, Saint Augustine, Florida
Website: https://www.kesslercollection.com/casa-monica/experiences/
About the Artist:
Shannon “Shan” Fannin lives in Austin, Texas. Her work has shown in galleries throughout the U.S., Canada, and the United Kingdom including the Salmagundi Club, Wausau Museum of Contemporary Art, and Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance. She is a member of the International Guild of Realism, American Women Artists, and National Oil & Acrylic Painters Society. She has won numerous awards including Best of Show, was a finalist for the Kessler Collection Next Original, and has five of her paintings digitally included in the Lunar Codex Moon project. Shan is also a guest art writer for various magazines.
How did you get started and then develop your career? How do you describe success?
Karen Ann Hitt: Ironically, I got started by growing up very tall and skinny and having to learn to sew at 12 years old to make clothes that fit my rare size. All of that led to my learning Advanced Technical Fashion Design in college level vo-tech high school courses and earning a partial scholarship by designing a wedding dress.
Culminating from all things Art consuming my attentions, I asked my Fashion Design teacher where I should go to college. She only named one: Parsons School of Design in New York. Therefore, I applied, and resolved that if I did not get in, I would just go to Miami Dade Community College until they accepted me. Well, I was accepted first try, and off I went!
The Foundation year at Parsons introduced me to a whole world I never even knew existed. Classroom for costume drawing class was in the basement of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. While in the basement, I saw a layout drawing by Leonardo da Vinci on display that he used to transfer onto a fresco by making pin holes along the lines and chalk; pieces of history like these forever changed me. A priceless education, that grew from the fashion.
A funny tale, in my first painting class the teacher recommended that I paint a “Sargent.” Little did I know she meant a Master Painter — being from a military family I sought out reference for a Sergeant! Back in the classroom I shared with her that it is much easier to find reference for Generals than Sergeants. Yes, she fell out of her chair, and yes, I had a LOT to learn! For that utter embarrassment I am forever thankful, and to this day the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art remains one of my favorite places on earth.
Studying Master Painters’ turned into a lifetime pursuit that still burns in me to this day. Realizing my true passion, I changed my major. The brand “An Original Hitt” was originally for the dress shop I thought I would open one day… now it’s just who I am.
For more of Karen’s work, visit:
www.anoriginalhitt
By David Masello
Frank DiLella knows famous faces. As host of the New York-based On Stage television show, the charismatic and handsome DiLella has a face that’s become famous to his viewers, as well as to the Broadway actors, directors, and choreographers he interviews on air. “If that’s true, that I’m recognized, to some degree, then I should say also that I completely, honestly, truly love what I do, being a voice for the performing arts community. I’m humbled by the talent I encounter.”
While some people post their favorite faces on Facebook or Instagram, DiLella displays many of his choices on what he calls the “gallery wall” in his Manhattan apartment. Hanging there are photos of stars he has befriended and interviewed, including Vanessa Redgrave and Tommy Tune, along with 1940s images of his grandparents and sheet music signed by the composers.
Also prominently positioned there is a colorful canvas filled with images of bunnies by Hunt Slonem (b. 1951), one of the most prolific artists working today. The one face DiLella wishes to add to his collection, though, is that of Abraham Lincoln, specifically a painting by Slonem, whose portraits of famous sitters such as the 16th president and Queen Elizabeth II are often likened to Pop Art, with their bold colors and photographic quality. Given the frequency with which he depicts Lincoln, Slonem seems as smitten with the man as Warhol was with Marilyn Monroe.
DiLella first encountered the work of Slonem while strolling a street in Boston and seeing the artist’s bunnies and birds, his most popular motifs, in a gallery window. Since his visit to Slonem’s Brooklyn studio, where this Lincoln portrait resides, DiLella has yet to forget the work, notable for its jewel-red background, void of any details or sense of setting, and the contemplative face-forward gaze of Lincoln.
“Not only was Lincoln one of our greatest leaders,” says DiLella, “but he was also a huge patron of the arts, notably of Shakespeare. To have this amazing American artist be so inspired by Lincoln is inspiring. I just think the work is beautiful.” Given that portraits by Slonem typically sell for more than $20,000, DiLella is saving his pennies and five-dollar bills with their images of Lincoln.
Now that Slonem and DiLella have become friends, the artist has spoken about his special fondness for Lincoln and Mary Todd, herself the subject of several Slonem portraits. As for the prevailing hue of this Lincoln work, DiLella admits that red is his favorite color — he spends a lot of time on the red carpet at Broadway and West End openings. “Red is sexy, it’s passionate; it’s love, after all.”
As an entertainment journalist, DiLella is frequently on the road, and wherever he is, theater is the first priority. But when the stage curtains are down, he visits art museums. “I particularly love seeing in the flesh the famous, iconic works you know from textbooks and film,” he says. “It’s super inspiring for me to see the real thing in its setting.”
As for the sheer effect of Slonem’s works, DiLella admires the way the paintings “stand out.” DiLella is passionate about the world of theater and recognizes a similar degree of commitment in the artist. “I admire Slonem because he is committed to what he knows he can do best. He knows what inspires him and responds to that.”
View more artist and collector profiles here at FineArtConnoisseur.com.
