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.
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.
All eyes are on Great Falls, Montana, the town of 60,000 that will come alive during its 54th Western Art Week. It was on March 19, 1864 that the Western master Charles M. Russell was born in St. Louis, and it was in Great Falls that he spent the second half of his life; he died there in 1926.
A key highlight will be the 36th Annual March in Montana Auction & Dealer Show, presented by Coeur d’Alene Galleries and Coeur d’Alene Art Auction (March 16–18). On offer there will be Western and sporting art, cowboy and Indian collectibles, and arms, with particular strength in Native American weavings, the art of William Standing, and woodcarvings by Montana’s John L. Clarke.
Illustrated above is a scene of the Salmon River painted by Jessica Bryant. She writes, “Known as the River of No Return, the Salmon is the longest undammed river in the contiguous U.S., dropping over 7,000 feet and flowing 425 miles, all within Idaho. I camped here last April, as the spring runoff swelled the creeks into a raging confluence with the Salmon. My campsite was on a large rock outcrop, just above this view. The force of the creek below transferred a con-stant, low vibration through the rock. It was simply magnificent to spend a few days experiencing this spot.”
Lots of other activities will be making Great Falls hop this March. The C.M. Russell Museum will present Charlie’s March Roundup (March 17–18), which features a preview party and two nights of sales offering art and collectibles, along with educational activities.
Overlapping it is the Out West Art Show & Sale (March 16–18) encompassing more than 70 artists and multiple galleries. Produced by the Out West Art Foundation, which mentors Montana’s high school-age artists, its offerings include two auctions plus Quick Draw and Quick Finish events.
Running concurrently nearby:
As if that were not enough, the Paris Gibson Square Museum of Art will be open as usual, presenting its permanent collection and temporary exhibitions.
Browse more western art and events here.
We’d like to congratulate Charles Newman for winning Overall First Place in the January 2023 PleinAir Salon, judged by CW Mundy.
Charles Newman received his Master’s Degree in Fine Art from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 2008, focusing on plein air painting; he earned a BFA in Painting from Rowan University in 2002. In 2001, Charles studied painting and photography at the Scuola Lorenzo de’Medici in Florence, Italy.
Charles continues to paint en plein air. He is an accomplished craftsman and currently works at Provenance in Philadelphia, PA, specializing in architectural salvage materials and antiques. He is known for his hand-crafted frames made with salvaged wood and custom home restorations.
Charles has received numerous awards at Plein Air Festivals along the East coast, including First Place at Cape Ann Plein Air 2022, Second Place at Plein Air Easton 2019, and was featured in the Aug/Sept 2018 issue of PleinAir Magazine. He was awarded Best in Show at the Philadelphia Sketch Club’s 150th Annual Small Oil Painting Exhibition.
In the spirit of the French Salon created by the Academie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, this annual online art competition, with 11 monthly cycles, leading to the annual Salon Grand Prize winners, is designed to stimulate artistic growth through competition. The competition rewards artists with over $33,000 in cash prizes and exposure of their work, with the winning painting featured on the cover of PleinAir Magazine.
Winners in each monthly competition may receive recognition and exposure through PleinAir Magazine’s print magazine, e-newsletters, websites, and social media. Winners of each competition will also be entered into the annual competition. The 12th Annual Awards will be presented live at the Plein Air Convention & Expo in May 2023.
The next round of the PleinAir Salon has begun so hurry, as this competition ends on the last day of the month. Enter your best art in the PleinAir Salon here.
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Now entering its 33rd year, Celebration of Fine Art is Arizona’s longest-running art show. It brings together 100 artists from across America, all invited to spend 10 weeks creating pieces in front of visitors. Their works range widely in both aesthetics and media.
Guests are invited to ask questions as the artists work, and these encounters are complemented by weekly demonstrations of woodturning, welding, kiln firing, and glass blowing, as well as exhibitors’ talks every Friday. Everyone is welcome to explore the one-acre sculpture garden, which features nearly 100 pieces, and to enjoy meals and wine in the cafe on site.
In 1991, inspired by California’s Laguna Beach Festival of Arts, Tom and Ann Morrow collaborated with Scottsdale officials and the community to open CFA’s “big white tents” for the first time. Now encompassing 40,000 square feet of covered space, the event is carried on by Tom’s daughter Susan Morrow Potje and her husband, Jake. Susan Potje notes, “There’s no place where art comes to life like the Celebration of Fine Art.”
For those who cannot make it to Scottsdale before March 26, 2023, visit the website to browse and buy CFA artists’ newest creations.
Browse more articles here at FineArtConnoisseur.com. Fine Art Connoisseur serves art collectors and enthusiasts with innovative articles about representational paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints — both historical and contemporary, American and European.
Jennifer Riefenberg: I prefer painting from life. Painting is exploring and discovering, healing and learning, admiring and preserving. As a painting takes on its own voice, it becomes a living experience with each brushstroke a breath toward its creation. I hope that my artwork communicates the experiences that I have and captures the very essence of the beautiful world through my eyes and interpretation. “Gray Extreme” recently won an HM Award at a regional OPA show.
To see more of Jennifer’s work, visit:
www.artofsunshine.com
Mary Williams Fine Art: www.marywilliamsfinearts.com
Gay Faulkenberry: My Still Life of “Spring Arrangement” was entered into the American Impressionist Society All Member Online Show in November of 2022. To my surprise it was awarded the “Award of Distinction”. Many thanks to Fine Art Connoisseur and judge Betty Carr. Peonies have always been one of my favorite flowers to paint and I had them in my garden. Hence a perfect arrangement for a still life set up in my studio.
To see more of Gay’s work, visit:
www.gayfaulkenberry.com
George Adams Gallery in NYC is opening “Moments of Being,” its first solo exhibition with Maya Brodsky. The exhibition brings together a series of portrait paintings – intimate in both scale and subject matter – that capture essential moments in Brodsky’s life.
The exhibition title derives from a Virginia Woolf essay in which she describes these consequential ‘moments of being’ as distinct from the ‘scaffolding in the background.’ Here, Brodsky calls out these singular moments that were transformative to her life through paintings created from photographs she took in the moment. The exhibition is on view through April 1, 2023.
The central piece of the exhibition is a series of paintings created around a hospital stay following the birth of her second daughter. The precisely rendered details of the works – wrinkled bed sheets, wilting flowers, coffee growing cold on a tray – contrast with Brodsky’s fractured memory of the moment, despite the significance of the event. Here the process of painting comes to life, a means to distill a single, essential moment and preserve it.
Throughout the works, life, love, and death play a pivotal role, often tied together through paintings that emphasize the power of touch, particularly from one generation to another. Brodsky’s grandmother Dusya, and her daughter Eda, appear frequently throughout the works, often connected through small, intimate gestures.
Taken together, the ebb and flow of images and the inevitable connotations of film emphasize not only the passage of time, but also a transfer from one generation to the next.
For more details: www.georgeadamsgallery.com
Browse more paintings and artworks on view at galleries across the country and beyond here.
Salmagundi Club of New York
New York City
salmagundi.org
Through April 30, 2023
A professional and social organization for representational artists and their patrons, the Salmagundi Club of New York is housed in a historic brownstone mansion facing Fifth Avenue in Greenwich Village. It remains one of Manhattan’s best-kept secrets, and within it lies an even better-kept secret: a stunning library with an unparalleled collection of visual reference materials.
Beginning in the years around 1896, the philanthropist J. Sanford Saltus (1853–1922) and artist William Henry Shelton (1840–1932) were among the club members who regularly traveled to Europe to buy books containing illustrations of uniforms and other costumes that the club’s many illustrator members could use for reference.
“That was the golden age of magazine illustration,” says Alexander Katlan, chairman of the club’s library committee. “The illustrators would refer to these books to ensure their creations were accurate.” Today, the Salmagundi library contains some 5,000 volumes of rare material catalogued using a unique method that predates the Dewey Decimal System.
Beyond its archival resources, the library contains many artworks to admire, including two allegorical door panels painted in 2021 by Noah Buchanan (b. 1976) as a commission after he placed first in the club’s competition. Now another commission has been undertaken through the club’s first bust competition, which sustains the tradition of talented sculptors honoring their artistic forerunners.
The “Sculpting Our Heroes” competition was conducted last year, and this winter the public is invited to admire the winning work — Heather Personett’s bust of the great sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848–1907) — plus nine other works recognized by the jury. (Interestingly, six of the 10 top artists chose to depict Saint-Gaudens, who joined the club in 1877. Their other subjects were William Merritt Chase, Alphonse Mucha, and N.C. Wyeth.)
Placing second in the competition was Jana Buettner; third place went to Andreja Vuckovic, and fourth to Maudie Brady. The remaining finalists were Kate Brockman, Zoe Dufour, Erik Ebeling, Matt Gemmell, Quitin McCann, and Susan Wakeen. Personett’s clay maquette (illustrated above) is being cast in bronze this season; both versions will be on view in the exhibition.
On February 16, Fine Art Connoisseur editor-in-chief Peter Trippi moderated a panel discussion on the bust competition and its significance.
On View: “Making American Artists: Stories from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1776–1976”
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA)
pafa.org
Through April 2, 2023
From the organizers:
Over 100 of the most iconic works in this famed collection spotlights both well-known names in American art and traditionally underrepresented artists, posing questions about what it has meant to be an American artist over two centuries.
“Making American Artists” explores the role that art has played in influencing our national history and identity over 200 years and embraces untold stories about women artists, LGBTQIA+ artists, and artists of color. Artworks will be displayed in five thematic sections—portraiture, history painting, still life, genre scenes, and landscape—rather than in chronological order. This design allows for objects from different time periods to be shown together, creating striking visual counterpoints and sparking new conversations.
Each of the featured artists’ careers were shaped by PAFA, whether through their education or the exhibition and display of their work, and the exhibition offers a critical re-examination of this legacy while shedding light on PAFA’s continuing role in shaping American art in the 21st century. Iconic American artists with one or more works in the exhibition include Mary Cassatt, Thomas Eakins, Barkley Hendricks, Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper, May Howard Jackson, Alice Neel, Georgia O’Keefe, Charles Willson Peale, Sonia Sekula, Henry O. Tanner, Dox Thrash, and Andrew Wyeth.
“‘Making American Artists’ is an epic collection of American art, featuring some of our nation’s most famous images and artists in new conversations with each other,” says Eric Pryor, President and CEO of PAFA. “When Charles Willson Peale founded PAFA with the sculptor William Rush in 1805, they created an institution that was devoted to groundbreaking initiatives in championing American art and artists—what that looks like has changed considerably throughout the last 217 years. This exhibition explores PAFA’s impressive collection with a critical eye and emphasizes its transformative contribution to the history of American Art.”
Chief of Curatorial Affairs and the Kenneth R. Woodcock Curator of Historical American Art Dr. Anna Marley led the curation of the 103 objects in the exhibition from PAFA’s collection of over 16,000 objects. Marley says, “‘Making American Artists’ asks integral questions about PAFA’s role in defining what American art was and is, and who gets to be considered an American artist. When you have a collection full of iconic art, that has been developed over more than 200 years, you have an opportunity and obligation to tell both familiar and surprising stories.”
The show will travel on a tour organized by the American Federation of Arts.
March 11: Carol Soltis, the premier scholar of the Peale Family of artists, will give a gallery talk about recent discoveries and outcomes of a multi-year investigation of the ”Washington at Princeton” painting by Charles Willson Peale.
April 5: “The Freedman” with Kelvin L. Parnell Jr. (Ph.D. candidate at University of Virginia and a 2020 Wyeth Foundation fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum)
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.
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.
