Elba Alvarez Alvarez was born in Pedernales, Venezuela in 1944. At the age of 18 she went to Europe and studied in Paris. She came to the United States in 1968 carrying the ideas and visions which would fill her canvases with bold, striking colors. The paintings that Alvarez created caused gallery after gallery to lavish high praise for her innovative and provocative abstracts. She was encouraged to set up a studio in New York City. Through years of studying and experimentation her talents have evolved into a highly unique and engrossing style of painting.
Edward Andrew Edward Andrew was born in America in the early 1950’s. Andrew paints in a realistic, impressionist style, painting his favorite European scenes.
Capturing the warmth and beauty of province, his use of light is what gives the work a special, romantic quality that draws people into each painting.
Most impressive is Andrew’s use of shadow. He clearly captures the depth of each scene by his rich use of color, outlined by the blending of shades and light displayed across each canvas.
Kenneth Appelbaum Born 1952 in Cleveland, Ohio Kenneth’s brother Stuart sent him his first camera, a type of Nikon called a Nikkormat in 1970. Kenneth has used Nikon systems ever since. He also uses a larger format camera made by Hasselblad.
When he received his first camera he was living in Tucson, Arizona. While going to Pima College for unrelated subjects he started working at a local Photography Studio. His first teacher although he is for the most part self-taught was a legally blind photographer. With a weak optic nerve Kenneth assisted him by focusing in the darkroom while learning the art.
Learning about black and white only he became a purest for about the next 25 years. In 1995 Ken was still only shooting with his one Nikon, one lense, never using color film, lenses, flash, filter, tripod or anything other than a manual camera. He then took a course that changed all that. Studying with a world class and world-renowned photographer Joseph Meehan he extended his horizons considerably. Updating his equipment, using tripods, color film, different lenses, flash and subjects his art continued to evolve considerably. In 1997 he enrolled in a course taught by another world-class photographer Miss Linda Summers. He studied and ran the darkroom there for 2 years honing all his skills and concentrating on black and white fine art. Ken’s art is very diverse. He has a feel for life that goes beyond what maybe socially acceptable or even spoken. He has the eye we so often hear about yet rarely experience. Kenneth is a freelance photographer in Boca Raton, Florida. Because of his many years experience he is able to shoot many types of subjects with great feeling and the unique ability to bring out the essence of the subject. Gallery Exhibits include: Palm Beach Community College, Shining Through Book Store, Boca City Hall Gallery, Patch Reef Park Gallery, E.P. Pro Lab Gallery.
Rita Asfour Avid Collectors and Fans of her Beautiful Pastel Compositions include: ELLA FITZGERALD, DONNA REED, TRICIA NIXON & publisher OTIS CHANDLER! Featured around the world in Museums, as well as Private and Public Collections, ASFOUR`s creations have been enthusiastically lauded as "Timeless Classics" with a "constant appeal because of their traditional base". All titles are extremely collectible. She has been painting for over 50 years and has an impressive roster of collectors from all around the world. She has been exhibited in museums and galleries across the nation.
Tony Azzito Azzito was born with a paint brush in hand in the late 50’s. He was heavily influenced by the POP phenomenon during his childhood, which is reflective in his art style. A self-taught artist, Azzito has developed a style uniquely his own. Utilizing mostly primary colors in his work, Azzito incorporates a wonderful use of abstract with clean line POP icons. Hailed as the “Pop Artist of the New Millennium”, Azzito has planned projects commemorating this century and the next! His themes are exciting, thoughtful and refreshing. Using a free associative thought process and vibrant use of color characterize Azzito’s paintings. Galleries across the country are eager to acquire Azzito’s POP ART and more excitement is emerging with each new Azzito painting! An American artist painting American icons, Azzito incorporates the use of parody in most of his work. As well as painting, Azzito is also a master printer. He creates all of his own silk screens from start to finish. Whereas most artist use artisans for printing, Azzito starts and finishes each unique mixed media painting himself, giving him the freedom to explore multiple techniques.
Roy Bal A multi-talented artist who has been highly influenced by the work of Boulanger, his style of color and balance of characters in his paintings reflects a wide range of styles, ranging from musical statements of children learning to play instruments, to sports, involving children at play with polo and football, allowing his audience to capture a pure moment of innocence and celebration of being a child. His main theme throughout his work underlines the essence of music and play, and the role it has throughout many of life's many encounters. At times his work is very textured giving it an old world feeling with a contemporary theme, while at other times his use of color is very graphic, going from muted tones to very bright and bold. Some refer to his images as Puffy People.
Roy Bal began painting at the age of 18 and continued throughout his life in Italy, painting children at play in many of the towns and villages that he frequented. Coming to the United States was quite and experience quotes Roy Bal, Many of the towns and villages in Europe are quite different from the city scapes in the United States and the backdrop of the children at play has changed quite significantly. Roy Bal currently resides in upstate New York where he continues his work surrounded by his three children and wife of 25 years. Roy Bal's paintings may be found in fine galleries throughout the United States and Europe as well as South America.
Mildred Barrett The Manhattan-born Mildred Barrett is a woman to whom painting is capturing the mood of the subject with an exceptional use of color. Barrett's training includes the Art Students League, the National Academy of Fine Arts, and the Brooklyn Museum Art School. She has traveled extensively through which the theme and style of her work was created and developed. Barrett has had numerous one-woman shows on Madison Avenue in New York and in galleries on Long Island and her works have been sold and re collected all over the United States, Canada, and Europe. Her paintings are also on permanent display at Bergdorf Goodmans Nenas Choice Gallery. There is a simplicity and charm in Barretts work which is enhanced by her remarkable feeling for color. Her impressionistic style captures the mood of the subject - figures which are unique in themselves in certain poses and expressions. Her canvases glow with flowers which look as though they have just been picked. Barrett is considered one of the finest female artists, certainly, living in the United States today. Of her success, she modestly says it happened all by itself - I put my time in six or seven days a week beginning at 5 or 6:00 AM. My only problem is that I like my paintings so much that I hate to see them sold.
Leonard Baskin Baskin, Leonard (1922- 2000) Printmaker, sculptor, book designer. Born in New Brunswick, N.J., the son of a rabbi. In 1937-39 he studied with the sculptor Maurice Glickman and in 1939 had his first one-man show in NewYork. He attended New York (1939-41) and Yale (1941-43) universities and then served in the U.S. Navy during World War 11 before continuing his studies at the New School for Social Research in New York. The year of his graduation (1949) Baskin began making prints. In 1950 he went to Paris and studied at the Acadamie de la Grande Chaumiare, and the following year to Florence to work at the Accademia di Belle Arti. Baskin's traditional training and his conviction that art should serve one's fellow man made him a rather unique figure during the 1950s, when abstraction and the expression of one's personal feelings held sway. Rather than experimenting with new formal structures, media, or techniques, Baskin developed a mastery of old techniques -woodcarving, woodcuts, etching, and lithography-and determined to use his work for social ends. During the 1950s he began a series of full-length standing figures of "dead men" in stone, bronze, and wood. Related to these are his "Birdmen" (human figures with bird heads that are reminiscent of certain statues of Egyptian gods) and his "Oppressed Men" (often featuring an owl -another favorite theme-standing on the head of a man). All of these figures represent "universal man" struggling with the problems of life and death, aspiration, immortality, and corruption. In his prints Baskin extends the psychological overtones of his sculpture even further, frequently producing powerful brooding, and even tortured, images. Much of the strength of these works derives from his bold cutting technique, which exploits the texture of the wood, and from his mastery of black and white.
Perhaps the two greatest influences on Baskin's work are Japanese calligraphy and German expressionism (the artists he admires most are Kaethe Kollwitz and Ernst Barlach). Defending the so-called "literary" or "journalistic" qualities of his work, Baskin has noted: "All art is propaganda.... The communication of an artistic idea is an act of propaganda." He has stated that for him the most important subject is "anxiety-ridden man, imprisoned in his ungainly self," and has illustrated this theme in such prints as Hanged Man, Angel of Death, and Oppressed Bird with Human Aspects. Like his black ink drawings on white paper, Baskin's graphics are technically brilliant. His most recent work is a series of bronze sculptures-many with an elegiac air-on the usual themes of death and compassion, and like all his work they display an odd combination of sophistication with the seemingly primitive." Baskin is often termed a romantic humanist," perhaps a result of his disavowal of the "purely decorative" and "the private world of the artist." He has long been interested in book illustration and founded the Gehenna Press, Northampton, Mass., which prints and publishes limited editions. A typical volume would be Homed Beetles and Other Insects, for which Baskin has provided thirty-four etchings; however, his interest extends beyond illustration into total book design: the integrating of type, paper, illustrations, and binding to form an esthetic object. Baskin has taught at Smith College since 1953 and has won numerous awards including the Printmaking Prize at the Sdo Paulo Biennial (1961) and medals from the American Institute of Graphic Arts (1965) and the National Institute of Arts and Letters (1969).
B Basson Basson was influenced by artists such as Vasarely and Agam. He works with multiple art mediums, but remains in the geometric abstract format. His strong background in painting and printmaking create emotionally abstract composites. His style developed a more structured asethetic in the mid 1980 mixing media by incorporating a more definitive style of bold color, hard-edge and texture.
Jane Bazinet Jane Bazinet has emerged as an important American artist. Born in Basile, Louisiana, she began painting during the 60's. Bazinet produced her first graphics in the early 80's. Jane studied at Arizona State University for five years and continued studying art thereafter as an apprentice under the able tutelage of several painters. First exhibited in Scottsdale, Arizona, her paintings and prints soon found their ways into collections (both public and private) and galleries across the world. Although she has worked in numerous mediums, deftly treating a variety of themes, she is best known for her lyrical figurative work, which dwells at a mysterious crossroad between poetic realism and abstract expressionism. Her airy and whimsical women are adorned with flowing gowns in plush and tropical settings give off a feeling of relaxation and romance. She has been recognized as an artist with an extremely personal style and technique, which is romantic and contemporary. Her work is held in many public and private collections throughout the world and she has had many gallery shows throughout the United States and abroad. Her style and technique is contemporary as well as romantic and her works are very collectible.
Patrice Beckerich was born in Paris in 1946. As a child, Patrice displayed a remarkable ability and passion for drawing. However, it was not until the age of 35 that this passion began to consume him on a full time basis. In his newly adopted home of Quebec, Canada, Patrice began to apprentice with various masters, further refining his painting and drawing skills. It was also at this time that Patrice Beckerich enrolled in the University of Quebec, Montreal, majoring in Fine Arts. Upon graduation, he accepted a position with the university, teaching adult fine art continuing education courses.
Intensely moved from the form, light, color and texture of the landscape, Patrice made annual painting excursions and attended painting symposium in the Charlevoix region of Quebec, world renowned for the beauty of its landscape. In his painting, Patrice expresses his love and his reverence for the natural world and his extraordinary perception of the formal visual elements of line, form, texture and shape. Patrice’s painting hovers on the very edge of realism. Forests, flowers, still-lifes and landscapes are translated into overlapping plaques of color and texture that combine a semi-abstract world of shimmering light and color.
Guy Begin Guy Bégin was born in Canada in 1944. Finding inspiration in a Christmas card at the age of 17, Guy Begin created his very first panting. Since then, he has developed into a professional, self-taught artist who is achieving tremendous success. After several years of traveling around Europe to observe the artworks of the old masters, Begin made a decision to pursuit a career in the field and thus began to fully dedicate himself to his art. The passion of traveling and of course, the passion of becoming a professional artist-painter,
made him want to further pursuit his exploration in style and color. In 1987, Begin started to exhibit his paintings solo. The following year, he lived in California where life under the sun softened the colors of his palate. The change was a success for him and from that time, he has been an internationally renowned artist. Known as the “painter of perfumes,” he takes part of the biggest art exhibitions, including Art Expo New York. In 1995, his painting Big Apple Perfume was chosen among 5000 other exhibitors’ works of art, to be the
official poster of the Art Expo Show. Guy Bégins’ talent reflects his satisfied frame of mind. His rich tones and beautiful impressionistic style, tell a lot about his happy way of seeing things. Put best in his words. “ I paint what I like in order to like what I paint.”
Howard Behrens Behrens was born in Chicago in 1933. At the age of 7, his family moved to a suburb of Washington, D.C. When he was 17, he broke his leg in a sledding accident. Bedridden, he turned to painting to pass the time. In 1959 Howard went to John Hopkins University to study medical art. He became disillusioned, and returned to the University of Maryland and obtained a degree in painting and sculpting. In 1961, Behrens was hired by the printing Office in Washington D.C., where he worked until 1981 serving as a chief artist for ten years. He continued to paint on weekends and nights. In 1980 he had his first one-man show at the Philips Gallery in West Palm Beach.
- Belvisi The highly impressionistic style of Bevisi's lithograph recapture a youthful innocence and show the artist's mastery of form and design that compliments his use of color. Belvisi was born in Provence, France in 1950 and, in his youth, moved to Paris to study painting. Original lithography fascinated him and he studied the technique of working on the many plates used to create a single lithograph. His use of bright colors reflects the part of France of his birth. Belvisi has had many exhibits in galleries all over France.
G. Rodo Boulanger Graciela Rodo Boulanger was born in 1935 in La Paz, Bolivia, Graciela Rodo Boulanger was raised in an artistic environment. She studied piano with her mother, and it was at the age of 25, after having studied music in Chile, Austria, and Argentina, that she decided to devote herself to her creative expression, which is painting. Since her first one woman show in Vienna in 1953, she has worked with a variety of media including: oil, etching, lithography, water color, pastel, sculpture and tapestry. Boulanger works with a brilliant palette to create bold, colorful compositions that brighten any room. Her high-spirited works are most often focused on the subject of children at play evoking a mood of joy and happiness.
More than 150 exhibitions of works by Boulanger have been held around the world. In 1979, Boulanger was designated by UNICEF as the official artist for the International Year of The Child poster. In 1993, the World Federation of the United Nations chose one of her oil paintings to illustrate a stamp issue and accompanying limited edition print with the theme of endangered species. Works by Boulanger are collected by many prominent institutions including: the Museum of Modern Art of Latin America, Washington, D.C.: the Bibliot que Nationale, Paris; the Museum of Modern Art, La Paz; and the Modern Art Center, Zurich.
American Fine Art Editions, Inc. represents this internationally acclaimed master whose unique works invite our inner child to come out and play, whether it be riding a tricycle, playing an instrument, or playing with animals.
Andre Bourrie B. 1936 - Andre Bourrie is renowned for his magnificent paintings of the French countryside and sea. His works are acclaimed for their brilliant use of sundrenched, white light and rich, iridescent palette. His paintings are in a private and institutional collections through out the world, including France, Japan, the United States and beyond.
Connie Boussom is a native of Elkhart, Indiana. She graduated from the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Ms. Boussom has held one women shows at the Huntsville Art Museum & was the first woman to show her works at the Van Braun Civic Center. Her works are both privately & corporately collected with displays through the United States & Europe.
Charles Bragg Bragg, America's leading satiric artist, is famous for lampooning pompous professionals, the power elite, the pious, the bizarre. Works in museums around the world including the Stedelijk in Amsterdam, the Pushkin in Moscow, the Modern in Milan, and the Joseph and Tyler Museums in the U.S. He is a Gold Medal Winner, National Society of Illustrators and New York Directors' Guild. Commissions include work for Playboy Magazine. Subject of the 1987 PBS Special, Charles Bragg One of a Kind.
Gwendolyn Branstetter American contemporary artist, Gwendolyn Branstetter is one of the leading female artists, specializing in WESTERN art. Her first hand knowledge of western lifestyle is realistically depicted in her art. This background is also evident in her paintings of Texas Wildlife done in their natural habitat, and in her rendition of the ever popular Texas Bluebonnet scenes. She began painting as a child, self-taught and working only in watercolors. As a teenager, a friend encouraged and helped her do one oil painting. Again she went through a long period of self-taught training, this time in oils. She later studied commercial art in college, and fine art under private instruction. Today she works in both watercolors and oils. Exhibits include such important invitational shows as the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame at Fort Worth, Texas, annually in the Western Art Show sponsored by the Alamo Kiwanis Club of San Antonio, The First Atlanta Art Show, Augusta, Georgia; and in many other shows over the United States, on television and on a European tour sponsored by the Center of Studies and International Cultural Exchange in Italy. Her works can be found in the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame, Dr Pepper Museum and Free Enterprise Institute, Waco, TX and in many distinguished private collections, including President and Mrs. Bush, former Texas Governors John Connally and Dolph Briscoe and their families, famed heart specialist Dr. Denton Cooley and many others. Mrs. Branstetter is named in Who's Who of American Art, by Bowker Publishers of New York; in Who's Who of American Women and Who's Who in the South and Southwest, by Marquis of Chicago, and Two Thousand Women of Achievement, by Kay Publishers of England.
Paul Braslow Braslow's sculptures show life as he would like it to be, graceful, elegant and hopeful. They inevitably recall the work of Brancusi in their startling grace, and the work of Giacometti in their intensity. After the first impressions, one reads the sculptures for their strength of balance, and only then the sense of emotion becomes apparent and remains the lasting impression. Educated in California with an Arts degree from UCLA and private study in Nara Japan, St. Ives England and Carrara Italy. Public works in Israel include Entebbe Rescue Memorial at Ben-Gurion Airport and sculptures for Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial and Haifa Museum of Modern Art.
- Briante Briante was born in Dijon and exhibited at the Paris Spring Exhibition in his early 20's. He took painting and drawing lessons to improve his technique, and in 1960 devoted himself principally to his art. Various prizes have marked his way toward becoming a recognized force within the art community. Since 1979, he has dedicated himself uniquely to his painting and with several exclusive contracts for his graphic works as well as noted exhibitions, Briante has become a renowned painter in today's art world. He continues to have his shows in regional and internationally known galleries.
Romero Britto Britto has been painting all of his life and by the age of sixteen had already had his first public exhibition at the Organization of the American States in his native Brazil. His clean and bold visual images, executed in exotic and powerful colors are evident throughout his work. The manner in which he optimistically and positively expresses his joie de vivre and confronts the social and political issues of the world today put him in a class by himself. In 1989, Romero Britto was commissioned to join the likes of Andy Warhol and Keith Haring by Absolut Vodka and as a result has become one of the most recognizable and celebrated artists in the world.
Mariarita Brunazzi Mariarita Brunazzi was born in Cremona, Italy.
Currently, she lives and works in Mantova.She is rapidly becoming a darling of collectors worldwide.
Her pieces exhibited in a number of galleries in her native country
deptic child-like women in a variety of different styles from classical scenes to more modern contemporary every day life.
Maria Rita was able to produce a woman, whose looks are closer to
those of an infant of a mother carrying a baby, and turn her into an angelic young figure holding in her short and chubby arms the delica-
cy of a newborn angel.
contemporary everyday life." My female imageries often remind people of ancient works of art in an ironic and very poetic vision" the artist explains.
"These images transmit memories of infancy, like dolls that interpret many different roles".
Mariarita, who has dared to challenge the world by copying the complicated features of the Monna Lisa, has turned this famous painting into a more subtle reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci 's mysterious lady.The risult: a beautiful version of "la Gioconda" a few years younger on oil on canvas.
But this artist's endowment goes beyond imagination. Mariarita's unique talent is beginning to make people's heads turn and stop still to admire her works.
Another example of her mastery when depicting child-like characters is one of her version of the Madonna carrying a baby.
This painting, capable of evoking the tenderest feeling will capture your heart, indefinitely keeping this image in your mind.
Mariarita was able to produce a woman, whose looks are closer to those of an infant than of a mother carrying a baby, and turn her into an angelic young figure holding in her short and chubby arms the delicacy of a newborn angel.
In a more modern piece, the artist utilized a technique of equality by depicting a little girl exercising in front of a mirror.Action normally carried out by adults are seen being performed by the young in this painting, where the girl is wearing workout gear, ready to lose those extra pounds.
Having explored the subjects of tenderness and modernism, the artist also represent sensuality in some of the works. To accomplish this, Mariarita uses a very delicate touch through the use of symbols of light drapery and colorful flowers.
Although she might be uncovering a area of the human anatomy normally not shown, the use of this approach makes the painting still look naive and harmless
Duane Bryers There is a lot of bunkhouse and cowlot character in the paintings of Duane Bryers. The cowboys in Bryer's painting are not the Zane Grey variety; they're the hard-bitten, bow-legged kind that can be found in ranch country throughout the West. Bryers lives on a ranch near Tucson, Arizona. He has had plenty of opportunity to get next to what he paints. His work proves that he has paid close attention to his subjects.
He has a knack for getting the crease just right in an old sweat-stained Stetson, and other little details like that which cowboys and ranch people appreciate in good art. It's one thing for a picture lobe painted well, but it sure adds plenty to it when the artist has paid attention to the authenticity of his subject matter. People who have spent any time around horses and cattle will find something they like in the paintings of Duane Bryers.
Duane Bryers is America's top western calendar artist-his calendars are published by Brown & Bigelow, number one in the calendar field.
He has been artist in residence on the huge Empirita Ranch in southern Arizona for the past five years. The magnificent beauty of this environment has provided him with unlimited inspiration for his highly successful paintings-which are purchased immediately by eager collectors.
He exhibits yearly at the prestigious National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City and is included in their permanent collection. He also exhibits with the annual Western Heritage Show in Houston -an invitational affair which includes the West's finest painters.
During his successful career, Mr. Bryers has had art studios in Chicago and New York. Because of the demand for his work, he never has enough paintings available for one man shows. He and his wife, Dee, are currently building a new home in the beautiful rolling country of southern Arizona. This spectacular background will no doubt show up in Mr. Bryer's future paintings.
Bernard Buffet was born in Paris in the year 1982. He entered the Ecole des Beaux Arts in 1944, where he worked mostly in solitude. About this time he found his individual style and in 1948 won the Prix de In Critique jointly with Bernard Lorjou which turned him into an overnight sensation. In sharp and spiky linear terms and with dismal grays and neutral tones he depicted emaciated figures and distorted still-lifes which seemed to express the existential alienation and spiritual solitude of the post-war generation. It was upon this power to capture a mood that his great popularity depended. Later, overwhelmed by commissions and success, his work became more stylized and more decorative, losing in great measure its initial impact. Depressed because he could no longer paint, his passion in life, Buffet committed suicide in 1999.
Fran Bull Fran Bull’s art has been shown worldwide for over 30 years. In a recent review of a solo retrospective at the Christine Price Gallery, art critic Marc Awodey writes: Fran Bull is a versatile artist, and not just in terms of the media she uses. She has a utilitarian approach to subject matter— that is, using any approach or medium, without regard to formal rules— that gives a surprising conceptual unity to her body of work…Bull's employment of the term "postmodernism" in her artist's statement fits her pragmatic approach to form and subject. Under that rubric, her work provides insight into the exuberant spirit of contemporary fin de siècle visual art. -Marc Awodey, Seven Days, November 2007 Bull’s life was inspired and defined by her childhood study of art at the Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey. She went on to study painting at Bennington College with Paul Feeley, and in 1980 she earned an M.A. degree from New York University in Art and Art Education. Upon graduation from Bennington in 1960, Bull embarked upon a professional life in art. Her early work was influenced by artist Malcolm Morley and by the Pop spirit of Photo-Realism. It was shown and sold through the Louis K. Meisel Gallery in New York City. Under the rubric of Photo-Realism, Bull addressed an established reality, one well known and shared. As her art evolved, she felt compelled to investigate the unknown-- the hidden realities of the unconscious-- the imagery of the unseen. In 1986, determined to find a personal voice, she set out on a solitary retreat to rural Ireland and delved into the writings of Carl Jung and Jungian analyst Marion Woodman. Bull’s affinity for the Jungian literature would come to exert a profound influence on her art. A large group of ink drawings emerged. In 1990 some of the drawings were chosen to illustrate Mordant Rhymes for Modern Times, a book of political satire by poet Ann Salwey, which won the American Institute of Graphic Arts design award, and is now in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. In her review in The Print Collector’s Newsletter, Art Critic Nancy Princenthal wrote: Bull’s expressive ink drawings bleed, maybe hemorrhage is the better word, across the tabloid-size page. -Nancy Princenthal, PCN, 1992. In the mid 1990’s Bull expanded her creative focus by exploring other media, and since that time her artistic output has included performance art, sculpture, mixed media, printmaking and set design, as well as painting. She has been especially prolific in the area of printmaking, creating numerous bodies of work that have received high recognition and several significant awards. Bull works in collaboration with master printer Virgili Barbara in Taller 46, a printmaking studio in Barcelona, Spain where Picasso, Tapies, Miro, Saura and others worked before her. In 2003 Bull exhibited her painting series The Magdalene Cycle at the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts in Burlington, Vermont. Art critic Marc Awodey wrote: The paintings in Fran Bull’s “Magdalene Cycle” at the Amy E. Tarrant Gallery comprise a fierce and meaty group of neo-abstract expressionist canvases. Bull’s paintings are firmly rooted in art history, and her extensive use of red is particularly powerful. She has taken away the patriarchal view of Magdalene’s red as a scarlet letter and turned it into a red badge of courage. -Marc Awodey, Seven Days, October 2003. Today Bull's art may be seen as an expressionist exploration, one that seeks to connect the mundane and quotidian to larger mythic and historical motifs, themes and narratives. Fran Bull lives, works, and is a professor of art in Vermont, where in 2005 she established Gallery in-the-Field, a fine art gallery and performance space, whose mission is to present the work of provocative, innovative living artists. Current exhibitions include a solo installation entitled In Flanders Fields in West Rutland, Vermont and Chicago, and group exhibitions of paintings and etchings in Chicago, New York, Denver and New Jersey. In a recent review of Bull’s latest work In Flanders Fields, B. Amore writes: “In Flanders Fields” is an epic and elegiac hymn composed of subtle yet powerful notes reminding us of the constant interplay between life and death, not only on the world stage, but in our own day to day lives. -B. Amore, Art New England, February/March 2010. Ms. Bull was recently invited to the Guilin Museum in China, where her work has been chosen for the museum's permanent collection. I want to give expression to very deep intimations about the world of forms and presences. This entails a kind of physics, highly theoretical, but eminently experiential. I portray not a shell, for example, but the forces giving rise to that form. I look for the dream of the shell inside the dreamer’s head.
Sergio Bustamante Bustamante is a "craftsman" who combines "the popular imagery and the surrealism." Born Mexican, with Chinese and Indian ancestors, he carries in his roots the inspiration of the richest villages in folk art. His work is among everything the result of the imagination and inspiration purely original from himself. He transforms into the author, a craftsmen, an artist who impregnates with sensibility, fantasy and emotions, who knows how to transform paper, ceramic, metals well combined, wood, oil colors, inks and water color into a fantasy. To Bustamante fantasy is not only a means of expression, it is an existential habit, a way of life. Every design is elaborated in a limited and numbered edition (accompanied by an authenticity signed certificate) in which the art piece is an original, emphasizing his individuality with his incomparable style.
Alexander Calder Calder is known as the inventor of the Mobile, a creation from the early 1930's. In 1919, Calder received his mechanical engineering degree from Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. In 1931, he moved to Paris and began to make mobiles. His first mobile incorporated glass, pottery pieces and weathered wood. In 1975, Calder received the United Nations Peace Medal. His public collections can be found at the Art Institute of Chicago, Kunsthalle Bern (Switzerland), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, the Metropolitan in New York, and other major museums in France, Sweden, Israel, Germany, Cuba and many more.
Frank Caldwell In 1911, Frank Caldwell was born in San Francisco into a family of artists and writers.
Being raised with an artistic background, he was inspired to enter the arts himself. He studied art at the San Francisco School of Design, the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles and at Warren Rollins in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Through the course of his career, Caldwell has taught art at Lose Angeles City College, was a United State Marine artist, and designed murals for the United States Maritime Commission. While living in Los Angeles, he became involved with the entertainment
industry. He designed murals for the Pasadena Playhouse and other theaters, created art for NBC's opera series and for the Band of America and the Perry Como shows. He was also art director for New World Productions. A few of the films he designed and produced were: In the Beginning, a winner at the Cannes Film Festival and Frenzy: The New Orleans Story. Since 1970 he has devoted himself to painting, drawing and graphics.
He has worked in oil, watercolor, oil pastel, and tempera among other media. Because he values the brilliant colors with which the oil pastels allow him to work, this has become has favorite media. Those brilliant colors are evident particularly in his vibrant marine paintings. He gained a love and respect for the water during the time he spent with the Marines
and Maritime Commission.
Caldwell's works are in many private and corporate collections throughout the world including: American Honda, Prudential Bache, the City of Long Beach, Tishman Construction Col, Transamerica Insurance Corp., Union Texas Petroleum and Uoqumi Gallery in Tokyo. He has had one-man shows in Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, San Diego, New York, Washington D.C., Baltimore and Florida galleries and museums.
Marc Chagall Marc Chagall was born in 1887 to a poor Jewish family in Russia. He was the eldest of nine children. Chagall began to display his artistic talent while studying at a secular Russian school, and despite his father’s disapproval, in 1907 he began studying art with Leon Bakst in St. Petersburg. It was at this time that his distinct style that we recognize today began to emerge. As his paintings began to center on images from his childhood, the focus that would guide his artistic motivation for the rest of his life came to fruition. In 1910, Chagall, moved to Paris for four years. It was during this period that he painted some of his most famous paintings of the Jewish village, and developed the features that became recognizable trademarks of his art. Strong and bright colors began to portray the world in a dreamlike state. Fantasy, nostalgia, and religion began to fuse together to create otherworldly images. In 1914, before the outbreak of World War I, Chagall held a one-man show in Berlin, exhibiting work dominated by Jewish images. During the war, he resided in Russia, and in 1917, endorsing the revolution, he was appointed Commissar for Fine Arts in Vitebsk and then director of the newly established Free Academy of Art. In 1922, Chagall left Russia, settling in France one year later. He lived there permanently except for the years 1941 - 1948 when, fleeing France during World War II, he resided in the United States. Chagall's horror over the Nazi rise to power is expressed in works depicting Jewish martyrs and refugees. In addition to images of the Jewish world, Chagall's paintings are inspired by themes from the Bible. His fascination with the Bible culminated in a series of over 100 etchings illustrating the Bible, many of which incorporate elements from folklore and from religious life in Russia. Israel, which Chagall first visited in 1931 for the opening of the Tel Aviv Art Museum, is likewise endowed with some of Chagall's work, most notably the twelve stained glass windows at Hadassah Hospital and wall decorations at the Knesset. Chagall received many prizes and much recognition for his work. He was also one of very few artists to exhibit work at the Louvre in their lifetime.
Alexander Chen Chen was born in Canton, China in 1952. In 1989, Alexander and his wife immigrated to the United States, where he began assimilating our culture and painting life in his new land. Currently, Alexander is working on his American Cities Series, reflecting feelings and emotions he experiences on location. He has also completed eleven works which are being printed as puzzles by one of Japan’s largest puzzle makers. Alexanders paintings are extremely detailed and complex, offering the viewer many levels of enjoyment. Some of his paintings take over a month to complete because of the attention to detail and the intricacy of the subject matter. Alexander’s greatest desire in his adopted land is to contribute something of value and beauty by painting what he observes in his unique style, bringing a little of Alexander’s World into your life.
John Chen Many of the contemporary artists from China who have been exposed to Western influences are currently developing original techniques and styles which encompass the best of both Eastern and Western cultures. These artists, including John Chen, are being recognized on an unprecedented level throughout the world for their ability to synthesize international trends and traditional Chinese art forms.
Chen attended the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. He was admitted to the Academy which is acknowledged as the most prestigious art school in China. Despite the honor of attending this school, Chen quickly became frustrated by the academic restraints imposed upon him. The traditional techniques taught at the school did not meet his needs for freedom of expression. Therefore, after attending the Academy, Chen experimented and developed his talent on his own.
Tracy Chysik A commitment to classicism is the driving force behind the work of sculptor Tracy Chysik, an emerging artist who grew up in the heart of the Canadian Rockies and who counts the Renaissance masters among her greatest influences. “Sculpture is intended to nourish the soul and inspire the heart. People want to live with art that expresses beauty, grace and elegance,” says Chysik, who has studied under renowned sculptors Morag McLean and David Robinson.
In 1998, she began studying at the Vancouver Academy of Art and was honored to work with Morag McLean, a graduate of the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in Scotland and a portrait sculptor for Madame Tussand’s. She then went on to study under Vancouver sculptor David Robinson, who is critically acclaimed for his work in figurative sculpture and classical training.
Descension into Matter is the first piece in a series of six sculptures and expresses a moment in the evolution of the soul of humanity. She describes her work as “the unique integration of the ethereal qualities of acrylic and the heavy qualities of bronze which together create the impact of my designs.”
As an emerging artist, Tracy Chysik has already attracted the attention of the art world. “It is not often that an artist of the caliber of Tracy Chysik emerges. Gifted with the vision to merge the feel of the Renaissance masters with a medium of the future, she is truly a leader in her field. “ says Ann-Marie Little of Plaza Galleries in Whistler, Canada. Chuck Huller of Benedetti Gallery in New York describes her work as,”Powerful, beautiful and definitely a winner.” Cindy Kellner of Sierra Galleries in Lake Tahoe says “This piece has universal appeal and a lot of soul”.
Descension into Matter was recently presented to the Secretary to the Pope at the Vatican by Monsignor Lopez Gallo of the Vancouver Archdiocese during his visit to Rome. It was an enormous honor both personally and professionally for Tracy Chysik to receive word that the Vatican had accepted her work into their Collection.
James Coignard Coignard's graphics and paintings are a power-packed and meaningful blend of traditional and modern art forms. As a young adult Coignard began a close friendship with the French painter Marchand des Raux, who greatly influenced his budding artistic development. In 1948 he decided to become a serious painter. He began courses at the Ecole des Arts Decoratif while apprenticing at Raux’s studio. In 1950 Coignard won First Prize at the Hors Concours at Arts Decoratif.
Joe Correale Before moving to Rockport, Massachusetts, where he currently resides and paints, Joe Correale was well-known as a graphic designer throughout New York [where he exhibited in Manhattan for 15 years], and Connecticut, his work appearing on the covers of publications ranging from telephone directories to national magazines. Throughout his illustrious career, Correale has exhibited an amazing technical proficiency, a surprisingly wide range of subject material, and more recently, a subtle sense of surrealism in all his work.
Correales artistic reputation has continued to accelerate to that of a preeminent watercolorist in photo-realism. His fascination with light and texture is apparent in all his work due to his impeccable attention to detail. It is the fine detail that draws the unsuspecting viewer into each scene as though he or she is the sole observer. All interference is eliminated and one finds oneself experiencing the subject of the painting from a quiet center or place of peace; from a truly subjective perspective. It is this characteristic which sets Correales work apart from most others. Each painting is a literal slice of life - and in a mysterious way - a very large one at that. Here is a master of his craft in every sense.
Richard Daford Richard DaFord was born in Cognac, France. His parents were a team of portrait photographers with businesses in Central Africa and the Charente Maritime region of France. DaFord's youth was filled with images of the photographic world, and has been greatly influenced by his parents’ aesthetic teachings. Drawing, painting and photography were an integral part of his life from the start. His father, a photographer and artist, had a passion for the old masters and guided DaFord into the exploration and creation of figurative and symbolic art.
DaFord studied fine art at Ecole Brassart in Tours, France. He left the private art school and moved to Paris where he fell in love with the beautiful architectural and diverse culture. It was in Paris where DaFord greatly influenced his artistic style, like many other old masters.
Over the last decade DaFord has perfected his artistic style, and has done countless hours of research and study of the old masters techniques. Though accomplished at various styles of art, his favorite subject matter finds itself in the ethereal romantic presence of street scenes. Many of his paintings combine ideas taken from his heritage, European history, and landscape. It is evident in his work that artists like Da Vinci, Titian, and other Masters of the Renaissance have significantly influenced him.
The delicate hand of DaFord is clearly visible in his expressive execution of the human form on canvas. Many of his splendid paintings can be found in private collections throughout the United States, Europe, Japan, and Mexico.
Noel Dagget Noel Dagget, American (1925 - 2005)
Noel Daggett's belief that there is a "universal motivation to life" is not only reflected by his personal action but through his brilliantly vibrant canvases. Born in Phoenix, Arizona, the family later moved to San Francisco where Daggett began his painting career. Motivation, talent, energy led him to a scholarship at the California School of Fine Arts.
After service in the Merchant Marine, Daggett studied at the prestigious Art Institute of Chicago. He served as Illustrator for U.S. Army Headquarters, Heidelberg, Germany, returned to the Art Center School in Los Angeles and became a technical advisor on a popular TV show. He soon left the world of commerce to paint, exhibit and lecture in Mexico and returned when he won a scholarship, this time to the esteemed New School in New York City. Eschewing the academic, formal approach to painting which his instructors pressed upon him, Daggett's motivation for self expression became apparent in experimenting with pigments, styles, themes in a search for artistic excellence.
Distant worlds with their beckoning frontiers became the inspiration for his palette and easel. Journeying through Europe, Hawaii, Tahiti, Pago Pago-then later explorations of Israel, the Mediterranean, Africa, Asia Minor and the Far East, served to heighten his perception of life's underlying oneness. He captured the colors, landscapes and people with a stunning quality in style, substance and technique.
Of his exhibit in Paris, Arts hailed his work as "distinguished by vibrant rhythms, intense colors of rich flavor, and an excellent feeling of luminosity." Masques & Visa ges called his work "very beautiful." Le Monde further heralded Daggett as "A lyrical visionary of bright color."
The Palm Beach Daily News spoke glowingly of his exhibit there: "All of his heavily textured canvases have a play of light and shadow that effectively suggest the bright light of the tropics... the people are invariably beautiful, with an unselfconscious pride that Daggett captures in canvas after canvas.
Daggett's return to the Southwest United States and his establishment of The Daggeft Museum for Living Artists in Galistec, New Mexico gave him expanded frontiers of freedom. His former odysseys fertilized a new plasticity of style and technique inspired by the wide vistas, the progenitors of America: the Indians, and the native cowboys.
Winner of the Emily Lowe Award, the excellence of Daggett's work was so highly regarded that the U.S. Coast Guard commissioned him to do twenty five paintings for its Combat Art Collection. Dr. Lester Cook, Curator of Paintings for the National Galleries, Washington, D.C. appraised them with, "These paintings are among the finest I have ever seen.
The prestigious Triton Press, New York, introduced two signed editions by Daggett, on Hot Air Ballooning. And in 1981 they also launched a Daggett poster on the same theme, which was distributed at Art Expo in New York. Daggett participated by signing and remarking at this show, which is the world's largest art fair.
The Tucson Art Publishers Exchange is currently introducing Daggett's limited edition prints to the international market.
Daggett loves color and employs it with respect and tenderness, but his stance is forceful and he is always in control. His approach to art is humanistic and perceptive and his technical proficiency is apparent 10 a wide circle of devotees.
Authenticated Dali Dali was born in 1904 and died in 1989. An eccentric and masterful Surrealist in painting and in life, Salvador Dali wrote in his diary two years before entering art school in Madrid during the early 1920s: "I'll be a genius... Perhaps I'll be despised and misunderstood, but I'll be a genius, a great genius." Born in Figueras, Spain, Dali first studied at the cole des Beaux Arts in Madrid and was influenced by Metaphysical painters de Chirico and Carra while there. Equally admiring the meticulous realism of the Pre-Raphaelites and French 19th century painters, he began to blend conceptual styles and technique. Beginning in 1927, Dali exhibited in Madrid and Barcelona, earning a reputation for being one of the most promising younger painters. A visit to Paris in 1928 brought him into contact with Picasso and the Surrealists Mir¢, Masson, Ernst, Tanguy and Andr, Breton; shortly thereafter, his first exhibition brought Dali firmly into the Surrealist movement where he was a leading figure during the next ten years. Dali transformed the definition of Surrealism, which combined pure psychic automatism expressing the unconscious process of thought, dream and associated realities to include what he called "critical paranoia," a theory that embraced delusion while remaining aware that reason has been deliberately suspended.
Danny Day he began his art career at the tender age of twelve, selling his work on a consistent basis from age fourteen on. As a pre-graduate high school student in the small Ohio town of Marion, Danny was viewed as one of the most talented young artists in the state, recognized by Governor James Rhodes in competitions two years running. He developed a photo realistic style using acrylic paints which transcended his age and experience. Danny relocated to San Diego in 1986 and has since established a local as well as national reputation with his sports compositions. With a strong athletic background, all-conference defensive back and state champion pole-vaulter, he has a true appreciation for the grace and strength represented in athletes and sports in genera. It was, therefore, a natural marriage, combining his painting ability with his love of sports.
Albert Decaris Albert DECARIS (1901-1988):
One of France's foremost engravers of the twentieth century, Albert Decaris is born in Normandy in Sotteville-les-Rouen in 1901. He began his formal art studies at the age of fourteen at the Ecole Estienne. Four years later he was accepted into the Ecole des Beaux-Arts (School of Fine Arts), Paris, and studied in the studios of Carmon and Laguillermie. Within six months Decaris had won the Premier Grand Prix de Rome of engraving (1919) and became the youngest student ever to win this prestigious honor for his work 'Eve before the sin'.
Decaris thus journeyed to Rome where he worked and lived at the Villa Medici. Unfortunately he contacted malaria on a journey to Paestum and was critically ill for a period of one year. Upon his recovery Albert Decaris was 'rewarded' with a two year mandatory service in the French military. After this he concluded his fellowship in Rome and then returned to Paris. He first worked upon a series of engravings of Belgian subjects which he submitted to the Paris Salon. These works received the Salon's Medaille d'Argent (Silver Medal). It was the first time in the Salon's long history that an artist had received this major medal with his premiere presentation.
During the following years Albert Decaris created a major oeuvre of original engravings and etchings, both as individual plates and as illustrations for livres d'artistes. In the first category, he began with big engravings inspired by his classic souvenirs, mythological scenes like Leda and the Swan, The Rape of Europe, Pasiphae, etc. In the latter category he illustrated such magnificent books as Shakespeare's, Macbeth (1930), Cathlin's, Le Sommeil d'Endymion (1934), Milton's, Samson Agonistes (1939), Chenier's, Eglogues (1945), Henriot's, Mythologie des Anciens Grecs et Romains (1955), Corneille's Theater (1955-1961), Emile Henriot, Les Trophees (1967) and Eschyle, Tragedies, under the direction of Mario Vincent (1975-1977).
One of Decaris's greatest illustrated books is Pierre de Ronsard's, Discours des Miseres de ce Temps, which was published in Paris in 1930. Consisting of three large volumes, Decaris created forty-five engravings which were published in an edition of 359. As well, Decaris selected some of the plates to be printed separately in a limited edition of one hundred signed impressions. Such is the case with Ronsard, which probably served as the frontis-piece to the above named volume.
He illustrated around 200 books, especially Ronsard, Shakespeare, La Rochefoucauld, Chateaubriand, Vigny, Montherlant, Claudel, Giono...
He collaborated to the Art-Deco International Exhibition of 1937 in Paris where he realized 300 square meters of paintings and to the International Exhibition of New York in 1938 for which he did a huge painting 'The Plague'. He did huge frescoes for the monumental stairs of the City Hall of Vesoul and for other monuments, churches and chapels.
Between 1935 and 1985 Albert Decaris created more than six hundred stamps for France (174) and its territories, Monaco, Andorra, Tunisia, etc. Held in equally high esteem for his architectural, historical, landscape, portrait and figurative engravings, he became a full member of the Academie des Beaux-arts in 1943 and was nominated its President in 1960 an re-elected four times. In 1962 Decaris was named the official painter of the Marine Francaise (Navy).
His style, ample, classic and marked with archaism of his engraving work can be also find in the severe disposition of his drawings and paintings.
Michel Delacroix Delacroix was born in Paris 14th District in 1933. Studied at Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris for two years. His style is said to be naive because if it is candidness, however his works are created with the skill and knowledge of the well-educated artist. Over the years he has received many awards, including the Prix Public-Prix Pro Art and many others. He achieved one of the highest accolades for a contemporary artist in 1976 when his work was purchased by the Ministry of Culture for Paris Fonds National d Art Contemporain.
Raymond Dilley is a self-taught painter who was born in Madrid, Spain. After touring most of the world, studying artistic techniques and exhibiting his work, he settled in Paris and began work on a series of one-man exhibitions that were held in various parts of France, the United States, and throughout Europe.
Alexander Dimitrov Alexander Dimitrov was born in Rousse, Bulgaria. By the age of 15, he had completed his studies with the famous Bulgarian artists Kiril Stanchev. He is a graduate from the Institute for Aesthetical Design in Bulgaria. Alexander paints in oil on canvas and mural of any sizes and he specializes in portrait and still-life. Some of his works are exhibited at the National Gallery of Arts in Sofia, Bulgaria. He also has paintings in galleries in Germany and Poland and others owned by private Dutch collectors and the former Israeli ambassador in Bulgaria. Most of Alexander’s art is related to human psychology and the sense of time depicted through visualized metaphors.
Bev Doolittle Bev Doolittle was born and raised in California. In 1968, she graduated from the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles. Doolittle met her husband, Jay, at school, and they started married life with a painting trip to Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks. For the next five years however, the Doolittles were engaged in advertising art and TV productions in Los Angeles.
It paid well, but after a while I was not learning,Bev explains, and we did not like living in the city. We wanted to be close to nature, and we wanted to travel. They have now accomplished both. Their frequent travels and backpacking trips have covered the western United States, Canada, Baja California, and eastern Africa. They now live close to nature in California.
Bev Doolittles subject matter is provided by the out-of-doors. I love nature,Doolittle says. I try to look beyond the obvious and create unique, meaningful paintings depicting our Western wilderness and its inhabitants. I start with a concept and attempt to convey it through strong design coupled with detailed realism. I want people to think when they
look at my paintings.
Jack Dowd Jack Dowd is quickly making a name for himself as one of America's foremost, modern sculptors. His life-size creations, viewed on continuing exhibition in museums and galleries throughout the nation, are recognized by Who's Who In American Art and are collected by private, public and corporate patrons from Florida to Australia.
Gallery owner Frank Oehlschlaeger says of the artist, "In my forty years of business, I have never seen an artist become as popular and successful in so little time as Jack Dowd."
However, success came humbly for the artist. Born in 1938 in New York City, Dowd was raised by a hard-working middle class family. He had a particular fondness for art and was often caught sketching while in class. After graduating from Adelphi University in Garden City, N.Y., Dowd became a High School Art teacher.
A college-age hobby of carving tiki's turned Dowd on to sculpture. He sculpted his first crude pieces with an ax until he saved enough money to buy a chainsaw. The power tool made it easy for the artist to quickly blend his imagination and interest in cartooning to create his first folk caricatures. He then began a two-summer tour to art fairs around the country, producing and showing his work under the auspices of a major chainsaw company. Turning out a carving every day, Dowd was labeled by the Media as the "world's fastest sculptor."
But the novelty soon wore off and Dowd began to demand more from himself. In the 70's, he experimented with smaller, more refined tools that gave depth and magnitude to his work. He also took more time to create each piece. "I wanted my artwork to be physical and large. I didn't want to sit in a confined space just painting pictures." It was at this time that Dowd's work started to become known for its whimsical-expressionist style.
The turning point in Dowd's career came in 1982 when he moved to Florida and was intrigued by the diverse culture he found there. Introducing humor and color, Dowd began to comment on social mores as he saw them. His first major piece to receive widespread recognition was "I Love New York," a punk rocker that earned Dowd best of show in the 1989 Coconut Grove Arts Festival. To obtain painstaking attention to character, the artist now spends two to three months sculpting a single piece of artwork. When he isn't in his studio, Dowd is likely to be found looking for inspiration for his next sculpture. The artist feels that an important part of his work is to keep in touch with humanity--whether it's a trip to Miami's trendy South Beach or rollerblading to a local K-Mart. Once Dowd locates his subject, he creates the character by taking parts of several live models and sketching them together. The result is the birth of a person who has never lived before. Art critic Victor Forbes of Sun Storm magazine says of Dowd's sculpture, "The secret to his success...is that he has simplified an artistic process and genre and at the same time made it larger than life, more in an emotional sense than in size."
Girard Drouillard Early on he was influenced by artists such as Hoffman, Stella, Richter, Rauschenberg, and Tapies. He has worked with virtually every art medium since 1976. He has a strong background in painting, performance art, photography, printmaking and sculpture. His paintings initially emerged as rather ambiguous, raw, emotionally abstract composites. He developed a more structured asethetic in the mid 1980 mixing media by incorporating a more definitive style of bold color, hard-edge and texture. He has thrown his brushes aside. This has enhanced a free-fall affect and spontaneity in his recent pieces.
Lee Dubin Lee Dubin is best known for her beautiful paintings of life in the Victorian Era. She’s from California and continues to paint in her Los Angeles studio. Dubin attended the finest art schools in California including Chouinard Art Institute, Otis Art Institute, UCLA, and Los Angeles Trade Technical College. Her techniques of glazing and underpainting is a direct result of studying the works of the old masters. One glance at a Dubin image is not enough. Upon further study, one soon discovers a fascinating visual story. An inside look as it were into the lives and history of a bygone era.
Ron Edward Ron Edward is an avid outdoorsman whose experiences in the field furnish the material for his paintings. Mr. Edwards’ was born in 1948 in South Africa. He prefers to portray his subjects in acrylic or oil on canvas. He believes that working in both mediums helps to keep him fluent, fresh and enthusiastic, but also allows him more creative freedom.
Mr. Edwards’ has been painting since 1963 and has been widely acclaimed for his breathtaking renditions of wildlife, fur-bearing mammals, fish, and birds of prey.
His work has appeared in a number of publications including Field and Stream, Outdoor Life, Wildlife Art, U.S. Art, Sporting Classics, North American Fisherman and Collectors Editions.
Kathy Edwards is a Queensland artist who delights in depicting life in a carefree and often zany way. Her naive-style paintings have become extremely popular with people looking for a brighter view on life in Australia.
M.P. Elliott MP Elliott is a disciplined and prolific painter who has spent his entire life studying and learning in the field and at the easel. His vast knowledge of the outdoors, together with well-honed artistic skills has produced wildlife art widely recognized for its creativity, realism and natural beauty. Elliott’s talent and dedication to the natural world have received critical acclaim and public praise. As a dedicated sportsman, Elliott is actively involved in efforts around the country to assist in the preservation and reclamation of natural habitats. This devotion to the land and its creatures is reflected in each of his artworks.
Elliott was born and raised in the upper Midwest, where he grew to love nature, and discovered he could share his feelings through his art. For Elliott, painting is much like poetry; some pictures require long highly detailed formal verse, and others are a simple statement with more emphasis on breadth and a single impression. In either case, he is a compelling storyteller, whether recording a specific scene, or simply using the subject to express and evoke poetic moods or feelings.
He says "After painting for 25 years, I feel I'm just beginning to speak the language." Elliott’s formal art training includes study of art history with a research abroad and a full time three-year apprenticeship in a classical atelier. His paintings are shown throughout galleries in America, Europe and Asia.
Romain de Tirtoff Erte Erte was a Grand Master of Art Deco and pioneer of showgirl theater. His legendary career spanned eight decades. He lived through 1990 to the age of 97. Designer for Folies Bergeres, Paris; Ziegfeld Follies, New York; George White Scandals, New York; Metro Goldwyn Mayer, Hollywood, Paris Opera; London Symphony; Diaghilevs Ballets Russes. Personal designer for Mata Hari, Lillian Gish, Mrs. William Randolph Hearst, Ana Pavlova, Zizi Jeanmarie, Josephine Baker, Marion Davies. 22 years the cover artist and contributor to William Randolph Hearsts Harper Bazzar. 170 works in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert, London; the Louvre, Paris; and the LA. County Museum of Art. His spectacular limited edition collections made him the most collected artist of our time. Recipient of the French Legion of Honor and honorary degrees from the College of Arts in London.
M.C. Escher Escher, born in Leeuwarden, 17 June 1898, received his first instruction in drawing at the secondary school in Arnhem, by F.W. van der Haagen, who helped him to develop his graphic aptitude by teaching in the technique of the linoleum cut. From 1919 to 1922 he studied at the School of Architecture and Ornamental Design in Haarlem, where he was instructed in the graphic techniques by S. Jessurun de Mesquita, whose strong personality greatly influenced Escher's further development, as graphic artist. In 1922 he went to Italy and 1924 settled in Rome. During his 10 year stay in Italy he made many study-tours, visiting Abruzzia, the Amalfi coast, Calabria, Sicily, Corsica and Spain. In 1934 he left Italy, spent two years in Switzerland and five years in Brussels before settling in Baarn (Holland) in 1941, where he died on March 27, 1972, at the age of 73 years.
Roy Fairchild Fairchild was born in Surrey, England in 1952. He lives and works most of the year in his country home. This peaceful environment is fundamental to his well being and stability as an artist, although he travels throughout Europe to obtain new sources of inspiration. He is particularly influenced by the painters of the Renaissance and he visits Italy in particular to study frescos, tapestries and paintings and to see for himself the techniques with which they were executed. For the past few years he has been giving classes to teach his skills and techniques to young artists.
Dave Faville born in 1965 in Portland, Oregon Faville studied art at the University of Oregon majoring in abstract painting. He has a graduate degree from the Seattle Art Institute in Seattle, Washington. While studying in Washington he became interested in concept and design. His work has become a synthesis of the two, sometimes humorous, somewhat on the edge, and always drawn to the correct proportion. Dave, who has worked as a graphic designer, lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife and children.
Frederick Fienburg Frederick Fienburg is a native of New York City and studied in the United States, Munich, Germany and in other European cities. He lived for many years in New York City. He retired to the Berkshires to live permanently, where he established his studio, and where since the 1960’s he has painted. He has been consistently active in regional art circles and a consistent prizewinner.
Fienburg’s stylized landscapes shadowed by his highly trained dramatist steals segments of the outdoors to translate and present in glowing color to his audience that side of Nature known best to those who know where and how to look.
His paintings grace so many walls in so many homes in so wide an area, to bring not only the outdoors, but exciting colors, and almost everything that can be painted into the daily lives of those fortunate enough to own the work of this student of Nature.
Jean Michel Folon Jean-Michel Folon (1934- ) was born in Brussels. He began to study architecture but abandoned it in favor of drawing, which allowed more expressive studies. His drawings have appeared in numerous magazines including Time, Fortune, The New Yorker, and L'Express. In 1969 he had his first one-man show in the United States, followed closely by exhibitions in Tokyo, Venice, Milan, London, Sao Paulo, Geneva, Brussels, and Paris. Folon has illustrated works by Kafka, Lewis Carroll, and Ray Bradbury. In 1973 he created a series of watercolors titled La Mort d'un Arbre (The Death of a Tree), for which Max Ernst created a lithograph as a preface. Folon has completed a 176-square-foot painting for a subway station in Brussels and a 160-square-foot painting for Waterloo Station in London. He is most comfortable using the engraving and drypoint techniques of printmaking.
Ella Fort Ella Fort was born in Bordeaux. After successful artistic studies in Paris, she diligently devoted herself to her art, which has rewarded her with many first prizes.Her works have been published by many major art companies, in France and abroad. She continues to devote all of her attention to her art and is prized by many collections and exhibits.
Claude Fossoux Claude Fossoux, French (1946 - ) Claude Fossoux was born in Paris of a Savoyard father and a Parisian mother. After school, Claude obtained a grant to study at the Ecole Nationale Superieure Des Beaux Arts in Paris where he stayed for four years. During that time, he attended the studio of Chapelin-Midy and Pierre Caron. He was greatly influenced by the Impressionists, particularly Sisley, Pissarro, and Renoir. But it was Claude Monet and Van Eyck, the Flemish painter of the Fifteenth century, who have most strongly influenced Claude Fossoux's pictorial personality. His work is a subtle blending of the techinques and expressions of these two renowned masters. The landscapes of Provence are one of his favorites with their bluish tints in the distance and their warm colors in the foreground; the little mass huddled behind the hills, the wide variety of vegetation. He also likes to paint cafe terraces, young girls wearing hats trimmed with flowers and ribbons, indoor scenes, children in gardens or public parks. He loves to make portraits and catch the personality of models, and to compose still lives where he can work on the effects of different textures. Critics say that the light is alive in Claude Fossoux's paintings; it seems to come from the back of the canvas. His palette of fresh and shimmering colors, spangled with light, produces a style of painting both vibrant and joyous. All of Claude Fossoux's works are luminous and spring-like.
Frank Frazetta Frank Frazetta (February 9, 1928 – May 10, 2010) was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1928. As early as age three he was drawing & at eight he is reported to have been selling his work! He later went to the Brooklyn Academy of Fine Arts. In 1944, at the tender age of 16, his first professional comic work appeared in Tally Ho comics, under his mentor John Giunta. This job would lead to others & for several years he illustrated funny animals for text stories in Coo Coo & Happy comics. He illustrated eight "Shining Knight" stories at DC which are highly acclaimed & also did stories for "Heroic Comics", including a one page anti drug story which was used repeatedly for several years. During this time he met & befriended Al Williamson & Roy Krenkel, two of comics' greatest talents. Each was inspired & influenced by the other, but Al & Frank were taught much by Roy & would later profess a great profit from his genius. Frank worked for numerous companies including Standard, Lev Gleason, & at Toby with Al Williamson, and later at M.E. where he drew "White Indian" & his own creation "Thun'da" . Thun'da, actually a derivation of Edgar Rice Burrough's "Tarzan" was a great achievement by any standards & Frank's talent glowed like a supernova with this effort. During this time he also worked for Bill Gaines at EC Comics, and it is here that he did a number of classic stories & covers, almost entirely in collaboration with Williamson & Krenkel. One effort entitled "50 Girls 50" is hailed as one of the greatest stories of all time, and another story, "Squeeze Play" is a fabulous "Sock Suspenstory". He contributed to the Buck Rogers mythos by illustrating 7 covers for the Famous Funnies comic in the early fifties. Among these seven covers are some of the most respected comic book covers ever created. Kinetic, visceral works; these pieces jump off the books & drill into your gut with their emotional & angry action scenes.
In 1952, Frank created his famous comic strip "Johnny Comet", later "Ace McCoy". Lasting for one & one half years, it was a finely drawn & brilliantly conceived strip about a race car driver; his girl, the gorgeous Jean & his friends, Mom & Pop Bottle. Unfortunately the scripting by Peter DePaolo was not on a par with the art & after an initial period of success, the strip was dropped in 1953. Also in 1952 he went to work for Al Capp assisting on the "Lil Abner" strip. Staying with Capp until about 1960 or so, Frank quit after Capp informed him that his salary would be cut -after Frank had re-located to be closer to Capp's studio!!!!! After leaving Abner he toiled for paperback publishers doing interior illustrations (these books are highly sought after & command high prices), and then wound up at Warren Publications where a number of the EC artists had gathered to work on Creepy, Eerie, Blazing Combat & Vampirella. Frank's assignments where mostly cover paintings & these works are some of the most memorable pieces of the baby boomer generation. "Egyption Princess" (Eerie #23), "Sorcerer" (Eerie #2), "Wolfman" (Creepy #5), "Sea Monster" (Eerie #3) and scores of others, each is a masterpiece. While at Warren he also drew a "Creepy's Loathsome Lore" page & another famous story (possibly his best comic story ever) "Werewolf", the story of a crazed "wolf-hunter" who is himself the hunted. These five pages are a momentous achievement for the comic medium. He was commissioned by Canaveral Press & Doubleday Books to do illustrations for E.R.Burroughs stories which naturally included the Tarzan & Mars series' and he also did a number of ERB covers & interiors for the entire spectrum of Burroughs stories for Ace Books. Some are great, others are less so. He admittedly did three covers in one weekend to meet a deadline after putting the assignment aside for almost three months. Two of these are rather dull Frazetta compositions, but one of them -"Tarzan & the Jewels of Opar" is an outstanding work of art. The fierce Tarzan leaping in mid-air, about to land on the back of the attacking lion; juxtaposed with the frozen beauty of the woman in mortal danger is electric. The forest trees in the back are living creatures as well, & you can hear the crackle of the campfire burning in the background. Frazetta's incarnation of "Conan the Barbarian" for Lancer Books paperback series are also revered. His painting for the cover of the first book in that series aptly titled "Conan the Barbarian" is most likely Frank's greatest single achievement. Frank has been variously been referred to as having influenced the mythology of Conan, or having revitalized popular interest in the character. In later years Frank has worked in films, most notably on "Fire & Ice", and he has done a series of paintings for the "Scientologists". The recent return of the "Death Dealer" under the pen of author Jim Silke has given us the opportunity to feast on more of Frank's work & he continues to paint for other companies, and occasionally does commissions for his fans. A very prolific artist, Frank has been one of the most influential & therefore one of the most important artists of the twentieth century, Frank is certain to have carved his niche in the history of American Art.........As a postcript, Frank has had two debilitating strokes, which have severely incapacitated him.
Soli Gaylord Gaylord was born and raised in North America, however, his art is clearly international in character. This is due to the variety of international influences that have flavored his artwork as well as the diverse skills and experiences the artist has developed and collected. The figures most influential on Gaylord’s art are Picasso, Tamayo, Toledo, Auerbach, and Hofmann. This produces works that are powerful, textural, sensuous, and filled with primitive mystery. Gaylord’s experiences in varied aspects of artistic endeavor have rendered him a master of techniques and visual effects. These activities include painting classic automobiles and fashion design, as well as the more traditional skills of oil painting and fine art painting. His home medium, as it were, is painting in acrylics. Acrylic paint admits of the rich color and freedom that facilitate the type of image the artist envisions. Gaylord has also perfected a mixed-media technique for translating the visions he creates through paint into limited editions of genuinely unique works. This facilitated through the artist’s close involvement throughout the printing process in addition to the inclusion of painting and handworking on each print. The inspirations for Gaylord’s creations are his travels and his abiding interest in primitive man. He has studied anthropology and primitive cultures extensively and not always from afar. He once spent forty days living with pygmies on the Kalahari Desert, as well as having backpacked Mongolia, Pakistan, Iran, and the Amazon basin. Thus, if his themes draw to mind the Native American, or the Latin, or the African this is reflective of the artist’s primary interests. One important goal of Gaylord’s artwork is to capture what is universal in man.
Gary George Was born in a small town in Mississippi in 1951. At the age of six his family moved to Europe and it was there his interest in art began.
He began his formal studies in 1969 at Memphis State University and continued then in New York at the Arts Students League and later in London at the Royal Academy. As an art student he visited Europe’s and America’s foremost art Museums and made detailed copies of the masterpieces he admired. Some of these early works were kept by him and can still be seen on his studio walls. During this period he supported himself by painting portraits from life. He also began to exhibit in juried exhibitions winning awards and acclamations.
Gary now divides his time between his studios in Palm Beach and London, England. He has recently added printmaking to his repertoire by doing limited edition serigraphs. These are done in his studio where every facet of the process is under his control to insure the highest quality attainable.
Marc Gester Marc Gester has spent years developing a unique style of painting for which he is known. He paints in Oil and Acrylic using techniques ranging from photo-realism to impressionism, with the combination of both being his most popular.
While living in South America, Mr. Gester firmly established himself in the art world with his exceptional waterfall paintings.
His paintings have been displayed on numerous magazine covers; he has been the featured artist in American Artist and Wildlife Art. His accomplishments have earned him one-man exhibitions throughout the world.
Yankel Ginzburg Ginzburg was born in Alma-ata, Russia in 1945 and is the son of a Russian Orthodox mother and a Polish Jewish father. He learned of his Jewish heritage when he was nine and discovered a wooden toy made by the Nazis that cruelly depicted a Jew praying. He thrives on creative challenges, especially those that involve three dimensional spaces. The essence of his abstract paintings has been, as he defines it, “the harvesting of light on canvas, penetrating colors and organic shapes intertwined into environmental compositions”. Ginzburg started his career as a writer. He was accepted to the Institute of Art in Israel in 1958 and became one of their youngest students. After his induction and two year service in the Israeli army, Ginzburg continued his painting and received 1st prize in the art competition at Bat-Yam Museum Israel which is now being renamed The Yankel Ginzburg Museum.
Chaim Goldberg Chaim Goldberg (1917-2004) has worked in nearly every medium available to the visual artist from watercolors to sculpture. But throughout his long career, one theme has been central to all his work-the dignity and nobleness of man. Goldberg has a deep understanding of human values, for he has spent much of his 60-odd years searching for them. Born in a Polish village in 1917 in the Jewish "shtetl" he later moved to Siberia where the Soviets took a dim view of his realistic depictions of the simple peasants. Returning to Poland, he found the Russians had made it difficult for him to work there as well. He took his family to Israel and then finally America, where he now lives and works. But the "shietl," until recently, has remained the main motif in his art, just as it has for those two other famous Slavic emigrants, Marc Chagall and Isaac Bashevis Singer. Singer has said Goldberg's work "is enriching Jewish art and the image of our tradition." Chagall has undoubtedly had a strong influence on Goldberg. They both celebrate the everyday village life as they remember it from childhood. Goldberg's domestic scenes may be more realistic on the surface, with fewer flights of inspired fancy, but they are no less true to their time and place. His watercolors are flowing and lyrical, vibrant in their bright colors. His people always seem to be in motion, moving in rhythm to the merry tune of that proverbial fiddler on the roof. In one painting it is a pair of young lovers dancing, in another a white-bearded water carrier kicking up his heels as he trods down a country road with his watery load. In a third canvass it is the musicians themselves who are the subject, beating the drum and playing the horn so the people can forget the misery of repression and prejudice for a time. And despite the darkness of civilization, life goes on. Babies are born, lovers are wed, and the teachings of the elders are passed on to the next generation. It is these themes of continuity and optimism that Chaim Goldberg has chosen to explore and reaffirm in his art. At an age when most men are thinking of retiring or at least resting on their laurels, Goldberg continues to investigate new forms of expression to illuminate the human experience. Of his back yard studio in Houston, where he now lives, he says: "This is the place I've always dreamed about. I work in the sun. I am making new art now. More than ever before my work now expresses lightness, an optimism, a more expansive love to mankind that knows no barriers-religious, cultural or governmental."
PERMANENT COLLECTIONS
• Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
• National Museum of Fine Art, Warsaw
• President's House, Jerusalem
• Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C.
• Museum Petit Palais, Geneva
• Museum Yad Vashem, Jerusalem
• Museum of History, Warsaw
• Museum Yad Labanim, Israel
• Klingspor Museum, Offenbach, Germany
• National College of Fine Art, Washington, D.C.
• Museum of Modern Art, New York
• Philadelphia Musuem of Art, Philadelphia
• Museum of Fine Art, Boston
• Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut
• Judaica Museum, Phoenix, Arizona
Michael Gorban Born in 1956 in the former Soviet Union. In 1976, Gorban graduated from the Kishinev Higher School for the Painting Arts in Moldavia and in 1982, he graduated from the Academy for Painting in the city of Lvov, majoring in graphics. Gorban received a grant in 1988-1990 from the Artists Association of the Soviet Union. And he emigrated to Israel with his family in 1990. It is doubtful whether any other artist studied art for 21 years before displaying his paintings on the market. Michael Gorban completed his studies at age 30, with a record behind him of working closely with the finest of Russian artists, and using dozens of painting techniques. At age 30 Gorban received the honor of exhibiting his paintings at an international exhibition beside the likes of Salvador Dali, Kandinsky, Chagall, and others, in the Hermitage museum in Leningrad. A third of Gorban's paintings hung in the Hermitage, one of the world's largest and most prestigious museums, for over a year. Gorban managed to receive a 140 square meter studio in Moscow from the government. In the national album of Russian art history, Gorban is prominently featured with three of his paintings as one of the young artists to impact the 20th century between 1960 and 1980. "Painting is a sensual experience," claims Gorban today from his studio in Petach Tikva, near Tel Aviv. "I will not sign my name until I am completely satisfied." Concerning the subtle difference between an artist and a painter, he adds, "An artist can hear what the painting wants; a painter cannot. I never painted under duress or according to order. My success comes from people feeling the same satisfaction that I myself felt upon completing the painting." In 1990 Gorban decided to emigrate to Israel. The fact of his Jewishness had been repressed for years and was unknown to most people. Yet, feeling a special warmth for Israel, Gorban resolved to leave everything behind – the exhibitions, the recognition, the spacious Moscow studio, the summer cottage on the Black Sea – and make the move to Israel. Michael Gorban's paintings are now displayed in galleries and museums throughout the Soviet Union, as well as private collections in the United States, Canada, England, Japan, Belgium, France, Germany, Australia and Israel. His name has returned to the headlines, not as a leading Russian artist, but as a first-rate Israeli artist.
Harry Guttman Harry Guttman was born in Bucharest, Romania in 1933. He graduated with distinction from the Romanian Academy of Fine Art in 1960. Many of his paintings and lithographs were purchased and displayed at the official exhibitions by the Romanian Government. With the loosening of the iron curtain in Europe, Guttman was able to immigrate to Israel in 1974. Since that time he has been extremely active putting on one man shows in Europe, Israel and North America. He has been critically acclaimed throughout the world.
Bracha Guy Bracha Guy offers a unique and feminine insight into the lives of women and their environment. She also sends a powerful message that people everywhere can live calmly, peacefully, and in harmony with nature. Through her remarkable ability to interpret complex subjects and her unusual talent for combining vibrant colors and intense detail, Guy documents the energy of life and expresses a basic optimism about life. With her rich palette and dramatic use of light and color, she is often described as a 'modern Matisse' who blends his style with a modern wave. Bracha Guy was born in Israel and still lives there today. Her natural talent with color and form were apparent from an early age, and she has developed it into an extraordinary style.
Guy has studied in Israel under the world class painter Moti Mizrahi, who had high praise for her work. From 1970 to 1974, she studied at the Avni School of Art in Tel-Aviv. Ever since, Guy has been developing and perfecting a unique post modern expressionism, creating a new language that combines color, form, and space. Her artwork has been exhibited in prestigious museums and galleries around the world.
The paintings of Bracha Guy shimmer with an appreciation of light and color and life itself. Her strong canvases are filled with intricate geometrics and bright, pure spots of color, with Matisse and Art Nouveau elements. With color, patterns, and intricate detail, Guy offers an unusual insight into the lives of women, from a feminine point of view. Sensual women in exotic, almost theatrical costumes and elaborate head wear adorn her world, their luminous skin reflecting the vivid rainbow of color surrounding them. Vibrant blooms appear everywhere, decorating tables, topping garden walls and scattered across the luxuriant fabrics worn by women. Like a flower unfolding, her creative impulse is always evolving, always changing, offering added dimensions of artistry. Her optimistic outlook on life is conveyed through her renderings, which embody beauty and happiness. Her works portray women who are more confident in their surroundings, more pleased with themselves, calmer and in more control of their environment. For Bracha Guy, a paintbrush is like a musical score, each brushstroke a note, each painting a symphony.
Kerry Hallam Hallam, born and raised in Northern England, showed early artistic talent when he won a six-year college scholarship to London University. He later established his first studio in Boston and opened a studio and gallery on Nantucket Island. Hallam is noted for his power to evoke emotion, opulence of light and distinctive color harmonies. The artists panoramas draw accolades and, recently, a first place award by the prestigious Association Pour le Promotion Artistique Francais. Hallams work is included in private collections throughout Europe and the United States, and has been honored with many one-man shows.
Keith Haring When he first hit the New York City subways with chalk in hand, he became an art sensation almost overnight. What was in the beginning a radical gesture of graffiti, soon transformed into an art form that would thereafter be seen in galleries and museums around the world. Haring has created a truly unique array of symbols and images which inhabit monumental sculpture to original drawings and prints.
Frederick Hart Hart was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1943. He attended the University of South Carolina, Corcoran School of Art, American University. He opened his own sculpture studio in 1972. He was commissioned to do famous projects such as the Vietnam Veterans War Memorial Sculpture, bronze bust of James Webb NASA Administrator, for the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institute. During his career he has received many honors.
Ray Hesler Ray Hesler approaches his paintings with a refreshing and spirited outlook. He creates images through a bold palette, captivating light, color and emotion. His distinctive color harmonies translates the moment into a magical world, one which revitalizes the world's simple pleasures.
Mary Ann Howard is a Texas native. She attended the University of Alabama in Huntsville, majoring in Art. Ms. Howard was an industrial artist with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for 14 years. Some of her works are on display at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C.
Cary Howard Cary Howard creates art, straight from his heart. Whether a masterpiece in oil or acrylic, a breathtaking watercolor or a one-of-a-kind pieces, his works adorn many of the finest homes from coast to coast.
But, Mr. Howard's artistic creations reach much further than private collections, his talents can be realized in the numerous wildlife illustrations he has done for award-winning magazines including National Geographic, Life, The New Yorker, U.S.
News and World Report; in the famous motion picture sets he has designed and constructed for feature films including Good Morning, Vietnam, Superman the movie and Dracula; and in the hundreds of graphic designs he has created for top advertising agencies, corporations and clients all over the world, which include: Young & Rubicam (YR), Ogilvy & Mather, J. Walter Thompson, U.S. Army, U.S. Air Force, Mercedes-Benz, Ford and more. Notable other clients include: Clairol, Avon, Roche Perfume, Owens-Corning Fiberglass, General Mills and more. Additionally, he and his brother owned an animation studio in New York, The Image Factory, where they produced animated graphics for all major agencies and TV production companies Cary Howard was educated in New York at The High School of Art and Design and received his Fine Arts degree from Cooper Union College. Currently, he resides in Deerfield Beach, Florida, with his family, where he continues to create art from the heart to benefit all those who see his works.
Urbain Huchet URBAIN HUCHET was born in Rennes on April 28,1930. After studying law and owning a textile factory for four years, he decided in 1960 to devote himself entirely to painting. Mr Huchet spent his first three years as an artist in Pont-Aven, following in the footsteps of Gauguin and Emile Bernard, both of whom influenced him a great deal. He does many paintings of the landscape and the typical people this region. His love of the Brittany coast and the sea can always be seen in his work. After moving to Paris in 1963, his love of adventure and travel led him to spend time painting and writing in Europe, the Middle East, and South America, where he produced many paintings of the Indian markets and the great scenery. He made 14 trips of more than 4 months each, from Mexico to Brazil via Peru, Central America and the Caribbean Islands. In addition to the paintings, he has written a book about these beautiful countries. A luxurious portfolio of paintings of Egypt shows his love of that country. Urbain Huchet has held exhibitions in New York, London and New Orleans, and several in Egypt. However, Paris is where his largest number of works have been produced. At least 300 editions of lithographs have been printed of his works, all produced by the artist himself in different workshops in Paris and Cannes. His "nature de Breton" and his love of the sea and ships have inspired numerous editions of lithographs and works of the sea.
Louis Icart Louis Icart, French (1880-1950) was born in Toulouse, France. He began drawing at an early age. He was particularly interested in fashion, and became famous for his sketches almost immediately. He worked for major design studios at a time when fashion was undergoing a radical change-from the fussiness of the late nineteenth century to the simple, clingy lines of the early twentieth century. He was first son of Jean and Elisabeth Icart and was officially named Louis Justin Laurent Icart. The use of his initials L.I. would be sufficient in this household. Therefore, from the moment of his birth he was dubbed 'Helli'. The Icart family lived modestly in a small brick home on rue Traversière-de-la-balance, in the culturally rich Southern French city of Toulouse, which was the home of many prominent writers and artists, the most famous being Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Icart fought in World War I. He relied on his art to stem his anguish, sketching on every available surface. It was not until his move to Paris in 1907 that Icart would concentrate on painting, drawing and the production of countless beautiful etchings, which have served (more than the other mediums) to indelibly preserve his name in twentieth century art history. When he returned from the front he made prints from those drawings. The prints, most of which were aquatints and drypoints, showed great skill. Because they were much in demand, Icart frequently made two editions (one European, the other American) to satisfy his public. These prints are considered rare today, and when they are in mint condition they fetch high prices at auction. Art Deco, a term coined at the 1925 Paris Exposition des Arts Decoratifs, had taken its grip on the Paris of the 1920s. By the late 1920s Icart, working for both publications and major fashion and design studios, had become very successful, both artistically and financially. His etchings reached their height of brilliance in this era of Art Deco, and Icart had become the symbol of the epoch. Yet, although Icart has created for us a picture of Paris and New York life in the 1920s and 1930s, he worked in his own style, derived principally from the study of eighteenth-century French masters such as Jean Antoine Watteau, François Boucher and Jean Honoré Fragonard. In Icart's drawings, one sees the Impressionists Degas and Monet and, in his rare watercolors, the Symbolists Odilon Redon and Gustave Moreau. In fact, Icart lived outside the fashionable artistic movements of the time and was not completely sympathetic to contemporary art. Nonetheless, his Parisian scenes are a documentation of the life he saw around him and they are nearly as popular today as when they were first produced. In 1914 Icart had met a magical, effervescent eighteen-year-old blonde named Fanny Volmers, at the time an employee of the fashion house Paquin. She would eventually become his wife and a source of artistic inspiration for the rest of his life. Icart's portrayal of women is usually sensuous, often erotic, yet always imbued an element of humor, which is as important as the implied or direct sexuality. The beautiful courtesans cavort on rich, thick pillows; their facial expressions projecting passion, dismay or surprise, for the women of Louis Icart are the women of France as we have imagined them to be Eve, Leda, Venus, Scheherazade and Joan of Arc, all wrapped up into an irresistible package.
Robert Indiana Indiana was born in New Castle, Indiana. Between 1945 and 1948 he studied at art schools in Indianapolis and Utica, and from 1949 to 1953 at the Chicago Art Institute School and the Skowhgan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine. In 1953 and 1954 he studied at the Edinburgh College of Art and London University, after which he settled in New York. His early works were inspired by traffic signs, automatic amusement machines, commercial stencils and old tradenames. In the early sixties he did sculpture assemblages and developed his style of vivid color surfaces, involving letters, words and numbers. He became known for silkscreen prints, posters and sculptures. The brash directness of these works stemmed from their symmetrical arrangements of color and form.
Phillipe Judge is an Austrian by birth and training has been living in the United States for many years. Judge has been painting since his early teens and is exhibited widely in Europe and the U.S. His early work was primarily abstract, but soon evolved into cut out figure forms in space age settings. These early interests continue to appear in the present abstract paintings. Figurative imagery relates directly to Judge’s space form paintings. Judge declares that contemporary art comes from the artificial. The human condition has undergone fundamental changes in this century. Traditional values and assumptions have been attacked and upset and not been replaced. Judge therefore paints the unexpected and is drawn to contrast especially the juxtaposition between simple forms and complex layers. Judge looks for the structure under the surface and at the same time capture the unusual light, the play of shadow, the voluptuous color, and the sensual surprise of a figurative abstract in the forefront of his art creations. Happiness comes for Judge when he is creating images, forms and landscapes. Phillipe Judge is a self-taught artist who moved to the United States from Europe and now resides and paints from his West Palm Beach, Florida studio.
Raffi Kaiser Raffi Kaiser has shown extensively in Europe, North America and Israel, and was trained in Paris and Florence.
Amit Kalla Amit has done masters in art & aesthetics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has been regularly exhibiting his works through solo and group shows. His recent solo shows in 2008 were held at the Canvas Art Gallery, New Delhi and Sudarshan Art Gallery, Bikaner. This year he has also participated in the group shows held at the Russian Centre, New Delhi and the show titled “Aspiration” at the Studio Vasant, New Delhi. He has participated in the Young artist camp, Bhimtal organized by Roy Foundation, New Delhi, 2007 and All India painters' camp residency Allahabad University, 2006. He has worked in the International Art Exhibition, Japan and has keen interest in ancient Indian art & culture - visual, performance & literary sources. He has been awarded Jhanwar Smriti Puraskar 2007 for paintings and Bhartiya Jnanpith Navlekhan Puraskar, 2007 for Collection of Poems - Hone Na Hone Se Pare.
Max Karp American Artist Max Karp is one of the few contemporary painters to use enamel for his artistic work. He is internationally acclaimed as the “father of modern enameling.”
His place in art history is assured, both because of his enormous talent and the fact that he has perfected unique processes, which allow the creation of museum-quality, kiln-fired collectibles.
A self-taught artist, Karp was born in Ohio in 1916 and raised in California. Max Karp passed away Jan of 1999 . Karp began painting by recording in his oils various species of birds and insects for his father who was an ornithologist/entomologist.
In the mid-1960's, Karp became interested in the enamel process. Beginning on a small scale, he taught himself the enamel technique and later experimented with the large paintings in enamel for which he is best known.
During the last decade, Karp's enamel paintings have received critical recognition. In 1970 Hamilton Mint commissioned Karp to produce four paintings of the seasons of the year, which were then issued as a limited edition of plates on precious metal. In 1980 Karp's 20 x 24-inch enamel portrait of Beverly Sills was presented to the American Queen of Opera following her final performance on full-length opera. In addition, numerous private art collectors, including Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Happy Rockefeller and Sarah Churchill, have acquired works by Max Karp for their collections.
Robert Katona Robert Katona is an artist from the United States. Born in Athens, Ohio, he has chosen to live most of his life in Golden, Colorado. He is a self-taught artist and a falconer. His close association and familiarity with hunting birds, hawks and falcons, has led to illustration contributions to the Raptor Research Foundation and the North American Peregrine Foundation. Honors for his Aat include twice winning the Jenkins Award at the Gilpin County Arts Association Show. His paintings have been exhibited in several galleries, including the Denver Art Museum and the Kennedy Galleries in New York.
Garri Katz Born in Odessa, U.S.S.R. in 1938, Garri Katz studied painting at the Odessa Institute of Fine Arts. He was a member of the Russian Union of Artists, and a painter and illustrator in the "Moldova Films Studios" in Kishener U.S.S.R from 1959-73. Three of Katz's paintings remain on display at the Russian Museum permanent exhibition in Odessa.
In 1973, Garri Katz immigrated to Israel, where he became a painter and illustrator at Car-Gal studios in Tel-Aviv. There he participated in a number of group exhibitions.
Garri is an artist with superb professional skill that speaks for itself. There are few artists capable of describing in watercolors and oil the sensation of freshness for characteristics and the warmth that he captures.
Garri Katz's work has been shown in numerous cities throughout the United States, and may be found in private and public collections in: Israel, Belgium, Germany, Japan, the United States, and Canada.
Alex Katz was born in New York City in 1927. He studied art at the Cooper Union from 1945 to 1949. He is a leading artist of the new realism movement in contemporary art. Katz's paintings from the late 1950s to the present have been characterized by expressive and literal portrayals of human figures. He is best known for his realistic portraits of friends and family, notable for their relaxed attitudes and uncomplicated bearing. Stylistically, his figures are simplified in form, but not disfigured or caricatured. On the contrary, one of the hallmarks of Katz's figures is their apparent normalcy. His figures are typically presented at close range from a frontal perspective, and in a flattened manner somewhat suggestive of a Polaroid snapshot. Throughout the 1960s, Katz taught painting at such institutions as the School of the Visual Arts in New York, the New York Studio School, and the Pratt Institute.
John Kelly Born in Scotland into a seafaring family, Kelly emigrated to Canada as a young boy. His experiences as a Merchant Marine seaman sailing off the coasts of Canada and Alaska would later be the subject of his artwork. His career as a musician included performing in nationally known bands, The Echoes and The Dolphins as well as with Don Ho. He returned to his art career, displaying precocious and prodigious talent and advancing quickly to study at the Art Center College of Design in the Los Angeles area. In addition, John Kelly studied under and collaborated with Lynton Kisteler to produce unique maritime works that now reside in the Smithsonian Museum. Other famous series by Kelly include the Cargo & Steamship Series, and the Sea Odyssey series. Newer series include Tropical Dreams, San Francisco cityscapes, and the upcoming Homage to William Turner, saluting the beloved and influential British landscape painter. His collectors have reached over 75,000 throughout the world. Influenced by the rich tapestry of his life experiences and world travels, Kelly’s body of work is impressive in many ways, but especially in its far-reaching international scope. John was the first American artist to depict The People’s Republic of China in a lithographic suite. His numerous publications and shows have featured countries such as Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Tahiti. He supervised the printing of his first hardcover book by Collier Press at the famous Nissha printing village in Kyoto, Japan in 1984. He has printed at the prestigious Ettinger Atelier in New York, and with other noted studios worldwide. A true renaissance man, John Kelly today is widely respected and honored for his past and present work as a painter, lithographer, and multimedia artist, lecturer, instructor, and musician. He continues to be a worldwide lecturer and consultant for numerous universities and art centers. He has received awards from the mayors of Atlanta and San Francisco, and was presented with the coat of arms of Glasgow, Scotland for his work of “Britain Revisited”. A former winner of the Quesnel Drawing Award, he was named one of the top 100 artists in America by American Artist magazine, and Best Artist of the Malibu Festival of Arts, Malibu, California. He is also a long-time Associate Member of the New York Pastel Society. Currently he resides in Los Angeles, California.
Stan Kettering Stan Kettering - Artist who is known as Stan K, was born in January, 1940. At the age of 10, his family moved to Italy where the young Stan K began touring museums. He knew instinctively that God had given him a special talent – an ability to transfer to canvas the reflections of nature and of his inner self.
Educated at the Accademia of Belle Arti in Naples, Stan K rapidly was becoming the talk of Italian art circles. His works steeped reflective tradition of the masters of the 16th and 17th centuries, bringing forth a clamoring of students of art wishing to learn his techniques.
In 1970 at the young age of 30, he returned to America to pursue his love of art. Although his popularity in Italian galleries had grown, his lifelong dream was to show in America and the rest of the world.
To achieve success in America, Stan K continued his study of art, in addition to experiencing the new culture. With a talent of his magnitude – his hopes of success were quickly realized. Since returning to his birth place, he has exhibited in numerous personal and collective shows in which he has earned many awards and the recognition of well-known art critics.
Mark King Mark King, a champion of Impressionism and the Ecole de Paris, was born in Bombay in 1931 of British parents. He is the product of an exotic and privileged upbringing in India, where he lived until the age of sixteen during the tumultuous last days of the British Raj. In 1948, following graduation from La Martiniere College in Calcutta, where his focus had been botany as well as art, King sailed to England to attend Bournemouth College of Art, having determined to pursue painting, sculpture, architecture and theatre design. He subsequently spent seven years as Resident scenic designer at the Oxford Playhouse Theatre, but in 1961 decided to concentrate on painting and moved to Paris to study at the Ecole and the Louvre.
Change has been an important catalyst in Mark King's life as well as his art. When he lived in Paris and Italy during the 1960's, he was a plain air painter, working out-of-doors in order to study and describe the effects of light and atmosphere like the Barbizon School and Impressionists before him. His move to the United States in 1968 prompted a shift in his working methods. Now he labors exclusively in the studio. For subjects he knows intimately, like Paris street scenes, King draws from memory. For sporting subjects, on the other hand, the camera is an indispensable tool. He takes several photographs of a subject, condensing various views or themes into one composition, without exactly reproducing nature. Small pencil sketches noting color and compositional motifs act as reminders of feelings and responses to events and vistas King admires. From these two sources, King produces vibrant preliminary drawings in gouache, devising structural and visual solutions for larger canvases, which he executes in acrylic. King consciously handles gouaches like watercolor, blocking out the backgrounds of his drawings with thin washes, preferring thicker impasto for surface treatment. Several canvases are in process at once. King masterfully manipulates a palette knife ninety percent of the time, only using a brush for small details. He moves freely from one subject and medium to another, gaining energy as he tackles the physical and mental demands of each composition.
King has carefully studied the old and modern masters from Cimabue and Massacio to Goya, Turner, Degas, and Bonnard. Fascinated with painting techniques, King meticulously layers colors, glazes and shapes as substrata for the five or ten percent of the acrylic paint that floats on top and forms the finished composition. The under painting filters through to the surface creating depth and texture. Because of his alla prima approach, in which a painting is realized in a burst of inspiration and single application of pigments, King confesses, "It is not until the last ten to fifteen minutes before completion that I am able in to see where the painting is going and catch the mood of the moment."
King follows in the footsteps of Courbet and the Impressionists, painting what he sees, such as the familiar streets, monuments and quarters of Paris. King never fully defines his seductive faces and figures, which he often shows from behind, as if they too were silent observers like himself. Passionate about horses since his youth, King's animated depictions of polo and the fox hunt derive from personal experience. His interest in big game dates from India, where elephants and camels roam the streets and tigers and other large cats can easily be seen in their natural habitat. In addition to King's fascination with the fauna of Central Asia, he has also retained a keen fascination for the flora of the region as well as botany in general, which he incorporates into his compositions. Since his arrival in the United States, as King became more exposed to sports, he capitalized on the drama and visual spectacle of ice hockey and horse racing, as well as his love of the out-of-doors by treating subjects like yacht racing, golf and tennis from a seascape or landscape point of view.
Like the Impressionist Masters, Mark King uses his eye as a passive organ, confronting the visual field. Objective and detached, he considers himself an "unobserved observer." He explains, "I make no judgments about what I see -- there is no right or wrong -- it is there to be assimilated." King believes, "When there is no jamming of the cosmic forces influencing our receptivity, those energies and forces feed into us and it is those briefest fractions of a second when things flow."
King's versatility and zest for life transform everything he paints into strong patterns of brilliant color. His subtle understanding of how color, texture and paint interact is his strong point. Color conveys feelings and emotions in the creation of a timeless art, and now in the full maturity of his career, he has achieved superb mastery of his palette.
Rachel King In her calculated renderings of the European Street Scenes, Rachel King has become most known for her photo-realism mixed with impressionistic style. Her colorful and textured work is made to look dated as the old world cityscape she paints. Born in 1948, Rachel King began her career as an art student on the streets of New Orleans as a teen. She was noticed by a teacher of art who quickly realized the talents of this young artist. She studied abroad, traveled and became more interested in architectural subjects when living in Paris and Italy in her 20s and 30s. After marrying, she returned home to the U.S. to continue her career and began art exhibitions world wide. Although her subjects have been almost exclusively European street scenes, she began as a portrait artist. While concentrating and perfecting this theme of street scene artistry, King has brought herself great appeal and success throughout the art world both in the U.S. and abroad. King resides and has her studio in New Orleans where she continues to study great architectural design. Her work is powerful and popular, collected throughout the world by both private collectors and gallery owners.
Piet Klaasse 1918-2001
Käthe Kollwitz (July 8, 1867 – April 22, 1945) Käthe Kollwitz is regarded as one of the most important German artists of the twentieth century, and as a remarkable woman who created timeless art works against the backdrop of a life of great sorrow, hardship and heartache.
Käthe was born in 1867 in Konigsberg, East Prussia (now Kalingrad in Russia). She studied art in Berlin and began producing etchings in 1880 In 1881 she married Dr Karl Kollwitz and they settled in a working class area of north Berlin. In 1896 her second son, Peter, was born.
From 1898 to 1903 Käthe taught at the Berlin School of Women Artists, and in 1910 began to create sculpture.
In 1914 her son Peter was killed in Flanders. The loss of Peter contributed to her socialist and pacifist political sympathies. In 1919 she worked on a commemorative woodcut dedicated to Karl Liebknecht, the revolutionary socialist murdered in 1919. Käthe believed that art should reflect the social conditions of the time and during the 1920s she produced a series of works reflecting her concern with the themes of war, poverty, working class life and the lives of ordinary women.
In 1932 the war memorial to her son Peter - The Parents - was dedicated at Vladslo military cemetery in Flanders. Käthe became the first woman to be elected to the Prussian Academy of Arts, but in 1933, when Hitler came to power, she was expelled from the Academy . In 1936 she was barred by the Nazis from exhibiting, her art was classified as 'degenerate' and her works were removed from galleries.
In 1940 Karl Kollwitz died. In 1942 her grandson, Peter, was killed at the Russian front. In 1943 Käthe's home was destroyed by British bombing and she was evacuated from Berlin to Moritzburg, near Dresden. The significance of the Vladslo memorial Extracts from The Great War and the Shaping of the Twentieth Century, Jay Winter
A few miles north of the medieval city of Ypres in Belgium is a German war cemetery. It lies in a field near the small town of Vladslo. In the cemetery are the graves of hundreds of men killed in the early days of World War I. Among the graves is that of Peter Kollwitz, a student from Berlin who volunteered as soon as the war broke out. Two months later, in October 1914, he was killed, aged nineteen, in one of the war's first major campaigns.
Käthe Kollwitz was informed of her son's death in action on 30 October. 'Your pretty shawl will no longer be able to warm our boy,' was the touching way she broke the news to a close friend. To another friend she admitted, 'There is in our lives a wound which will never heal. Nor should it.'
By December 1914 Kolhwitz, one of the foremost artists of her day, had formed the idea of creating a memorial to her son, with his body outstretched, 'the father at the head, the mother at the feet', to commemorate 'the sacrifice of all the young volunteers'. As time went on she attempted various other designs, but was dissatisfied with them all. Kollwitz put the project aside temporarily in 1919, but her commitment to see it through when it was right was unequivocal. 'I will come back, I shall do this work for you, for you and the others,' she noted in her diary in June 1919.
Twelve years later, she kept her word: in April 1931 she was at last able to complete the sculpture. 'In the autumn - Peter, - I shall bring it to you,' she wrote in her diary. Her work was exhibited in the National Gallery in Berlin and then transported to Belgium, where it was placed, as she had promised, adjacent to her son's grave. There it rests to this day.
Käthe Kollwitz's war memorial was an offering to a son who had offered his life for his country. That she was only able to complete it eighteen years after his death should tell us something about how unconvincing is the view that the Great War ended when the textbooks tell us, on 11 November 1918. For millions of people who had to live with the human costs of the conflict the war lasted much, much longer. It is for this reason that it makes sense to suggest that, in an important way, the contours of the history of the Great War, the history endured by millions of ordinary men and women, are visible at Vladslo.
The war opened in 1914 as a conflict which almost everyone believed would last for a few months. But the slaughter of Peter Kollwitz and the armies of 1914 did not result in a decisive victory. Instead, by the end of that year stalemate had set in: the Great War was born, a war which was to last fully 1,500 days.
At the Armistice of 11 November I9I8, the German Army was not far from Vladslo. It was still in occupation of large parts of Belgium. But it had been defeated. The Allies had won the war, at an unimaginable cost. In all combatant armies, over 9 million men had died in uniform; perhaps twice that number had been wounded. And an even larger number of people in every combatant country - wives and brothers, sons and daughters, mothers and fathers like Käthe and Karl Kollwitz - were in mourning. [That is the meaning] of Vladslo: in the midst of a Great War battlefield returned to farmland, holding together the remains of the fallen and the gestures of the survivors.
The story of the pilgrimage of one mother and father to their son's grave stands for millions of others. In August 1932 a war memorial was unveiled at the Roggevelde German war cemetery, near Vladslo in Flemish Belgium: a sculpture of two parents mourning their son, killed in October 1914• It is the work of Käthe Kollwitz. There is no more moving monument to the grief of those who lost their sons in the war than this simple stone sculpture of two parents, on their knees, before their son's grave.
There is no artist's signature, no location in time or space - only the universal sadness of two aged people, surrounded by the dead like 'a flock of lost children'. The phrase is Käthe Kollwitz's own. The story of her struggle to commemorate her son's death testifies both to her humanity and to her achievement in creating a timeless memorial, a work of art of extraordinary power and feeling.
Kollwitz was only able to complete the memorial eighteen years after her son's death, which alone should tell us something about the process of bereavement described so movingly in her diary and in her work. That process was in no sense unique. Kollwitz was haunted by dreams of her son, and felt his presence in the same way that other bereaved parents did throughout the world. She spent hours sitting in his room. In October 1916, she wrote in her diary that 'I can feel Peter's being. He consoles me, he helps me in my work.' She rejected the idea of spirits returning, but was drawn to the 'possibility of establishing a connection here, in this life of the senses, between the physically alive person and the essence of someone physically dead'. Call it 'theosophy or spiritism or mysticism' if you will, she noted, but the presence was there none the less. 'I have felt you, my boy - oh, many many times.' Even after the pain of loss began to fade she still spoke to her dead son, especially when working on his memorial.
What gives Kollwitz's mourning an added dimension was her sense of guilt, of remorse over the responsibility of the older generation for the slaughter of the young. This feeling arose from her initial apprehensive but positive reaction to Peter's decision to volunteer. Her vision was internationalist, and hostile to the philistine arrogance of official Germany. But, as she said time and again, she believed in a higher duty than mere self-interest, and had felt before 1914 that 'behind the individual life ... stood the Fatherland'. She knew that her son had volunteered with a 'pure heart', filled with patriotism, 'love for an idea, a commandment', but still she had wept bitterly at his departure.
To find, as she did later in the war, that his idealism was misplaced, that his sacrifice was for nothing, was difficult for many reasons. First, it created a distance between her and her son. 'Is it a break of faith with you, Peter,' she wrote in October 1916,'if I can now see only madness in the war?' He had died believing; how could his mother not honour that belief? But to feel that the war was an exercise in futility led to an even more damaging admission - that her son and his whole generation had been 'betrayed'.
This recognition was painful, but when she reached it in 1918 she did not flinch from giving it artistic form. This is one reason why it took so long for her to complete the monument, and why she and her husband are on their knees before their son's grave. They are there to beg his forgiveness, to ask him to accept their failure to find a better way, their failure to prevent the madness of war from cutting his life short.
At Roggevelde, on their knees, Käthe and Karl Kollwitz suggest a family which includes us all. And that may be precisely what she had in mind: the most intimate here is also the most universal. In a powerful sense, this memorial in a German war cemetery is a family reunion, a foretaste of what her broad religious faith suggested would happen at some future date. The sense of completeness, of healing, of transcendence is transparently present in her moving account of her last visit to the memorial. She was alone with her husband: 'we went from the figures to Peter's grave, and everything was alive and wholly felt. I stood before the woman, looked at her - my own face - and I wept and stroked her cheeks. Karl stood dose behind me - I did not even realize it. I heard him whisper, "Yes, yes. How close we were to one another then!'
This pilgrimage helped to heal one set of wounds just as another cruel period was about to begin ... For Käthe Kollwitz, the war they unleashed brought still more suffering to her life. Her work was derided, but she was left alone by the Nazis. Her husband died in 1940. Her grandson Peter, named after his uncle who had died in Belgium in 1914, was killed on the Russian Front in 1942.
The next year, she had to leave Berlin due to Allied bombing: her house and much of her work was destroyed on 23 November 1943. If World War I had blurred the distinction between civilian and military targets, World War II erased it. 'Carpet bombing' of cities became an ordinary event. 'It is almost incomprehensible to me', Käthe Kollwitz wrote, 'what degrees of endurance people can manifest. In days to come people will hardly understand this age. What a difference between now and 1914... People have been transformed so that they have this capacity for endurance.... Worst of all is that every war already carries within the war which will answer it. Every war is answered by a new war, until everything, everything is smashed.'
In the spring of 1945, Kollwitz knew she was dying.' War', she wrote in her last letter, 'accompanies me to the end.' She died on 22 April 1945, two weeks before the end of World War II.
Mark Kostabi Kostabi has had an impact on the art world unrivaled since the days of Andy Warhol's Factory. Kostabi's original artwork often fetches tens of thousands of dollars - but he doesn't even paint them. In the 80's, Kostabi hired "idea people" through ads in the Village Voice. These artists were paid $4 to $10 an hour to imitate Kostabi's earlier works. His Fiancee earned $300 a week thinking of ideas for his staff to paint. Kostabi studied art for a few years at Fullerton College and at Cal State Fullerton and flunked a business-economics marketing course. "Nobody understood that I could sell things by insulting people, which is what I did for class demonstrations", he says. "But it worked, and that's just what I do now."
Mikulas Kravjansky Kravjansky was born in Czechoslovakia in 1928, and as a young man, attended the Academy of Arts in Bratislava. He went on to become one of the foremost set and costume designers in the Czechoslovakian theater as well as for Czechoslovakian State Television. In 1968, Kravjansky and his family left Czechoslovakia and settled in Canada, where he became Assistant Master of Art at Toronto’s Humber College. The artist eventually relocated to Florida where he began creating the limited-edition intaglios. Kravjansky’s previous association with the performing arts fueled his passion for theater, one of several motifs explored in his graphic art. Among the artist’s finest intaglios are his exquisite images from the world’s best-loved Shakespearean dramas, “Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “Romeo and Juliet.” A fascination with the Orient spawned the creation of his two stunning triptychs, “The Tea House”, and “Cherry Blossoms.” The newer pieces boast his extraordinary palette expressed in lovely garden scenes and other images that suggest something of a “post-Maxfield Parrish” style. But what transcends the varied themes is the exceptional quality and technique perfected by one of the world’s masters of intaglio, Mikulas Kravjansky.
Annmarie Kristina Kristina has spent years developing a unique style of painting for which she is known. She paints in Oil and Acrylic using techniques ranging from photo-realism to impressionism, with the combination of both being her most popular. While living in South America, Kristina firmly established herself in the art world with her exceptional scenic paintings of wine vineyards and interiors. Her paintings have been displayed on numerous magazine covers; she has been the featured artist in American Artist. Her accomplishments have earned one-woman exhibitions throughout the world.
Ting Shao Kuang Ting was born in Chenggu, a village located in the norther province of Shanxi, China in 1939. By the age of 11 he was painting everyday, using cooking oil as a medium for his pigment. Despite this lack of adequate supplies, he evidenced such remarkable talent that in 1954 he was given the opportunity to attend the prestigious high school affiliated with the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. In 1957, Ting was accepted at Beijing’s Central Academy of Arts and Crafts.
Muramasa Kudo As an artist, Kudo’s most successful images lure the viewer into a fantasy world of exotic women in placid, almost dream-like settings, enticingly garbed in fine silks, perhaps offering fruit or the potential of themselves. When one thinks of a Kudo painting, a sense of illusion is conjured. A peaceful world the way it could be. But then there is that bolt of lightning in the background, or that longing look of the fisherman returning his catch the mermaid to the sea. Or the demure expression on the face of his female subjects whose appearance could as easily be an invitation to a storm of wanton excitement. In his quest for serenity, Kudo relates opposing forces in his work, and in his life. “I am not against, but I am according. I don’t fight with anybody, except with myself; ego, pride and greed”. In a summer scene, he will incorporate a poem about winter. On a black sheet of Arches paper, he will render a blazingly colorful line drawing of a female nude. His strong and beautiful sense of color is very Japanese, balanced and tight yet bold and primary.
Serge Lassus Serge Lassus was born in Hendaye, France, on the Spanish border in 1933.
After his studies at the Ustaritz Secondary School for Seminarists, he took drawing lessons and passed the entrance examination to the Paris School of Applied Arts.
He was placed fourth out of 800 candidates. He left four years later and, attracted by advertising and graphic creation, he worked for Publicitas.
Since 1959, he had regular shows in France and abroad. His works, which have received numerous awards, figure among major private collections.
Marie Laurencien French painter, illustrator, and stage designer, born in Paris. Apart from evening classes in drawing, she was self-taught as an artist. In 1907 she was introduced by the picture dealer Clovis Sagot to Apollinaire, Picasso and their circle (she painted a group portrait of several of her famous friends in 1908; The Guests, Baltimore Museum of Art). For several years she lived with Apollinaire, and she exhibited with the Cubists. Her work, however, was entirely peripheral to the Cubist movement. She specialized in portraits of oval-faced, almond-eyed young girls painted in pastel colours, and although she borrowed a few tricks of stylization from her Cubist friends, her style remained essentially unaffected by them. Her work was lyrically charming and rather repetitive. From 1914 to 1920 she lived in Spain and Germany, then returned to Paris. Apart from paintings, her work included book illustrations and set and costume designs for the ballet and theatre.
John Pierre Laurent Laurant is a contemporary French painter, classically trained in France, who specializes in capturing scenes from the area of his youth. He is one of the most famous landscape figurative painters of our time. Many of his works are found in the French National Archives.
Henri de Toulouse- Lautrec The French painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec depicted the Parisian night life of cafés, bars, and brothels (houses of prostitution, where sexual acts are traded for money)—the world that he inhabited at the height of his career.
Crippled childhood
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, a direct descendant of an aristocratic family of a thousand years, was born on November 24, 1864, at Albi, France, to Alphonse-Charles and Adèle Zoë. His wild and colorful father lived in moderate luxury, hunting with falcons and collecting exotic weapons. Henri began to draw at an early age and found the arts an escape from his loving but over-protective family.
In 1878 Toulouse-Lautrec suffered a fall and broke one femur (thigh bone). A year later he fell again and broke the other one. His legs did not heal properly. His torso developed normally, but his legs stopped growing and were permanently deformed. Many attribute his health problems to the fact that his parents were first cousins.
In 1882, encouraged by his first teachers—the animal painters René Princeteau and John Lewis Brown—Toulouse-Lautrec decided to devote himself to painting, and that year he left for Paris. Enrolling at the École des Beaux-Arts, he entered the studio of Fernand Cormon. In 1884 Toulouse-Lautrec settled in Montmartre, an area in north Paris, where he stayed from then on, except for short visits to Spain, where he admired the works of El Greco (1541–1614) and Diego Velázquez (1599–1660). In England he visited celebrated writer Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) and painter James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903). At one point Toulouse-Lautrec lived near painter Edgar Degas (1834–1917), whom he valued above all other contemporary artists (artists from his time) and by whom he was influenced. From 1887 his studio was on the rue Caulaincourt next to the Goupil printshop, where he could see examples of the Japanese prints of which he was so fond.
By habit Toulouse-Lautrec stayed out most of the night. He frequented many entertainment spots in Montmartre, especially the Moulin Rouge cabaret (a nightclub with entertainment). He also drank a great deal. His loose lifestyle caught up with him—he suffered a breakdown in 1899. His mother had him committed to an asylum, a hospital for the mentally ill, at Neuilly, France. He recovered and set to work again, but not for very long. He died on September 9, 1901, at the family estate at Malromé, France.
The influence of Parisian nightlife
Toulouse-Lautrec moved freely among the dancers, the prostitutes, the artists, and the intellectuals of Montmartre. From 1890 on his tall, lean cousin, Dr. Tapié de Celeyran, accompanied him, and the two, depicted in At the Moulin Rouge (1892), made a colorful pair. Despite his deformity, Toulouse-Lautrec was extremely social and readily made friends and inspired trust. He came to be regarded as one of the people of Montmartre, for he was an outsider like them, fiercely independent, but with a great ability to understand everything around him.
Among the painter's favorite subjects were the cabaret dancers Yvette Guilbert, Jane Avril, and La Goulue and her partner, Valentin le Désossé, the contortionist (an acrobat who demonstrates extraordinary bodily positions). Through the seriousness of his intention, Toulouse-Lautrec depicted his subjects in a style bordering on, but rising above, caricature (exaggeration). He took subjects who often dressed in disguise and makeup as a way of life and stripped away all that was not essential, thus revealing each as an individual—but a prisoner of his own destiny.
The two most direct influences on Toulouse-Lautrec's art were the Japanese print, as seen in his slanted angles and flattened forms, and Degas, from whom he derived the tilted perspective, cutting of figures, and use of a railing to separate the spectator from the painted scene, as in At the Moulin Rouge. But the genuine feel of a world of wickedness and the harsh, artificial colors used to create it were Toulouse-Lautrec's own.
Unusual types performing in a grand show attracted Toulouse-Lautrec. In his painting In the Circus Fernando: The Ringmaster (1888) the nearly grotesque (distorted and ugly), strangely cruel figure of the ringmaster is the center around which the horse and bareback rider must revolve. From 1892 to 1894 Toulouse-Lautrec produced a series of interiors of brothels, where he actually lived for a while and became the companion of the women. As with his paintings of cabarets, he
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Reproduced by permission of the Corbis Corporation.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
Reproduced by permission of the
Corbis Corporation
.
caught the feel of the brothels and made no attempt to glamorize them. In the Salon in the Rue des Moulins (1894) the prostitutes are shown as ugly and bored beneath their makeup; the madam (woman in charge) sits quietly in their midst. He neither sensationalized nor drew a moral (having to do with right and wrong) lesson but presented a certain interpretation of this side of society for what it was—no more and no less.
Color lithography and the poster
Toulouse-Lautrec broadened the range of lithography (the process of printing on metal) by treating the tone more freely. His strokes became more summary (executed quickly) and the planes more unified. Sometimes the ink was speckled on the surface to bring about a great textural richness. In his posters he combined flat images (again the influence of the Japanese print) with type. He realized that if the posters were to be successful their message had to make an immediate and forceful impact on the passerby. He designed them with that in mind.
Toulouse-Lautrec's posters of the 1890s established him as the father of the modern large-scale poster. His best posters were those advertising the appearance of various performers at the Montmartre cabarets, such as the singer May Belfort, the female clown Cha-U-Kao, and Loïe Fuller of the Folies-Bergère.
In an 1893 poster of dancer Jane Avril, colored partially in bright red and yellow, she is pictured kicking her leg. Below her, in gray tones so as not to detract attention, is the diagonally placed hand of the violinist playing his instrument. There is some indication of floorboards but no furniture or other figures. The legend reads simply "Jane Avril" in white letters and "Jardin de Paris" in black letters.
Charles Lee Korean-born Lee is a diverse, multi-talented artist with the c capability of creating many different types of art, from pencil drawn portraitures to tranquil landscapes and arresting abstracts.
Lee began showing an affinity for art in 1955 at the young age of seven. In order to hone his skills, he attended middle and high school in his hometown of Seoul. It was in high school that he received his first honor in art creativity: a gold medal in an international competition. He went on to graduate from a university where he majored in art, and has his first personal show at the age of 23. Shortly after, in the 1970’s, Lee exhibited the Hong Kong and Tokyo Group Shows. The middle to latter part of that same decade brought Lee wider acclaim when he presented his second one man show and had his works displayed at the Tae Yoon and Man Kang Galleries in Seoul. Subsequently, during the 1980’s, while employed at the Gaius Art Studio, many of his works were exported to America. Lee arrived in the United States at the onset of the 1990’s and worked for Art USA in Miami, a wholesaler of fine art. He became an exclusive artist for a published in Fort Lauderdale in 1993. Lee shows his true talent and versatility as an artist. His art reflects his uncompromising high standards.
His paintings are a compelling combination of traditional and neo-classic. In the execution of his designs, Lee embraces oils, watercolors, and acrylics. He also has a penchant for a bright and eye-catching palette (including gold foil) that demonstrates his keen sense of color; yet, in spite of such vibrant imagery, he presents his subjects in a calm, reflective and almost ethereal way.
David Lee David Lee was born in Canton, China in 1944 and in 1946 moved with his family to Hong Kong, where he was raised. He began painting at age 4. He was educated in Hong Kong and attended Taiwan University, where he received a B.A. in Fine Arts. He also attended Kaoshung University in Taiwan and the Far East Academy of Art in Hong Kong. David Lee was the youngest winner ever of the prestigious Chinese National Painting Competition. After moving to Hawaii, where he initially worked for the Consulate General of the Republic of China in the Foreign Affairs Department, David Lee devoted himself to his artwork full-time. He has had numerous one-man shows throughout the world including Hawaii, the U.S. Mainland, Canada, Japan, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Taiwan. David Lee's paintings hang in the permanent collection of the Taiwan University, in the National Museum of Taiwan, and the Chuk-Yun Museum in Hong Kong. Worldwide, his art is shown in over 300 art galleries, universities, and museums, as well as many noteworthy private collections in the U.S., Asia, Europe, and Canada, including the collection of the Imperial Family of Japan. Among the numerous honors David Lee has received are awards from the government of the Republic of China, the government of Switzerland, the City and County of Honolulu, and the City of Osaka, Japan, where he received the Gold Key to the City for his achievements. David Lee has decided to fulfill a life long dream of painting abroad. Beginning in January 2004 he has decided to move from Hawaii and travel the world seeking new inspirations for his art. While he will be traveling he will continue to paint and his Maui Studio will be showing all of his newest works.
Barry Leighton-Jones Born in London, England on October 17, 1932, Barry Leighton-Jones has been creating paintings and prints for over forty years. Major art publishers in Europe and the United States have made his name synonymous with clowns and satire. He has painted in many different styles, ranging from photorealism to abstract expressionism (and successfully exhibited in many countries) but always returns to his personal forte, creating images with a totally universal appeal. His original works grace the walls (and ceiling) of stately homes throughout the world, including the palace of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, but his art is not only collected by the rich and famous. His popular prints, notably of clowns and urchins, has been successful in one hundred and forty-two countries!
Arthur Lidov sculptor, engraver and designer, was a professional artist since 1937. He received his Fine Arts Degree from the University of Chicago. His list of accomplishments includes five Annual Awards from the New York Society of Illustrators and many other Awards too numerous to mention. He is considered one of the world’s finest medical illustrators. is a Texas native. He attended the University of Alabama in Huntsville, majoring in Art. Mr. Howard was an industrial artist with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for 14 years. Some of his works are on display at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C.
Zhou Ling Ling was born in Tian Jing, China in 1941. She studied Chinese history and art as well as Western art history from the Renaissance through Modernism at the Central Institute Nationalities in Beijing. After becoming a prominent painter in the Peoples Republic, she was promoted to the position of Associate Art Professor of the Institute of Nationalities. In her paintings, she seeks to illustrate the beauty of a strong emotion, an imposing strength and eternity.
Harold Edward Little was born in 1942, in Aurora, Illinois and educated in Virginia schools. He studied printmaking and painting in Florence, Italy from 1965-67 and also the summer of 1971 under tutelage of American painter Richard Serrin, then of Fiesole and Swietlan Kraczyna of Florence. He began making woodcuts in 1969 moving to etching plates in 1972. To date Little has executed 180 Plates in all sizes of editions. All plates are printed by the artist at his studio in Fincastle, Virginia where he lives and works with his wife, Harriet and son, Ian. Also involved with oil painting, Little produces landscapes of town and country scenes as well as views of the Outer Banks in North Carolina where the family frequently vacations in autumn.
Xinhua Liu born in Beijing China, had a remarkable family, several of which were already well known artists in the area. As a child, he started taking lessons in figure sketch, water-color and landscape painting in both Chinese and Western style. In 1977, he was admitted at the Central Institute of Art and Design, the most prestigious art school in China. During that time he was exposed to the great masters like Picasso, Paul Klee, and Modogliani. This gave him the inspiration to create new themes and experiment with new techniques. After graduating with the highest honors in 1981, he was assigned to be a teacher at the institute. In 1987 he came to the United States where he found intellectual and artistic freedom. Liu has skillfully used his basic traditional Chinese painting techniques and his western influenced mind to create his own style of art. He expresses a beauty of emotion, strength and eternity. These characteristics have set him apart from all other Chinese artists.
John T. Lotton John T. Lotton is the creator of unique hand-crafted glass artwork. He follows his father, Charles Lotton, and brothers, David and Daniel, in a life-long family quest to perfect the art of glassblowing. He began working as an apprentice in his father's glass shop in 1976, making jewelry and a few paperweights, then later along with his brother Daniel, finished and polished his father's glass works. Under his father's direction, John soon advanced to producing glass creations of his own. The past nineteen years have been spent perfecting his skills and techniques to achieve the outstanding results seen in his pieces today. His artwork can be viewed in fine galleries and private collections across North America.
L LuHong LuHong painted, studied and absorbed information from every available source open to him. He was influenced by the works of Jiang Tiefeng, Ting Shao Kuang, Paul Klee, Modiglani and Picasso. Seeking intellectual and artistic freedom, Lu Hong moved from China to the United States in 1986, where he was reunited with his teacher Ting Shao Kuang. In just three years, he became one of the most acclaimed contemporary Chinese artists in America. Lu Hong's Paintings are reminiscent of ancient Chinese art, American Indian art, and the work of Picasso. Student of the Master's Jiang Tiefeng and Ting Shao Kuang.
Aldo Luongo Luongo was educated at the Buenos Aires Academy of Fine Art and had his first gallery show in 1968 after a successful career as a designer. Well known in galleries across the country for his post-Impressionist portraits and genre scenes. His celebrity collectors include the late Yul Brynner and Cary Grant, Dionne Warwick, football star Marcus Allen and singer Christopher Cross.
Richard MacDonald Born and raised in California during an unkind era for figurative art, MacDonald was tossed into artistic waters by his uncle, who was a leading graphic designer in the United States. A master at rendering surface, MacDonald has become a choreographer of shape, knowing instinctively at what point the body becomes sensual and vital, as parts transcend form and move into dance. Like a mental siren, he seduces his audience as he plays to their expectations of beauty and their perceptions of the perfect form. In this light, he considers his own work successful simply because others are touched by it, feeling its natural progression from artist to body and soul. Art does many things for human beings; when it touches them in any way, it becomes successful. The mere creation of art, that a human being can achieve is success in itself. With little initial awareness of the magnitude of his project, MacDonald approached Flair Across America without fear or anxiety, thinking not of barriers, but of possibilities. As the master creator, he seeks not permission, but rather, potential. For MacDonald, art is the celebration of life.
Bill Mack Macks art elicits an immediate emotional response. In his art a moment of time is stopped, the grace of a body in motion is captured. The viewer becomes a participant. Much of this impact is created not only through Macks realistic portrayal of the subject matter, but by his choice and manipulation of materials. He complements his artistic nature with his technical ability to use porcelain, resins, urethanes, epoxies, silicones, acrylics, gypsum, and other modern materials not commonly used in contemporary art. He also takes into account that people like to touch sculpture. Unlike some settings where touching the art is a cultural faux pas, Mack likes his work to be displayed in settings that invite a viewer to caress the art and enjoy a tactile experience.
Yuval Mahler Born in 1951 in Haifa, Israel, Yuval Mahler studied graphic design and animation at School of Visual Arts in New York City. While living in New York, he also participated in several group shows in Soho. Mahler draws on rich supply of wry humor, satire, caricature, and comedy to produce his insightful studies of human behavior. His paintings explore human relationships under various conditions of life the world over. Mahler’s work appeals to the child in us all, to optimists as well as those who simply want their spirits lifted. The artist works in varied media… acrylic, colored pencil, gouache, pastels, and serigraphs… to achieve his delightful depictions of human condition. His paintings have been shown in galleries and exhibitions in many countries, including Canada, Germany, Switzerland, Israel, and United States.
Isaac Maimon Maimon studied at the renowned Avni Institute of Fine Art in Tel Aviv, graduating in 1976. He has exhibited extensively both in Israel and abroad, and in addition to being an accomplished artist, taught art at the School of Visual Arts in Deer-Sheba, and at the Kay Art Academy. His warm palette has been influenced by early 20th century European art, yet he brings to the canvas a strength which is characteristic of his works.
David Mann David Mann (September 10, 1940 – September 11, 2004) was an American artist famous for his paintings of motorcycles and biker culture. Most of his famous works have been for the motorcycle industry, especially for motorcycle magazines. Some of his art was featured on an episode of American Chopper. A custom motorcycle was commissioned in his honor for that episode, with custom art in his style. This bike was entitled the 'David Mann Bike'.
A native of Kansas City, Missouri, Mann began drawing and painting at an early age. his first passion was custom cars and his first job was as an automobile painter. After high school, he left Kansas City and settled in California where he became interested in motorcycles. He became immersed in biker culture and motorcycles supplanted cars in his artwork.
In 1963, David brought some of his artwork to the Kansas City Custom Car Show. There a biker took an interest in Mann's artwork and with Dave's permission, forwarded it to Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, a pop artist who was then the publisher of one of the world's first custom motorcycle magazines, Choppers. Roth loved the painting and purchased the rights to commission ten original posters.
In 1971 he answered an advertisement in the back of a new motorcycle related magazine called Easyrider asking for a "motorcycle artist". His relationship with Easyrider would continue for the rest of his life. After 1972, Mann's artwork began appearing regularly in Easyrider. His art was reproduced as the magazine’s center spread beginning in 1973 and continued to be the publication's centerpiece until he was forced to retire in 2003 due to his failing heath.
Mann's health began a slow decline in the early 2000's and by 2003 had deteriorated to the point where he could no longer work. Following this lengthy illness, Mann died in Kansas City just one day after his 64th birthday.
Marco Mark Marco Mark is a multi-dimensional creative artist. He has worked in the mediums of airbrush, acrylic, crayon, house paint, watercolor, dye, printing, ink, pastel, colored pencil, magic marker, etching, engraving, serigraph, silkscreen, dimensional paint, wallpaper, collage and ink jet printer.
In his creative output, Marco loves to make art icons of famous people. As a youngster growing up on the Caribbean island of Trinidad, Marco was an ardent observer of the island’s annual carnival celebration. He became fascinated with the colorful revelers, masquerading as famous people during the two-day festivities. This early exposure, coupled with the everyday play of calypso and steel drum music, left a profound influence on Marco that still fuels his creative expression today.
In 1968, Marco immigrated to the United States and attended the School of Visual Arts in New York. Here he learned about commercial illustration and graphic arts and honed is skills as a commercial artist. After completing his studies, Marco apprenticed at Designers 3 Art Studio and worked as an Assistant Art Director at Hicks & Criest advertising agency. When he left the agency, he became a successful freelance commercial artist. In a short time, his art work adorned umbrellas for the likes of Oscar De la Renta, Nina Ricci, ABC Wide World of Sports, NBC Sports, CBS Sports, Colleges and Universities, and numerous other businesses throughout the United States.
In the 1980s, Marco moved to Atlanta, Georgia and began making fine art for the Arthur A. Kaplan Co. He created for the company his popular African-American Dance series, Ailey Dancers, a colorful homage to the late choreographer and dancer, Alvin Ailey.
In 2007, Marco was asked to contribute his artistic insights and talents to a memorial retrospective of the late Princess Diana. This retrospective entitled, Princess Diana in Art, compiled by London-born art connoisseur, Mem Mehmet, and published by Pop Art Books features a collection of paintings reflecting the shifting moods of this enigmatic princess. Marco’s work, a collage of rag paper, ink, and acrylic on canvas, captures the essence of this most remarkable and vulnerable young woman.
Today, Marco continues to work and create art in Atlanta. Asked what he would have become had he not become an artist, Marco replies, “an actor, of course,” a testament to the creativity in him that continues to burn bright.
Darina Marko Darina Marko was born in Bulgaria in 1966. At an early age she focused her studies on fine art. After specializing in fine art in secondary school she went on to study at the Academy of Fine Art in Bulgaria for an additional five years focusing her studies on silk printing and batik. After completion, Darina moved to London, England for four years. Darina has spent considerable time traveling across Europe and North and South America and has exhibited her work in England, Germany, Italy and Finland. Inspired by artists including Egon Schiele and Matisse, Darina bends, twists and distorts her subject matter and perspective. She freely employs mixed media including acrylic, water colour, oil and pastel. By concentrating on the interactions between visual elements including form, colour, texture and light, her still life work acquires its abstracted aesthetic.
Andras Markos Andras Markos studied fine arts at the Kunstakademie Ion Andreesseu in Kolozsvar, Romania. After graduation he worked as a graphic designer for many years, then turned his attention to being curator of medieval church art at the Komitatsmuseum in Cskszereda and Set Designer for the Hungarian State Theatre. By 1981 Markos had showings throughout Europe and finally in America, establishing himself as an internationally renowned artist. His list of group shows include appearances at "Zalavar 74," Hungary in 1974; "Joan Miro" International Competition for drawing, Barcelona, Spain and "Clausur" with "Die Gruppe" at L’Esplanade la Defense, Paris in 1984. Also, his one-person shows have appeared at Galerie Basilisk, Vienna in 1981; Neues Rathaus Galerie, Leonberg, Germany; Maison des Arts, Belford, France in 1987.
Spanning Markos’ long career, several distinctions including First Prize of Kiel, West Germany in 1983 and Prize at the International Graphic Biennale, Sao Paulo, Brazil, have been awarded to him, along with permanent museums showing collections of his work at Collection of the Catholic University, Campinas, Sao Paulo, Brazil; Museum of Fine Art, Bucharest, Romania and Museum of Opole, Poland.
Felix Mas Mas received formal art training at the San Jorge Academy of Fine Arts, where he studied under masters of Spanish and French schools of painting. An outstanding student, he was awarded a scholarship for additional studies in London. He returned to the continent and continued working and studying in Paris. Before long, Mas works were being shown in galleries in London, Paris, Barcelona, and Madrid. One of Mas principal themes is the beauty of women. Romantic, delicate, reverent paintings of female faces and figures portray the thoughtfulness, sensitivity and fantasies of women.
Henri Matisse Henri Matisse is often regarded as one of the most important French
painters of the 20th century. Early in his career, he was the leader of the
Fauvist (meaning Wild Beasts) Movement, a painting style which focused
on pure colors used in an aggressive and direct manner. His style changed
many times over the years, but he never gave up his art. Matisse continued
creating even into his 80s, when cancer had taken over his body. This was
the time when he created the papercuttings that he is perhaps best known
for. Matisse understood perfectly the relationship between color and shape,
a talent which rightfully earned him the name Master of Color.
Peter Max Max is one of Americas most famous and collected artists, in the league with Erte and LeRoy Neiman, but with a 60s spin. Famous for his leading role in the psychedelic art of the hippie generation. Exhibitions include The World of Peter Max at the M.H. de Young Museum, San Francisco and the Images of an Era show at the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C. Comissions include 235 border murals at entry points to Canada and Mexico by U.S. General Services and six Liberty portraits at the White House at the invitation of Mrs. Reagan. Monuments include 1989 Liberty Heads, dedicated to the students of Beijing.
Paul Maxwell Paul E. Maxwell (1925–)
Paul E. Maxwell is a modern artist and sculptor who developed a technique for using stencils to create thickly textured and layered surfaces, as well as objects he patented as “stencil casting” but that later became known as “Maxwell Pochoir.” He is also known for creating the “Max Wall” in the West Atrium of the Dallas Apparel Mart; though demolished in 2006, it can be seen as a backdrop in the science-fiction movie Logan’s Run. His work is highly abstract and often consists of some kind of grid, a form that is non-hierarchical and illustrates a major theme of his work.
Paul Maxwell was born in Frost Prairie (Ashley County) on September 17, 1925, to the farm family of Willie F. and Robert M. Maxwell. The sixth of seven children, Maxwell considered himself an artist from an early age and recalled the landscape of Frost Prairie as “pure form—wide unbroken fields of tall grass which the slightest breeze could shape into waves and ripples of golden light.” He has said that drawing in the exposed clay soil there may have been an early inspiration for the kind of textured surfaces he would later create.
When Maxwell was nine, the family moved to Bastrop, Louisiana, where he completed high school. Maxwell went on to graduate from Principia College in Elsah, Illinois, in 1950 with a BA in art, followed by graduate work at Claremont College in California. While at Claremont, Maxwell had his first museum show in Stockton, California. In 1951, Maxwell exhibited his work at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in a show that included such artists as Picasso, Miro, and Matta; also that year, he had his first commercial gallery exhibition.
From 1955 to 1958, Maxwell taught at the Houston Museum of Art and at the University of Houston. From 1959 to 1961, he lectured and exhibited his work in Europe under the sponsorship of the U.S. Information Agency while maintaining a gallery in Switzerland. During the rest of the 1960s and into the 1970s and 1980s, Maxwell lived and worked in Texas and Oklahoma, receiving commissions for works in public spaces such as a wall sculpture in the Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and the free-standing sculpture for the lobby of the Stark County Library in Canton, Ohio.
It was also during the 1970s that Maxwell developed and created pieces using his stencil-casting technique. In 1985, a twelve-minute documentary that dealt with Maxwell’s work was produced by Carol Shroeder and broadcast by PBS. The documentary, titled Paul Maxwell: Lines/Horizons, won the American Film Festival Red Ribbon Award for Best Short Documentary and the Mitchell Wilder Gold Medal Award given by the Texas Association of Museums, both in 1986.
Maxwell has had exhibitions in galleries and museums throughout the United States and in England, Switzerland, France, Canada, and Australia. The permanent collection at the Arkansas Arts Center includes an acrylic painting on paper.
Tim Mayer Tim Mayer's extraordinary wildlife paintings offer the viewer a unique vantage point. His paintings express more than the physical characteristics of a species; they reveal something of its personality. Now living in the U.S., Hillier was born in Buckingham, England, in 1943.
Drawing and painting animals is something Tim has loved to do since he was a child. When he made the transition from an illustrator to a wildlife artist, he also switched to acrylic because it involves a looser painting process.
Traveling widely in search of subjects to study and paint, Mayer’s favorite subjects come from Southeast Asia, Florida & Louisiana wetlands. He is drawn to water birds. Since moving to the States, he has begun painting North American subjects in addition to the dramatic African and bird subjects for which he is renowned.
Mayer studied at Art in London and graduated with distinction. He has exhibited at the Pastel Society, the Society of Wildlife Artists, and the Society of Animal Artists. He has had one-man exhibitions throughout Great Britain and the United States.
The love Mayer feels for his subject is evident in his work. He says, "I paint anything that moves. I love animals, their natural environment and being a part of their world is a privilege."
Dan McCaw Dan McCaw was born and raised in the Irish mining town of Butte, Montana. Dan’s hometown had no museums or art schools, so the young McCaw’s desire to be an artist stood out as something different. His peers planned careers in mining copper or steel, or yearned to be doctors and lawyers. In 1962 McCaw received a scholarship to attend the San Francisco Academy of Design. The Academy has had a nationwide reputation for nurturing artistic talent since the late 1800’s. After doing coursework at the prestigious Art Center of Design in Pasadena, California, McCaw was asked to the role of the painting instructor for the Art Center. McCaw has taught hundreds of students how to paint over the last few decades. Aspiring artists appreciate McCaw’s congenial, witty, insightful teaching methods and they are spellbound by his desire to help each of them develop their individual skills and to truly enjoy painting as he does. In the pursuit of knowledge and a better way to express him self with paint, the eclectic McCaw has been inspired by the superlative paintings of Sorolla, Flechin, Vuillard, Bonnard, Franz Kleine and Robert Motherwell. The artist has comfortably supported his family of seven for nearly four decades mainly from the sales of his original works.
Jean-Francois Millet was born in 1814 in the Norman village of Gruchy, the eldest child in a large, closely knit family of farmers living in modest prosperity on their own land. His parents, saw to it that he received a good education, which gave him a knowledge of Latin and a lifelong interest in literature. Having shown early signs of talent, the youth was sent to Cherbourg in 1833 to work with a local portrait painter. Two years later, he entered the studio of Lucien-Théophile Langlois. In 1837, provided with a stipend by the city of Cherbourg, Millet went to Paris, to enroll at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. After two unhappy years of study, Millet competed unsuccessfully for the Rome Prize, left his teacher, and lost his stipend. Back in Cherbourg, he set himself up as a portrait painter. One of his portraits was accepted for the Paris Salon of 1840, but another, commissioned by the city of Cherbourg, was returned to him as a poor likeness. Discouraged, Millet decided to seek better luck in Paris, where he established himself with his wife, barely twenty years old. His portraits of that time, modeled in hard contrasts of light and shadow are indebted to the Spanish painters whose work he was able to study in the Galerie Espagnole at the Louvre. While he struggled for a livelihood, his wife contracted tuberculosis and died. Millet returned to Cherbourg in 1844. He moved to Paris (1846), where he continued to woo the public with mildly erotic compositions.
Don Mingolla Don Mingolla has painted abstract his entire career. Inspired by Paul Jenkins, Mingolla primarily paints in watercolor, explaining that the blend of color is most effective in this medium. Mingolla paintings are wonderfully colored contemporary abstracts with a combination of whimsy and sophistication. The loose brushstroke and simplistic imagery combined with bold primary color produce a high-impact work of art. His paintings are a must-see for those who enjoy strong color.
Joan Miro Miro was born in Barcelona, Spain in 1893 and died in 1983. I make no distinction between painting and poetry.... The poetic paintings of 20th century master Joan Miro amuse, inspire and captivate audiences worldwide. Miro studied art at School of Fine Arts at La Llotja and Galis Escola de Art. His earliest works show the influence of the Fauve and Cubist movements which were fashionable in Spain during the early part of the century. In 1920, Miro traveled to Paris and painted with Surrealists Andr, Masson and Max Ernst. While frequently identified with the Surrealist movement, Miro never fully accepted the movements creed and refused to sign the Surrealist Manifesto. His vibrant canvases transport the viewer to alien worlds inhabited by all manner of whimsical creatures. Throughout his life, Miro felt a deep connection to his Catalan heritage and much of the symbolism that is so prevalent in his work is deeply rooted in this bond. In 1940 Miro returned to Spain and began to explore new media including large scale sculpture, ceramics, murals and tapestries. Following his first retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art in 1941, Miro achieved international acclaim and is recognized as a pioneer of Modernism.
Dan Mitra Before coming to the United States from Romania, Dan Mitra worked as a graphic designer for both motion pictures and theater. He published graphics in various magazines, and won prizes in several art competitions in Italy. Although he has excelled in such varied media as painting, sculpture, and drawing, Mitra first began to explore the field of etching after traveling to the United States. A natural talent added to an intense enthusiasm assured his immediate success. His subject matter covers a wide range of topics, but he approaches it always from a decorative viewpoint and creates a pleasing addition to any interior with his distinctively fine line, un-flawed technique, and attention to subtle detail.
Vicky Montesinos Victoria Montesinos was born in Mexico and is the only daughter of the well-known movie director, Fernando A. Rivero, and Maty Humana. When barely three years old, Victoria was sent to live with her grandparents. She loved to draw from her early childhood. By the time Victoria was twelve she had the opportunity to paint with Jose Bardasano, the great Spanish painter who had arrived in Mexico as a refugee from the Spanish Civil War. She studied with Bardasano for five years. In late 1983, Victoria moved to New York to work with one of the largest galleries in the United States to study developing high quality lithographic works. During that period, Victoria's talent became widely recognized in the US. Victoria decided to return to Mexico in the late 1980's. She worked ardently in her homeland and developed an outstanding new style. Through her oil paintings and serigraphs on textiles she gained fame and recognition. In the mid-1990's, Victoria signed new contracts to work with various galleries in the United States. When Montisenos returned to New York she decided to make flowers the focus of her attention. Montesinos was captured by their beauty and described them as an incredible way for nature to show the infinity of existing colors. Vicky Montesinos executed her idea brilliantly through her magnificent brush, great skill, and abundant creative passion.
Fernando Montoya Born in Colombia , South America, Montoya is a self-taught artist. Montoya participated in the International Joan Miro painting contest in Barcelona, Spain, where he won an honor award. This recognition motivated Montoya to enter the job force as a plastic artist . The labor of Montoya is comprised with sweet erotism, and a beautiful sensuality. His pictorial imagination creates figures that pertain vivid realism. He shows life to his artistic work, which gives an image that mixes into perfectionism. His paintings portray symbolic elements of realism, that evokes sensuality of the human body through the execution of imagery. Montoya has participated in more than 30 individual exhibitions. His work has been shown throughout Europe, South, Latin and North America.
Wayland Moore Wayland Moore is a native of Belton, S.C. and a graduate of the Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota, Fla.," according to his biographical sketch. "His commissions and assignments have brought him international acclaim as an artist who has captured the excitement of events such as the Winter and Summer Olympics, America's Cup, U.S. Open, the Masters, P.G.A., U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame, Maccabiah Games of Israel, Davis Cup and many other international events.
Moore has exhibited in numerous one-man shows throughout the United States and Europe. His original works and limited edition prints hang in private and corporate collections and he is listed in Who's Who in American Art.
The artist's studio has been the hot and dry bush of Africa, often only yards away from lions, zebra and wildebeest; and his palette has captured the excitement and intrigue of the white waters of Alaska, Montana rodeos and European landscapes.
In addition to Moore's reputation as an artist, he conducts workshops and has taught painting in evening classes at Emory University for 15 years. His concept of teaching art to federal inmates earned him a commendation from the White House. He is in demand as a lecturer and is a powerful storyteller whose company is always treasured, whether it be in offices, galleries or around a warm campfire."
Henry Moore Sculptor Henry Moore was born on July 30, 1898, in Yorkshire, England. His father was a coal miner and as a boy Moore remembered sculpting with clay obtained from the pits. In Sunday school, Moore’s teacher told the students about the "greatest sculptor who ever lived- Michelangelo," and Moore became interested in the Renaissance master’s life and work.
At age 18 he went to London for the first time to join the military. Before his departure to the Western Front in France, he was able to see the British Museum and the National Gallery. When he returned from the war, he went to the Leeds School of Art and was subsequently admitted to the Royal Academy. A scholarship allowed him to travel to Italy, where he admired the work of painters Giotto and Masaccio. Although his style was much less conservative than that of the Academy, Moore was offered a teaching position at the prestigious institution.
Moore’s influences were incredibly diverse, including such sources as Mexican Pre-Columbian sculpture, African art, Oceanic and Cycladic pieces. Three-piece Reclining Fig. No. 2: Bridge- Prop shows the effect that seeing the Pre-Columbian reclining figure of Chac Mool, the Mayan God of Rain. Of Auguste Rodin, Moore stated, "Rodin of course knew what sculpture is: he once said that sculpture is the science of the bump and the hollow." Among modern artists, Moore favored Sir Jacob Epstein, Constantin Brancusi, and Pablo Picasso. He was also struck by Paul CÈzanne’s Large Bathers, which Moore said looked "as if they’d been sliced out of mountain rock."
In 1936, Moore exhibited in the International Surrealist Exhibition in London. However, he did not share the Surrealists’ philosophies. Moore was intrigued by the organic forms of the real world, not by the shapes that haunt our dreams. His work explored not only the solid forms of the sculpted material, but also the voids created by the removal of material.
Moore received many commissions, including ones from Time-Life, Lincoln Center in New York City, and UNESCO. He hoped that he would be able to live at least as long as his idol, Michelangelo, who lived to the age of 89. Moore almost achieved that goal. He died at age 88 in 1986.
Valter Morais Imagine a colorful, romantic and fun world, where people celebrate peace, love, freedom and happiness . That is the Valter Morais art world. His works reveal his visionary impression of our everyday life and also reflect his great sense of humor that is always present in all of his paintings.
Morais was born in São José dos Campos, São Paulo, Brazil in 1948. As a child, he had wanted to be a football player. However, his destiny was drawn to the arts. He has been committed to the fine arts since he was fifteen years old. Morais opted to dedicate his life to painting a happy world. It is a pleasure to know that my paintings can create a nice environment.
He became a professional painter in 1981, when he received a bachelor of Fine Arts degree in the University of Mogi das Cruzes in São Paulo. He also had an academic experience teaching for many years at the University, where he willingly shared his knowledge with many students.
In 1988, he came to The United States in an attempt to achieve his main goal - to conquer the American art market. By that time, he was settled in his mind to show his works that go from classic academic to pop art style represented in oil, acrylic and watercolor. Through his eclecticism, Morais would establish a wide international reputation showing his works in many nationally recognized art shows in New York, Kansas City, Las Vegas and Hawaii and also international shows in Brazil, Paris, Germany, Australia, England, Canada, and other major art centers.
Valter Morais works are deeply rooted in the cubism represented by Picasso and a pop art style , movement that emerged in the late 1950s. His works are inspired on his own romantic feeling of the world. The choice of this kind of matter, is guided by a reference to the beautiful models, dances, musical instruments and, why not, the daily life.
Morais moved from Boston to exhibit his pictures that perfectly combine to the tropical atmosphere. He became involved in painting different themes characterized by the deep perspective, colorful backgrounds and unexpected dimensions.
Robin Morris Morris has come to the forefront of the Art Deco revival with a unique style of her own. “New Deco” combines the elegance and whimsy of classic Deco with a bold contemporary flair. Robin’s compositions are calculated statements that encompass both engaging form and social style. Her figures are beautiful, their scene urban, their attitude chic. With the publication of “The Couple” lithograph in 1982, Robin’s work was launched. Much of the success of her limited edition lithographs may be attributed to Master Printers Joseph Kleineman and Maureen Turci of J.K. Fine Art editions in New York. Robin has sold out solo shows in New York and Florida and her original paintings are in collections worldwide. Recent commissions include Bloomingdales, Edward Fields, Inc. and Radio City Music Hall. Robin was born in New York in 1953. She was educated at Syracuse University and C.W. Post College on Long Island. In many ways, New Deco brings forth more colorful, even more decorative elements than were present 50 years ago.
Alphonse Mucha was born in Czechoslovakia and emigrated to Paris when he was twenty-nine
years old. It was there that he achieved great fame as one of the most important
exponents of the art nouveau movement. He created prints, posters (many
featuring the legendary actress Sarah Bernhardt), illustrations for books and
magazines, and jewelry. Almost all of his designs were centered on romanticized
female figures, highlighted by great flourishes. It has been said that his popularity came too quickly and he saturated his market with too many products, thereby causing a decline in quality and, eventually, demand. His early prints, in mint condition, are considered valuable today because they are some of the best representational art of his era and because Mucha earned an important place in European art history.
Dennis Mukai Mukai was born in Hiroshima, Japan and was influenced by Japan's master printmakers such as Utamaro, Hiroshige, and Hokusai. Not only did he appreciate their asymmetrical use of space, he adopted their fascination for the beauty of women. Mukai's art depicts the rarefied world of high fashion and feminine beauty with an original sense of style. In limited edition serigraphs, Mukai demonstrates this unparalled vision. The fashion models are rendered in bright, unconventional tones and flowing lines to maintain a delicate balance between reality and illusion. The beauty of these models is idealized without losing the individual characteristics that allow them the aspect of portraiture. Mukai's lyrical compostions transcend their connection to illustration to becoming contemporary icons, coolly restrained yet humanistic images. His reductive line, the inventive use of negative space, and composstional refinement imbue his subjects with seductive mystery.
Patrick Nagel Nagel was born in Dayton, Ohio in 1946 and died in 1984. He synthesized components of graphic design, fashion illustration and a sensuous approach to painting the figure into a stylized personal vision which altered attitudes towards illustrating fashions in the 80s. Nagel lived and worked most of his life in California studying painting and graphic design. After graduation, he began teaching at the Art Center College of Design, while simultaneously establishing himself as a successful freelance designer, illustrator and painter. Influenced by the design of Japanese woodblock prints, Nagel's figures are silhouetted against a neutral background, with bold linear elements, strong shape relationships and unusual angles forcing perspective from a two-dimensional surface. In addition to paintings, Nagel created more than sixty graphic editions, posters, commemorative editions and several commissions for Playboy and Architectural Digest, as well as the 1983 Duran Duran album cover on what became the number one record in the world. Beginning with his distinctive work for Playboy, Nagel's reputation as a designer was well-recognized and he produced numerous magazine covers and illustrations over the years.
Robert Natkin Robert Natkin is considered to be the evocative poet of post-war American abstract art. Over the course of four decades, his work has been internationally recognized and it represented in the collections of major museums throughout the world including: The Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Soloman R. Guggenheim Museum; the Whitney Museum of American Art; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Art Institute of Chicago; The Joseph H. Hirshorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C.; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The San Francisco Museum of Art; and the Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, CT.
While much of the post-war abstract art exudes raw power, angst, and/or reflects the detritus of modern life, Robert Natkin’s work teases, tantalizes, and searches for the sublime. Like Paul Klee, whom he considered to be his greatest inspiration, Natkin is fascinated by the mystery of creativity and the exploration of metaphysical relationships. These ideas are often expressed through evocative forms that reappear in a number of his paintings, like strangely familiar characters from some serial drama. The artist creates improvisational surfaces preoccupied with the structuring of light through color modulation and textural manipulation. His works, like spontaneous rituals, are at once imbued with the solemn and the humorous, the scared and the profane, the serious and the irreverent. Natkin, as both an artist and a free-thinking individualist, is a man who consistently embraces paradox.
LeRoy Neiman Neiman is a sports artist, a chronicler of contemporary lifestyles and a creator of the action-subject. He is credited with reviving figure painting during the years of the abstract movement when the figure, and realism in general, were abandoned. Neiman paints with a technique that often starts with his own Impressionistic style and continues with a process that looks very similar to the action paintings of the Abstract Expressionists. Accident and chance seem to play significant roles in determining the final appearance of his creations. This is seen in Neimans spontaneous application of paint and color. He paints quickly to grasp moments in time. Explains Neiman, I do not really examine other people as to what they are all about. The way people look, the way they fix themselves ... I am fascinated by the superficial. His works are held in the collections of both the Baseball and Football Halls of Fame, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Portland Museum of Art, The Hermitage Museum in Leningrad and universities throughout the United States.
William Nelson Is one of the premiere marine artists. Nelson is an environmentalist and leading community figure in his home Hawaii. Also innovator of the two worlds compositional format. Celebrity collectors include former President , Ronald Reagan, and wife. Nelson has works in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and in the Museum of Natural History, New York.
Lowell Nesbitt Lowell Nesbitt was born in Baltimore in 1933. He received a BFA degree from Temple University's Tyler School of Fine Arts and then attended the Royal College of Art in London. An artist with a highly personal style, Nesbitt has made realistic studies of many themes throughout his career. His most well-known series, and perhaps his most beautiful and poetic, are the more than four hundred works he created using the flower as theme. Since his first show in 1957, Nesbitt has had more than eighty one-man shows in galleries and museums internationally. His paintings, drawings, and prints are included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, the Corcoran Gallery and the National Gallery of Fine Art in Washington, D.C., the Detroit Institute of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the La Jolla Museum in California, among others.
Bo Newell Bo Newell is at once a precisely detailed wildlife painter and a master of multiple perspectives. his surrealistic style superimposes one layer of interpretation upon another, or sets one painting within another. Every viewer sees a different story in each of his paintings.
"I come up with the concept," says Newell. "Very rarely do I have a deliberate statement that I'm trying to make. I try to leave that up to the viewer."
To those who come to recognize and appreciate the unusual style of Newell art will spend more time with each image, contemplating the levels of meaning. The artist has profound respect and awe for his subject, whether it is native peoples, jungle cats, horses, or a more abstract object, shines out of each canvas brilliant and serene. Whatever the image, the effect is stirring.
Denis Noyer Noyer was born in Paris in 1944 to the illustrious French artist, Philippe Noyer. At an early age, Denis was an avid sketcher. Encouraged by his famous father, Denis studied at the Ecole Bequx Arts de Troyes. Proud of his son’s exciting talent, the elder Noyer, encouraged and directed his art education which culminated in Denis' international reputation as a distinguished painter with a variety of electrifying subjects successfully illustrated in both oil and watercolor. Denis treats his subjects with the same ease in both oils, watercolor, and graphics. Having mastered each, he applies different techniques while maintaining what makes his work so distinctive. In his graphics, Denis uses the white of the paper to create an unusual, very refreshing rhythm to his work while on canvas he uses his oils to bring forth very refined and subtle textures to charm the eye. Over the years, Denis and his father developed this very special technique. In an ongoing exchange over a period of twenty-two years, both artists worked together and separately to create what in the end – is a totally original inspiration and graphic vision. Since the death of his father in 1985, Denis has continued to nurture this special art which is at its very best in the paintings of women. Denis’ reputation throughout the international art scene is a result of his enchanting, realistic street scenes and depiction of beautiful women.
A talented, inspiring, energetic and prolific artist, Denis again demonstrates he is a major talent, one who has diversity and enthusiasm for the wonderful world of art."
Philippe Noyer "My paintings are what they appear to be, nothing more, nothing less," Philippe Noyer
Philippe Noyer was born June 28, 1917 in Lyon (central France). After a traditional course of study at the elite Ecole des Roches, Noyer enrolled in the Beaux Arts (Fine Arts) School of Lyon, before going to Paris to study at the Paul Colin School of Art and experience the whirlwinds of Surrealism first hand on Paris' Left Bank.
Philippe Noyer started his painting career in 1943. That same year he met the famous Paris art dealer, Emmanuel David, who promoted world-known "School of Paris" painters from 1943 - 1950. David immediately put Noyer on contract with the prestigious DROUANT-DAVID Gallery of Paris. Parallel to his paintings, which at the time, represented owls wrapped in leaves and round-faced urchins with their pet animals, Philippe Noyer soon became one of the most sought after portraitist of Paris and London high society. The Gallery gave him his first one-man show in 1947, which immediately crowned him with instant success. Life was good.
While he was with the DROUANT-DAVID Gallery, Philippe Noyer says his stroke of luck for his success in the United States can be attributed to Mr. Robert Goldstein, the former President of the 20th Century Fox movie company. It was in 1949. The Gallery gave twenty of Philippe Noyer's paintings on consignment to an American art dealer who had agreed to organize an exhibition of them in the United States. The American dealer, however, was a heavy gambler and one night, before the show, he suffered unprecedented losses and was forced to sell off the paintings without a profit. The buyer turned out to be Robert Goldstein who was so pleased with his purchase that he distributed the art to his friends, including the legendary Samuel Goldwyn, who, in turn, made Philippe Noyer's name known on the West Coast.
A deep and long lasting friendship between Noyer and Goldstein ensued. In 1960 when, like it happens to all artists, Philippe Noyer was in a difficult financial situation, Goldstein jetted Philippe from Paris to London and organized an auction at which all of Noyer's current paintings were sold to Goldstein's friends.
In those following years, Philippe was commissioned to paint the portraits of dozens of personalities including Elizabeth Taylor, Dinah Shore, Jean Wallace and the children of actor Alan Ladd and producer Alan Lerner. As his art matured, however, he put aside this career as a portraitist to devote himself entirely to the delicate, sophisticated, slim, long-limbed ladies who had progressively replaced children as his favorite subjects.
"My paintings are what they appear to be, nothing more, nothing less," Philippe Noyer once told a critic. "Some are serious, some are not. But I have always painted what I have felt."
From the leaf-clad owls of his first paintings to the litho maidens and languorous cheetahs of his later works, Philippe Noyer's art has always remained quite unique. The elements Philippe uses in his paintings - the women, the monuments, the animals and the flowers - come alive under the brush which translates them in strictly realist terms in compositions that are the fruits of his fantasy and intellectual or literary reminiscences. Like in the paintings of any artist, there are pet themes and objects that recur like good luck charms - eggs, hats, shoes - but as the artist himself warns, it would be vain to seek in them some hidden symbolism or draw oversimplified Freudian conclusions.
Thirteen years of careful personal research brought Philippe Noyer to the technique which gives his paintings their very special transparency and light. The technique, which Philippe Noyer finished perfecting in 1956 eliminates the use of white in favor of pure colors which give the rocks their roughness, bring alive the subtle glow of a seashell and give the subjects' skins a peach-like softness one can feel without touching.
Noyer's honesty with himself, his inborn draftsmanship and eye for color have earned Philippe Noyer a worldwide reputation. He married Nora Kern in 1939 and fathered four children: Denis Paul, Corinne, Laurence and Ariel. Noyer died circa 1980. Currently 2,000 of his oil paintings and watercolors are in museums, collections and private collections.
Jovan Obican Obican was born in 1918 in Cannes, France of Yugoslav parents. He died in 1986. His father was also an artist. The family wanted him to study law, which he eventually did but never wanted to practice. From childhood on, Jovan practically devoted himself to art, scratching designs on mud pies when paper was unavailable. He trained with many important teachers and in many important styles. He finished his training, imbued with the spirit of his native country, the people, their legends, their philosophy. It has been said that his work has a “timeless quality” and a naïve, child-like primitive style.
Leo Ofremon The artist Leo Ofremon was born in Vitebsk, Belarus in 1955-- the same town where Mark Chagall was born. Ofremon graduated from Vitebsk Art School The school was founded by Mark Chagall in 1921 . Along with Chagall, Malevich and Kandinsky, Ofremon is a member of the famous Vitebsk painting school.
Ofremon worked a lot and participated in different exhibitions in Vitebsk. Since 1990 he has lived in Israel.
The artist has his own unique style. He doesn't use brushes to paint - he uses a palette-knife. Original, light-colored, and gentle style that had been worked out for years is the main distinction of the artist.
De Berardinis Olivia Olivia was born in 1948 and was raised on the eastern seaboard. In the history of Pin Up art, no one has depicted the female form quite as skillfully. She began her paintings of women as a child, using her disarmingly beautiful mother as a model. I was always amazed at the impact my mother had on men says the artist. So began her fascination with the feminine mystique. In 1966 she came to New York to attend the School of Visual Arts. Dabbling in minimalism for a short period of time, she quickly returned to her paintings of women. Olivias work is ever changing, always new yet wonderfully timeless. Her current popularity has created a clamoring for her work world-wide. Her technical virtuosity includes works in pencil, gouache, pastel, acrylic, oils and watercolors.
Orlando AB Orlando Orlando has sustained his artistic and philosophical dialogue in powerful paintings that reflect the artists own personal development and natural curiosity for more than twenty five years. Articulating a vision of humanity with dignity Orlandos paintings give one an enlarged sense of life, both here and hereafter. There is a quality of empowerment one feels when viewing his work that enriches and alters the spirit and it is that profound power that lies at the core of his art. Orlando was born in the Andes Mountains of Colombia, South America in 1946 into a family of twelve. My work is a vehicle for my own self-examination,says the forty-nine year old painter. I struggle in each and every piece to discover something about humanity and to attempt to communicate it. Creating images drawn from his psyche his deftly drawn forms radiate an uncanny aura and sensual richness which appeal to our deepest level of consciousness. His recurring themes of education, family, spirituality his love of music, as well as the exploration of his Latin heritage attest to his belief in the educational and healing powers of art. Orlando Agudelo-Botero was the 1988 recipient of the White House Hispanic Heritage Award for the Visual Arts and is a former Trustee of the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts. His work is held in many important collections both private and public and his art is exhibited worldwide.
Emilija Pasagic was born in Yugoslavia and arrived in Canada in 1993 and was educated formally in Landscape Architecture. Since Emilija’s arrival to Canada, she has been a member of various artistic organizations including “The Scollard Street artistic Cooperative”, and the “VAO” (Visual Art of Ontario). In exploring her artistic side, Emilija began painting in various mediums including oils, encaustic and painting on silk. As a self-taught artist she continues creating her art in mixed media on various surfaces. Currently, her body of work includes painting on furniture.
Lorna Patrick Her creative drive, imagination and technical virtuosity has forged a unique style of work that had begun at a young age. As an aspiring painter, she was captured in her kindergarten photograph standing at an artist’s easel. In grammar school, parents for portraits of her classmates commissioned Patrick. While still a teenager, the artist had refined her talent so impressively that Patrick’s mother exhibited the artist’s oil paintings in her Palm Desert, California gallery.
Patrick’s relocation to New Mexico at twenty-one marks an important turning point in the life of the artist. While teaching at the Albuquerque Institute of Art, Patrick felt what she describes as “the enveloping spiritual energy of sunlight.” She began to understand and to interpret the profound relationship between the people and their environment. A deep, spiritual and philosophical belief in man’s harmony with nature emerged as a result of these experiences and has become the basis and subject of Patrick’s art.
Currently residing in Southern California, Patrick regularly travels to New Mexico to compile slides of new images, which she will meticulously transform, into works of art. She tours the dirt roads of the mountains near Albuquerque and Santa Fe with props of cacti, rugs, pillows and pottery. When the artist locates a site that she envisions as a perfect setting for a painting, she spends days photographing the different inspiring compositions created by the play of light and shadow against the landscape, architecture, furniture and props. Upon the return to her studio, Patrick reviews the images and selects those in which her preferred subject of light is most powerfully depicted and her philosophy communicated. The slide becomes an evocative reminder of the visual and emotional impact the artist feels while photographing the subject. Just as the artist’s images draw collectors, New Mexico continues to draw the artist. Within the mountains of this vast wilderness is a hilltop which will some day become the artist’s home. Here, in her studio, she will always be a part of that which she continue to paint.
K. Paul K. Paul was born in America in the early 1950’s. K. Paul paints in a realistic, impressionist style, painting his favorite European scenes.
As he captures the warmth and beauty of the Tuscan fields, his use of light and depth is what gives the work a special, romantic quality that draws collectors into his painting.
Most impressive is K. Paul’s use of shadow and perspective. He clearly captures the depth of each scene by his rich use of color, outlined by the blending of shades and light displayed across each canvas. Utilizing brush and palette knife techniques, K. Paul’s extensive texture demands attention.
Linnea Pergola Pergola's unique creativity is the driving force that inspires and guides her to meld the diverse elements of drama and naive charm in her multi-media paintings and serigraphs. Pergola's body of work is a collection of captivating and enchanting portrayals of life infused with fantasy to reveal the artist's pure and unaffected response to her subject. Although many subjects inspire Pergola, city scapes are most often seen throughout the body of her work. Being a native of Los Angeles has given Pergola a distinctive regard for urban environments, and their unique atmospheres.
Raymond Peynet he is called the "Painter of Lovers," Peynet was born in Paris in 1908. During the War Years of 1939-1945, he would go to the public gardens in Valence and would paint the young lovers who would walk around the Music Kiosk in the center of the park. Seeing the lovers gave him the idea of painting bright and cheerful people, oblivious to all the problems facing them outside the lovely park. His delightful subjects made him famous all through Europe and the world.
In 1980, the Museum he opened in Tokyo with a special limited edition of lithographs. In 1981 the City of Carros, France, commissioned a Peynet mural stretching 120 feet long and 24 feet high. Exhibitions were held every year in galleries in Europe and Japan, where the artist was popular and loved until he died in 1991.
Frederick Phillips Born in 1953 in the English pottery-manufacturing town of Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, Frederick Phillips descends from an artistic family background which includes the distinguished Victorian artist, Francis W. Topham. Influenced by Topham's paintings, Phillips became an accomplished watercolorist by the age of twelve.
Awarded a scholarship at age seventeen, Phillips began studying at Burslem College of Art. Here he encountered the work of the Surrealist artists and realized that he, too, had begun to create images that could be called "surrealist". Phillips graduated with an Honors Degree in Fine Art at the age of twenty-one. In 1975, Phillips achieved recognition with his first one-man show at the Norton Gallery, Birmingham, England; reviews compared his early work to the paintings of Magritte. By 1984, at age thirty-one, Phillips' work was being shown at several London galleries and his art was sold at auction by Christie's, London. In 1985, Phillips was introduced to American collectors by Atlas Galleries, Chicago, where his first exhibition of paintings met with great success. In 1990, Phillips moved to the U.S. through an 'Artist of Exceptional Ability' visa in order to accommodate the practical demands of his rapidly expanding career.
In the course of a career which now spans twenty-five years, Frederick Phillips' art has moved from its original inspiration in 19th century Romanticism through Surrealism and its cousin, Symbolism, to where the artist stands today. In recent years, Phillips has moved away from the visual constructs of overt Surrealism towards a more subtle and individual approach where reality itself begins to reveal inherent surrealities of time, place, and atmosphere. The unique qualities of Phillips' work have been recognized by writers and art critics including: David Sylvester, English art critic, author and curator-listed as one of the most influential people in art. Having spoken of Phillips as a phenomenal new talent, he later wrote of the artist as "... a certain kind of Romantic painter, very much in the tradition of Caspar David Friedrich." Bill Hopkins, English writer and art critic. Dubbed Phillips' singular style 'Quintessential' - quintessence being the fifth and most mysterious element, the ultimate substance of which all else is composed. Joseph Merkel, New York art critic. Described Phillips' work as a "...fresh style on the New York art scene..." Merkel continued, "His imagery is ultra-clean, rendered in a precise, meticulous manner. These prints and paintings reveal a modern development of Surrealism, [combining] a Dali-like fineness of execution with clarity and isolation of image."
Frederick Phillips' artwork has been exhibited in cities throughout the world including New York, Hong Kong, Boston, San Francisco, London, Tokyo and Chicago.
Pablo Picasso Picasso was born in 1881 in Spain. He was the son of a drawing master, under whom he began his study of art. Picasso is recognized as a major contributor to the art of the 20th century because of the brilliant manner in which he visualized his objects and scenes. He began painting in the city of Corunna in 1891. In 1895, and up until 1904, he painted in Barcelona; however, during this time, he made his first trip to Paris, where he was greatly influenced by the artwork of Toulouse-Lautrec. From 1900 to 1907, Picasso completed his first two artistic periods: the Blue Period and the Rose Period. Both periods reflect his visions of society at the time. The scenes and people depicted were usually impoverished, and he tended to focus on the outcasts of society. In 1906, Picasso met Matisse, who was to become his longtime friend. Picasso admired Matisse's Fauvist style, but would not copy it, concentrating instead on simplifying his forms rather than dealing with color issues. Shortly afterward, Picasso began to work with Georges Braque and Joan Miro, starting the movement known as Cubism. As an artistic movement, Cubism is the exact reproduction of an image seen from a variety of perspectives at the same time. Picasso's Cubist works were somewhat more emotional than many Cubist-style paintings. He tended to give creative life to the feelings of anguish and despair he was experiencing at the time. In his later years, Picasso abandoned painting and devoted himself to drawing, printmaking, sculpture and ceramics.
Jean-Claude Picot born in Paris on October 21, 1933. He is a self-taught artist, his career as a painter began in 1956. He has been highly praised by European critics who see his brilliant colors and infectious "joie de vivre" as belonging to the Fauvist tradition of Dufy, Van Dongen and Vlaminck. The inspiration for many of Picot's works comes from the vibrant life of the French Rivera and idyllic charm of the French countryside. They bring to the viewer an instant impression of the carefree, happy days to be found in this most favored of European regions. Picot communicates his happy world with a warmth, gaiety and rare skill that has delighted art lovers not only in his native Paris but also throughout the world. He is a regular exhibitor at the Salon De l'ille De France, Salon D'Anthony, Salon De Clamart, and the Moulin De Vauboyen.
Thomas Pike Pike’s calculated renderings of the “European Street Scene” create a photo-realism mixed with impressionistic style. Reality is made to look so overpoweringly real as to make it pure illusion. Through the basically magical means of point-for-point precision rendering the actual is portrayed as being so real that the viewer believes it exists. What does exist off the canvas is the mind, which conceived of the idea of the painting of a photograph of reality, in all its intrinsic implausibility. Whereas classical painters through the ages have idealized reality itself, the “classical” New Realists have totally devalued reality in order vastly to completely abstract the human brain. Pike admits “Photo-Realism mixed in with Impressionism is basically not realism at all. More correctly, it is the plastic offshoot of today’s conceptual arts.
Born in Brussels in 1936, Thomas Pike first came to the United States in 1967. He began his studies with Architecture but soon found more opportunities for expression within the art world. He eventually studied art in Paris at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts. His subjects have been almost exclusively European street scenes. That an artist can concentrate so masterfully on one theme is enticing and his renderings have brought great appeal and success.
Currently, Thomas Pike resides and has studios in both Paris and southern Florida. With his work in private collections around the world, original paintings by Thomas Pike can be found in galleries nationwide.
Daeni Pino Pino Daeni, born Giuseppe Dangelico, in Italy, on November 8, 1939. Trained at the Art Institute of Bari, and later at Milan’s Academy of Brera, Pino perfected his skills painting nudes and figure studies heavily influenced by the pre-Raphaelites and Macchiaaoli.
After establishing himself as a successful artists in his native land, Pino decided to emigrate to the United States, where he felt he would have more artistic freedom and opportunity. He was soon discovered by the distinguished Borghi Gallery, Which gave several prestigious exhibitions for him in New York and Boston.
His early paintings featured soft romantic characters, mostly women dresses in flowing skirts and dressed; and these caught the attention of both Dell and Zebra Book Publishers. During most of the next two decades, his Romance Period, Pino’s oeuvre was marketed by hundreds of book covers painted by artists such as Danielle Steele, Sylvie Summerfield, and Amanda Ashley. Using a then unknown Italian model named Fabio, Pino struck a cord that is still resounding today.
Always underlying his success as a commercial artist, was his desire to express his own thoughts and emotions, Years later, we see these images brought to life in Pino’s original oils on canvas, giclee and serigraphs published exclusively by Collectors Editions.
Pino’s canvases elicit feelings of warmth, nostalgia, love and family. His paintings are often set on vibrantly sunny beaches, typically in the Mediterranean where he grew up. His alter ego., A young boy surrounded by beautiful women, (his sisters, aunts and cousins), are found in various states of emotion ranging from adoration to isolation. Many of Pino’s characters are also found frequently inhabiting sensuous boudoirs or dressing rooms, in anticipation of their husband or lovers.
Pino’s technique, his warm and exciting colors, and the subtle, but simple approach to his subject, are his trademark, his talent, and the reason why his paintings and limited editions are in growing demand throughout the United States, and appreciated by collectors throughout the world.
Percy Pond Winter & Pond’s strikingly beautiful photographs contain a wealth of information about the changing native cultures in Alaska. Lloyd Winter was by training, a portrait painter, and had studied at the California School of Design. At age 27, in 1893, Winter traveled to Juneau, Alaska, to explore the gold-mining possibilities. A friend, Percy Pond, with whom he opened a photo studio, later joined him. They developed special relationships with Alaskan Indians because of their yearlong tenure, displaying genuine interest in their culture and lives. Some of their most striking images were taken in the winter of 1895-95, and include views of the Whale House at Klukwan, where they recorded the interiors and ceremonial regalia. Together, they continued to have a deep personal interest in the Indians throughout their lives, and in 1928 Winter applied for membership of the Alaska Native Brotherhood, an all-Indian organization. He was accepted, as he was able to give references of Chilkat me who adopted him 34 years before. Winter & Pond operated their studio until Pond’s death in 1943. Winter died in 1945 and 6 Indian’s served as honorary pallbearers.
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Vladimir Pronin Russian artist, Vladimir Pronin. Pronin's artistic virtuosity and solemn rendition of ornamental detail define this artist's style. He gives birth to the richness of his paintings, drawn up from the depths of world culture and tradition. His work is ornamental neo-symbolism. He has exhibited in both Moscow and the United States in numerous one man shows and group exhibitions. His powerful statement makes him a unique artist, very sought after in international circles.
Vladimir Pronin was born in 1955. In 1974 he graduated from the Fedoskino School of Miniature Painting. In 1982 he graduated from the Moscow Textile Academy, Faculty of Crafts.
He took part in many national and international exhibitions. Some of them : 1993 Sydney, Australia, 1994 Las Vegas, USA, 1995 and 1996 New York, USA, 1994-2000 Miami Beach, USA, 2002 India.
S. Aidinyan wrote about Pronin: "Artistic virtuosity and solemn rendition of ornamental detail : these are the defining moments of Vladimir Pronin's style and give birth to the richness of his painting. His individual style can be seen as an ornamental neo-symbolism".
Alicia Quaini Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Alicia Quaini was recognized as a painter at an early age. She studied with masters Amicarelli and Carpanelli and in the Mutualidad de Egresados de Bellas Artes, located in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In Mexico, she studied with Melquiedades Ejido, a prominent Mexican muralist.
Quaini equates her life and art with drama. Provocative bold shapes and fruits laden with symbolic meaning. Her paintings incorporate an originality that sets them outside the ordinary. She paints with varying depths of light and sensual colors, which are coupled with remarkable textural contrasts.
As a multi-faceted artist, it isn't surprising that Alicia Quaini is also a singer, songwriter, musician, conductor and scenographer.
R Rafael Rafael, known for his Stylized Deco Art, was inspired by Erte. His compositions reflect sensual feelings, with soft contemporary lines. He has painted since early childhood. Originally from South America, Rafael found his home in America in the 70's when the Art Deco movement resurrected. He has held one-man exhibitions in cities across America, Canada and Brazil. Rafael still paints today, describing his style as classic, one that never ages. His classic imagery can be found in galleries throughout the US, Canada and South America.
Auguste Renoir Renoir was born in 1841 and died in 1919. A French impressionist painter and sculptor, b. Limoges. Renoir went to work at the age of 13 in Paris as a decorator of factory-made porcelain, copying the works of Boucher. In 1862 he entered M. C. Gleyre's studio, where he formed lasting friendships with Bazille, Monet and Sisley. His early work reflected a myriad of influences including those of Courbet, Manet, Corot, Ingres and Delacroix. He began to earn his living with portraiture in the 1870s; an important work of this period was Madame Charpentier and her Children (1876; Metropolitan Mus.). Simultaneously he developed the ability to paint joyous, shimmering color and flickering light in outdoor scenes such as The Swing and the festive Moulin de la Galette (both: 1876; Louvre). Renoir traveled in Algeria and in Italy (1881–82), returning to Paris where a successful exhibition (1883) established him financially. He had gone beyond impressionism. His ecstatic sensuality, particularly in his opulent, generalized images of women, and his admiration of the Italian masters removed him from the primary impressionist concern: to imitate the effects of natural light. After a brief period, often termed “harsh” or “tight,” in which his forms were closely defined in outline (e.g., The Bathers, 1884–87; private coll.), his style of the 1890s changed, diffusing both light and outline, and with dazzling, opalescent colors describing voluptuous nudes, radiant children, and lush summer landscapes. From 1903, Renoir fought the encroaching paralysis of arthritis at the same time that his work attained its greatest sensual power and monumentality. Despite illness and personal tragedy he began to produce major works of sculpture (e.g., Victorious Venus, Renoir Mus., Cagnes-sur-Mer). Among his most celebrated paintings are: Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881; Phillips Coll., Washington, D.C.); Dance at Bougival (1883; Mus. of Fine Arts, Boston); Lady Sewing (Art Inst., Chicago); and Bather (1917–18; Philadelphia Mus. of Art). Renoir's work is represented in most of the important galleries in the world. The Art Institute of Chicago; the Barnes Collection, Merion, Pa.; Clark Institute, Williamstown, Mass.; and the Louvre have large collections. His son, the film director Jean Renoir, wrote a biography (tr. 1962).
Andre Renoux Renoux was the leading French artist in what has became known as “Urban Realist” painting for over thirty years. Renoux, is known for being the father and inventor of this style of painting. He had been documenting the Parisian streets, each with its own personality and individual charm. His paintings capture and ambiance that is timeless. Renoux painted the surrounding mood of the street as well as the buildings with a hollowness that captures the soul of the city. Many of the works are void of people to allow the viewers to personally visualize, from their own perspective, the moment in time. Renoux passed away in January 2002 at the age of 62.
Hilda Rindom She is a natural talent and acclaimed artist. She received her early formal art training in her native Cuba and continued her studies in Europe and in Miami, at the Miami Art Institute. Rindom has been a professional in fine arts for over twenty years and has mastered her own style. Her contemporary work has been described as “Objective Abstract”. Her use of vibrant colors, skillful composition and variety of mood at first glance may appear abstract, but gradually definite forms emerge. Her paintings have been exhibited in many museums and are in the collections of major corporations and art collectors around the world. Rindom is collected by the Getty Foundation and Rockefeller Museum and similar patrons.
Susan Rios Susan Rios’ ability to evoke familiar feelings through her paintings is the hallmark of her work. A nationally renowned artist, Susan works with a palette of soft, warm colors, inviting viewers to step into a world where one tranquil moment can last an eternity.
Largely self-taught, Susan’s artistic potential was apparent even as a child. Her love of the outdoors inspired her to begin drawing scenes from nature. Today, she continues to find inspiration in the gentle-hearted beauty of everyday life.
Susan’s surroundings are reminiscent of the images she paints. Working from her home-based studio in Glendale, Ca, many aspects of her world are subjects in her paintings - daughter Olivia, granddaughter Rosie, her cats and countless collectibles.
A painter of feelings and emotions, Susan creates familiar scenes that exude peace, harmony and romance. Images of cozy interiors, lush floral gardens and soothing seashores uplift the senses and the spirit.
When painting, she devotes herself to one image at a time. The close relationship she develops with each painting radiates from the canvas, evoking a sense of emotional closeness and intimacy that distinguishes her work from other contemporary artists.
She prefers working with acrylics because they dry quickly, allowing her to catch a little moment in time and then share it with others.
A professional artist for more than 25 years, Susan spent the early years of her career working as a floral designer. She soon discovered that blending flowers was similar to mixing colors on a palette. To this day, flowers are an ever-present motif in many of her paintings, as are other "favorite things" - wicker chairs, love seats draped with afghans, intricate bits of lace, china cups and teapots.
An active participant in causes that touch her heart, Susan devotedly supports charities and nationwide organizations, including the Los Angeles Children’s Hospital, Saddleback Community Outreach (Orange County), Taylor Family Foundation, Make a Wish Foundation and The Ronald McDonald House of Orange County. Over the last quarter-century, Susan’s work has attracted the attention of many noted collectors and celebrities who have added her paintings to their private collection such as Jane Seymour, Mr. & Mrs. Bruce Dern, Priscilla Presley, Phyllis George, Ann Gillian, Sandy Duncan, Shelley Fabres, Andre Agassi, Mr. & Mrs. Brian Wilson and Mr. & Mrs. Walter Mathau.
The timeless, enduring beauty of her work continues to garner attention from art enthusiasts, young and old alike. The emotional impact of her paintings however, is the most important element. As an artist, she says, that is her true reward.
Jan River Jan River was born in New Orleans in 1963. From the time River was old enough to hold a crayon, her artist skills were present. Her Father, a professional commercial artist, taught River the concept of layout and space. In the 1980s, River lived in Europe, Asia and Carribean islands. There she developed diversity and interests led her to explore many disciplines. Inspired by artists Miro and Dali, a sense of primitive-abstract is most present in her work. When River first dips a brush in color, she literally does not know what she is going to paint until the brush touches the canvas. So many images enchant her -- alluring the viewer to ask about her mixed media paintings, "What is the arist thinking about on this one?" River now resides in south Florida and is shown in several galleries across America.
Norman Rockwell Rockwell created a pictorial history of his times with more than 2,000 artworks. His work has been reproduced more often than Michelangelo, Picasso and Rembrandt put together. Rockwell gained national prominence as an illustrator for the Saturday Evening Post and Life Magazine. Rockwell attended the Chase School of Fine and Applied Arts and the National Academy of Design. Rockwell was named "artist of the year" in 1969 by his colleagues of the Artists Guild of New York, and in 1976, former President Ford presented him with the Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest decoration for civilian Americans.
Alexi Romenelle Romanelli was born in Naples in 1934 and studied at the Art Institute in his city. He started painting when only 15 years old, and since then has continually sought the best, with remarkable results: the settings and range make his works a valued item to connoisseurs the world over. Romenelli’s great fantasy cannot be denied, given the great variety of his subjects, to which he gives a very special immediacy. Who wouldn't be drawn to admire his body of works? With their rich colors portrayed with vivid, essential, sharp strokes, along with heavy texture and alluring scenic views from around the world. As his popularity increases, so do the many national and international exhibitions, making Romanelli an artist to watch!
Dino Rosin Dino Rosin was born in Venice, Italy on May 30, 1948. His family moved to the glassmaking island of Murano when he was two months old. At the age of twelve, he left school and began work as an apprentice at the Barovier and Toso glassworks where he remained until he joined his brothers, Loredano and Mirko, at their factory, Artvet, in 1963.
Dino continued at Artvet until 1975 when he moved to Loredano's newly established studio as his assistant. There Dino collaborated with his brother for almost 20 years. He was Loredano's right hand in the "piazza" and a master in his own right in cold work.
In 1988, Dino Rosin was invited to Pilchuck Glass School in the state of Washington to teach solid freehand glass sculpture with Loredano and the American glass artist, William Morris. Then in 1992, Loredano met an untimely death in a boating accident. Dino assumed the role of "maestro" and began single-handedly to produce his brother's old designs and ultimately his own., His skillful use of "calcedonia" glass is unique and makes his pieces recognizable and highly collectible.
Dino Rosin uses the ancient technique of "calcedonia" coloration for his glass works of art. Each sculpture has its own unique coloration, not to be duplicated. Colors range from bright yellows to deep purples,varying on the metals used, temperature and duration the glass is in the furnace. There are many styles to choose from but no two are ever identical. In Dino Rosin's works, the designs are similar but colors will always vary.
Dino Rosin's work is shown at many galleries throughout the United States. His first personal appearance tour in America in 1993 was a great success and he has continued to visit galleries to much acclaim. He has made several gallery appearances through the United States, culminating in a one-man show at the prestigious Corning Museum in Corning, New York.
Loredano Rosin (1936-1992) (1936-1992) Taught by one of Murano's most respected masters, advanced hot sculpture draws from the Venetian glass tradition to discover processes of free-form modeling for molten glass. Utilizing the immediacy, fluidity, and freedom of design that characterizes hot glass, Rosin's understanding of the nature of glass created new possibilities to explore the sculptural potential of this plastic medium. Rosin techniques for shaping the glass skillfully to meet the needs of individual designs.
As a master glassworker in Murano, Italy, Rosin was born into a family of Murano glass artists. Rosin mastered solidworked glass and cold-forming techniques at an early age. For more than twenty years, he ceated large sculptures that have been shown in prestigious galleries throughout the world.
Loredano Rosin Biography Written By Loredano:
I am a member of the last generation of Murano glass masters who were trained in the ancient artisan tradition. For better or worse, we were not free to choose a profession. Constrained as we were by geography, by the mentality of the times and, above all, by economic necessity, we began working glass as adolescents. It is only now that I can fully appreciate just how fortunate I was.
A boy on my first day at the job, I was assigned to a piazza, a work group of four or five men who labored together in front of the mouth of the glass furnace ten to twelve hours a day, my colleagues, thus became a surrogate family and the master (head of the work group) was in those days the head of the family.
My first master was Romano Zanelli called Cocui Saor (nicknames which distinguish one branch of an extended family from another are Murano tradition which, with the spread of literacy, is fast fading. He was a skilled glass worker and kind to me. I can see him yet: an elderly man seated at the masters bench, relaxed, working calmly and without fear while tongues of flames leapt from the furnace and other glass workers moved about him with sps of glowing molten glass, from this magma he drew the stuff to create roses for traditional Venetian chandeliers. I had no doubts. The surreal images and the creative possibilities of the world of glass fascinated me, and I wanted to be like him.
When I was only twelve I was already working more than ten hours a day. After working those long hours I had little time or energy left of play or to express my creativity outside the work environment. However bit by bit during slack time and almost as a game, I began to play with glass and, thus learned how to manipulate the material. After my first experience I worked with several other glass masters on Murano as an apprentice then as a journey man, through them I learned all the techniques of Murano tradition, but I never did work with any of the famous masters celebrated for their glass sculpture.
Blowing glass didnâe(tm)t satisfy or fulfill me; I was drawn to the process of working and shaping solid glass in the mass. For a brief period when I first became master, t was a great call for solid tabletop pieces.
Making these figures gave me both the possibility to earn a living and also to begin to apply techniques I had learned for working solid glass. In 1965 a grand opportunity came my way: âeoeThe Fucina Delgi Angeliâe was looking for a young master ready to carry out some important glass projects. At that time I was a partner with my brother Micro in our own glassworks, but the proposal intrigued me, not the least because the first piece to realize was Pablo Picassoâe(tm)s Nymphs and Fauns. At that moment my collaboration with Fucina was born. The transformation of designs by world famous artists into sculpture in glass was a great challenge, especially because the artists had not accounted for the new technical problems of working glass .
Georges Roualt French expressionist and religious painter. Son of a cabinetmaker. Trained as a maker of stained-glass windows (1885-90) before studying at the School of Fine Arts in Paris where he was encouraged to develop his talent (1891-98). After his conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1895 he concentrated on Biblical themes in his paintings, etchings and lithographs. In 1905 he exhibited with the Fauves (Matisse, etc) but wasn't influenced by them. Instead he came under the broader expressionist school which dealt with intensely felt human emotions (Chaim Soutine, Edvard Munch, etc). Georges also painted scenes from the street, prostitutes, judges and tragic clowns as well as some still lifes. His style was basically melancholy, portraying the tragedy of the human condition, but with hope in Jesus.
Frank Rowland During his career, Frank Rowland has applied his creative energies to a wide variety of endeavors–all of which reflect his love of art. A multi-talented individual, he has mastered every art form he has undertaken. Over several decades, has made a name for himself both nationally and internationally.
A native of Altoona, Pennsylvania, Rowland has lived in cities across the U.S., among them Pittsburgh, Phoenix, Chicago, and currently Winston-Salem. His interest in art began when as a child, he accompanied his father, an amateur landscape artist, to classes at night. He later studied at the School of Art in Pittsburgh, the American Academy of Art (Chicago), and the Academic Art Foundation (Chicago).
Among Rowland’s accomplished works are oils and watercolors, sketches, prints, photographs, murals and sculptures. Over the course of his career, he has also designed sets for film and stage. Other fields to which he has lent his talents include architectural and industrial design, illustration, animation, and museum exhibits, as well as book design. In addition, his talent as a Master printer is widely recognized in the field of art serigraphy.
Rowland is currently working in oils, including landscapes, cityscapes, seascapes, figuratives, and abstracts. With each painting he relies on diverse imagery and varying degrees of abstraction to evoke rich emotions for the viewer.
He has been featured in one-man shows in New York, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Chicago, and Paris. He has also been part of group shows throughout the U.S., Canada, Mexico, France, Japan, Australia, and Western Europe. Rowland's artwork is included in the corporate collections of AT&T, IBM, Disney Productions, Price Waterhouse, Arthur Andersen, Playboy, Allstate, Sears Roebuck, Coldwell Banker, Crocker National Bank, Gould Inc., and many others.
Helen Rundell A native of Long Island, New York, Rundell has developed a uniquely inspired vision of the American northeast. For her subjects, she chooses the trees, barns and landscapes of New England and Long Island. Her form of realism is particularly suited to these simple rustic scenes, which she re-creates with honesty and emotion.
By working originally in an egg tempera medium, the artist is able to achieve stroke by stroke detail. The resulting effect is one that goes beyond the visual to encompass all the senses. She has been honored with exhibits in the Smithsonian Institution, the West Point Museum of Art and many American embassies throughout the World.
Susan Sahall A perennially popular artist, who brings a sensitive and original eye to traditional subjects, Sahall combines a vigorous palette with uncommon purity of composition in her oils and acrylics. She has had solo shows in Los Angeles and in New York. She has produced an impressive body of paintings, many of them impeccably reproduced in limited editions of hand-drawn flatbed lithographs, signed and numbered by the artist, along with special editions of print uniques, highlighted by hand-painting to produce a yet more vivid effect. Sahall’s work has an assertive thrust which carries it beyond mere representation into the realm of abstraction as she dramatically probes the formal values of her subjects. Although she never departs from the concrete in her representation, her mass and color are allowed to follow their own inner logic to produce images of great emotional impact.
Edwina Sandys A renowned novelist, painter and sculptor, Edwina Sandys (pronounced "Sands") was born in England and lived for many years in Tuscany, Italy before moving to New York City where she now lives. A "citizen of the world" in more ways than one, Sandys’ work occupies a position of central importance in the closely related realms of international art and politics. Her work has always reflected a strong social consciousness, focusing on several key issues of contemporary society: child, family, war and peace, woman, and the environment. Her monumental marble sculptures have been commissioned by United Nations in Rio de Janeiro, Geneva, Vienna and New York City. In 1990, her political and artistic passions were combined once again in a major piece entitled Breakthrough. This sculpture, constructed from eight massive sections of the Berlin Wall features male and female forms cut out from the wall’s concrete surface. The work invites its viewers to walk through a once impassable barrier and has been visited by both Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. Sandys is currently at work on another global project entitled Millenium Circles. These large rings of interconnected male and female figures are to be constructed out of materials native to each climate and culture and installed on each of the continents, providing a permanent link between the world’s varied people and places.
Kim Sargent "The artwork I create produces a concentration of three things; my love and passion to create, my education in traditional style and a vision of color". By combining these elements, Kim Sargent conveys in her paintings quiet images that are either remembered or of which we are ever watchful for. Kim Sargent was born in 1948. Until she traveled to the Mediterranean, her paintings remained in the landscape genre. At 20, Kim traveled throughout Europe and remained enrolled in art classes. She returned to America in 1981 with a style influenced by world travel. Her paintings can be seen throughout galleries in the United States, Canada and Europe. She has held over 15 one-woman gallery exhibits.
Thomas Scarff he studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 1960 - 1964. During this time he received the John Quincy Adams Traveling Fellowship. Scarff has twice been honored with Artist Grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1976 he was awarded a Bronze Hugo by the Chicago International Film Festival. Scarff's works are included in the public collection of the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago and the corporate collections of Johnson Products Company and Dayton Hudson.
Henry Schaare is one of the few artists who have ventured into as many different areas in art making as illustrator Harry J. Schaare In addition to his graphic works he is a regular illustrator for such magazines as Readers Digest and Aviation Week and is a frequent designer of book covers, having worked for practically every major paperback publisher in New York. He even painted the macquette for a \"Star Wars\" bedspread. Born in Jamaica, NY, in May 1922, he attended N.Y.U. School of Architecture, and graduated from Pratt Institute in 1947. He served as pilot in the Air Corp during WWII and has since traveled around the world as artist for the U.S. Air Force.
Kenny Scharf Scharf was born in 1958 in Hollywood and grew up in Sherman Oaks California. As a young child he did a lot of drawing and finger-painting, and was influenced by the cartoons he watched on TV He attended the University of California-Santa Barbara in 1976 and enrolled in The School of Visual Arts in New York in 1978. In the 80's the artist started spending extensive time in Brazil where his work started to take on a samba beat and an ecological edge. Since 1990 Scharf has made sweeping multicultural panoramas that display a rich repertory of photo silk screened visuals advertising early 1960's merchandise. Scharf's allegories are politically engaged while appearing to be no more than just stylish modern art.
Maestro Gianni Seguso Maestro Gianni Seguso, the founder of our glassworks, was born in 1951 into the world of glass created by his father Guido Seguso. His first experiments with glass began when he was just a child, when he would play with it and start to learn its secrets. Thus from the very beginning he has always been fascinated with the great art of glass. This highly gifted artist learned the techniques and the mysteries of Murano glass workmanship that the Seguso family has handed down from father to son for centuries. He was only eighteen years old when he obtained the most sought-after title in Murano - that of ‘Maestro Vetraio’ or Master Glassworker. Even his very first pieces were executed with a quality and style usually seen only in much more experienced artists. Maestro Seguso loves the transparency and lightness created by the extraordinary world of glass. His boundless passion which fires the glass, together with the classical style of his vases, are the ingredients of his world-famous masterpieces in glass art. "Seguso Gianni & Co." was founded in 1982 to express the talents of a master who is open to any idea, and thus creates a never-ending series of shapes and experiments. They free his imagination for new forms of art that actually become concrete applications for home and interior design. Our tireless passion for experimenting with new forms of glass art has been achieved through years of close collaboration with artists and designers. Our years of experience allow us to turn custom-made projects into pieces of art.
Dr. Seuss Seuss was born in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1904. He graduated Dartmouth College and attended Oxford University. Geisel was a Lt. Colonel in the Army in World War II. After the war he and his first wife, Helen moved from Los Angeles to La Jolla. There they built a house on 6 ½ acres next to an observation tower that eventually became part of his living room wall. Within a year of Helen’s death in 1967, Geisel married Audrey Stone Dimond, a nurse 20 years his junior, the two remained together until his death. By the time he died in 1991, he wrote and illustrated nearly 50 books. During his lifetime his books sold over 100 million copies and have been translated into 20 different languages and that number continues to rise at an accelerated rate.
Dr.Seuss Collection of Unorthodox Taxidermy: In 1934 Ted Geisel created a collection of three-dimensional work from real animal breaks, horns, feathers and hair. They were derived from characters which appeared in his early political cartoon and advertising illustrations. These sculptures have remained quietly tucked away in his home for over 60 years ... until now!
Bob Shepherd E.R. Shepherd, a native of New Orleans, was born to paint. He was influenced by the grand old city architecture. His passion for painting was evident throughout his school years, where Mr Shepherd excelled in artwork. Mr Shepherd attended Delgado College, studying Fine Art, Graphics and Advertising.
His unusual degree of creativity allowed him to arrive at greatness at a very young age. He worked in the commercial trade for 47 years in New Orleans, Atlanta, Las Vegas and San Diego. His resume includes movie production artwork in films such as “Starman”, “The Twilight Zone” and various Cheech & Chong movies. Mr Shepherd has been featured in numerous magazine articles including Art Design, Art Business News, Artist’s Review, Sign Craft and Signs of the Times for his creative skills in design and concept.
For over 50 years, his work in various mediums, including oils, watercolors, charcoal and pastels, to name a few, have gained national acclaim. His diversity in painting and sketching landscapes, still life, abstracts and portraits display his extraordinary talent. Although past paintings were predominantly traditional style, Mr Shepherd recently introduced a more modern approach to the abstract. Favorable attention is given to shades of color, with emphasis on pleasing compositions. As a trained realist, Mr Shepherd finds himself ever returning to his first true love.
Wong Shue Shue was born December 1952 in Jamaica, West Indies, of Cantonese Jamaican parents. At age 7 he began experimenting with colors from flower petals and executed his first deliberate painting. It was a painting of the Giant Green Dog, a legendary dog from the hills of St. Andrew. From that point, painting became an obsession. At the age of 17 Wong Shue began the study of charcoal drawing with private instruction from Alfred Chin of Canton, China. At age 16 he was the personal student of Alexander Cooper at Kingston College. In less than three decades, Wong Shue experienced the social and political changes of colonialism, independence and socialism. Isolation, as a child and teenager, produced a sensitivity to life, as expressed in his paintings. His earlier pen and ink drawings were realistic images of daily life and communicate the full scope of human emotion. Wong Shue was always encouraged to experiment towards self discovery and freedom, both in this art and in his life. He has always been an artist, a painter, and never questioned art being his life passion. After visiting the United States several times, Wong Shue moved to Los Angeles in 1980 where he found individual freedom. Later he attended Antioch University where he graduated with a B.A. in psychology.
Nicola Simbari Simbari was born in San Lucido, a small village in Calabria, deep in the south of Italy on the Tyrrhenian Sea. He was raised in Rome where his father, an architect, worked for the Vatican. Young Simbari was influenced by all of the great art treasures of Rome. Simbari showed his paintings for the first time in Rome in 1953. Each piece expressed his passion for life, and all those who saw the show were impressed with his wonderful paintings. An exhibition in London followed, then New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and the rest is history. Today his original paintings sell for as much as $40,000.
Robert Simon Robert Stephen Simon is an artist of tremendous technical skills, working as easily with collages of sports art, meticulous reproductions of the masters, or portraits from live sittings, to creating his own original art. His range of technique, mediums and style is truly amazing and unique among contemporary artists.
Anton Sipos Anton Sipos was born in 1938 in the small village of Donji Vakuf in the Bosna central mountain region of Yugoslavia. His hypnotic interest in drawing manifested itself at an early age. Drawing has been the anchor of his restless, unsettled life. He left home I his teens and supported himself as a film animation artist.His very first collaboration Surrogat (1961) won an Academy Award for best animated short subject. Doing freelance work for movie studios never took him away from his painting. Six years in Paris saw him become one of the elite painters of the Ecole de Paris. His paintings from this period hang in major galleries throughout Europe in the company of works by Pugni, Clave, Chagall, Buffet, Pignon, and others. He exhibited annually at the Salon des Artists Francais in the Grand Palais, and worked as an instructor at several note-worthy ateliers. In 1970 Anton arrived in Los Angeles and immersed himself in his work. Never submitting to pressures of the marketplace he often resorted to working as an artist for the major studios. His superb classical training won him a contract with the Eleanor Ettinger Studios in New York to work with Norman Rockwell, transposing his original oils to lithographic plates. His first major New York exhibition took place at the Jasper Gallery on 57th Street in 1977. His latest film collaboration was with Andrei Konchalovsky on Maria’s Lovers (1984), a film in which Anton appears in a scene with Natassja Kinski. For more than 30 years, Anton Sipos’ unflagging devotion to his own unique impressionist vision, has resulted in a rich harvest of paintings, which stand the test of time.
Rockwell Smith Rockwell Smith was born October 21,1955. Paint what you know and know what you paint,
are the words of the counsel Rocky has received during his entire artistic career. Rockwell
has lived all his life in the Rocky Mountains of Idaho, Utah and Montana and his intense interest
in the western world around him comes to life in his detailed canvasses. Even at a relatively
young age for an artist, Rockwell Smith has evidenced an impressive long-term commitment
to his craft and is surely on his way to making an impact among his contemporaries.
Stan Solomon Viewers feel like they are taking a voyage through outer space when they see the brightly colored spheres and geometric forms that make up the fantastic 21st century images of futuristic painter Stan Solomon. Observing a “Solomon” has been compared to the discovery of a new dimension in space; both experiences are sure to be exciting and unforgettable experiences.
A graduate of Brooks institute in California and New York Institute of Technology, Solomon uses a self developed technique of hard-edged acrylic painting to create images that consistently amaze, entertain, and provoke the imagination of his audience.
Born in New York City in 1946, Solomon has lived in Japan and California, and is currently living in St. Louis, Missouri. Here he paints from eight to eighteen hours a day in his turn-of-the-century home where he surrounds himself with his acrylics, canvases, brushes, tape, and pepsi cans. His work has created an incredible splash within the art world, resulting in the instant success of his dynamic images with art lovers everywhere and of every age. He is recognized as a master of illusion, perspective, and imagination whose “Neo-Geo” works merit the acknowledgment that they are receiving now and will surely be receiving throughout the 21st century.
Hijime Sorayama Intensely erotic, artistically extreme, Hajime Sorayama has taken the art of eroticism to its most seductive and possible shocking level.
There is an intensity to Sorayama’s work, as if there is a provocative need to both arouse and shock the viewer, with a painstaking perfectionism and technical brilliance few artists can ever achieve. So what is it that inspires this charming, friendly and surprisingly modest artist to push moral and sexual boundaries to such an extreme? Certainly the desire to expose the more forbidden side of sexuality is apparent in many of his most recent paintings. Perhaps it’s Sorayama’s belief that he must engage his audience with more than just visual stimulation, but in fact should question contemporary values and introduce alternative views even if the outcome is ridicule and rejection.
Or it is what drives all great artists, an overwhelming and insatiable passion to create.
Tom Spencer a native of Tennessee, studied at the Art Student’s League in New York City, Ringling School of Art is Sarasota, Florida and the Art Center in Los Angeles, California. Mr. Spencer worked as a staff artist for Boeing and Lockhead, along with various technical illustrator agencies. Some of his works are on display at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., NASA in Huntsville, Alabama, and the Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville. He is also exhibited at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C.
John Stango Stango has been painting since early childhood. Born in 1958 he held his first one-man show at the age of 19 at the Race Street Gallery in Pennsylvania prior to graduating with a BFA in Painting Design from the Tyler School of Art, Temple University. Using a free associative thought process and the vibrant use of color characterize Stango’s paintings and limited edition serigraphs. Galleries across the country are eager to acquire Stango POP ART. As an emerging American artist, John Stango’s artwork is represented New York, Washington, D.C., Texas, California, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida to name a few. His art appears in public and private collections throughout the country including Kristi Yamaguchi, Olympic Gold Medallist, Fred J. Kliesner, President and CEO, Westin Hotels and Resorts, designer Nicole Miller, The Dallas Cowboys and The Walt Disney Company. As well as painting, Stango also designed a line of sportswear called Stango International. His clothing has been featured in stores such as Macys, Bloomingdales and Fiorucci. John Stango has donated his art to benefit the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, The Ronald McDonald House, The Make a Wish Foundation, and most recently, Helping Hands, a non-profit organization that places special monkey helpers with severely disabled individuals. John Stango is big ~ and HOT ~ and happening! His subjects include pop sports like Michael Jordan and Dan Marino, entertainment stars James Dean, Elvis Presley, and Marilyn Monroe and even comic book icons such as Superman, Batman and Mickey Mouse.
Lynn Taber-Borcherdt Born 1943 in California. Selected Collections: Osaka Triennial, Osaka, JAPAN - Smith College Museum of Art, MA – Tampa Museum of Art , FL – Phoenix Art Museum, AZ – Tucson Museum of Art, AZ
Seikichi Takara Born in 1929 in Hawaii, Takara knew from an early age that he wanted to be an artist. His sixth grade teacher recognized his potential, and because he came from a poor family, she paid his tuition at the Honolulu Academy of Art. In 1968, after several small exhibitions, Takara won the Public Prize for his oil painting “Erosion” at the Hanalei Art Festival in Kauai. Later while working as a graphic artist, screen printer, and commercial artist, Takara refined his technique and understanding of movement and color. In a studio in his home in Hawaii, Takara works in oils, watercolors and ink drawings, and some of these images will become serigraphs, lithographs and poster art.
James Talmadge From the time James Talmadge was old enough to hold a crayon, he knew he wanted to be an artist. At the age of 14, he was given his first one man exhibition. Shortly thereafter, he was awarded a scholarship to the Los Angeles based Art Center School of Design -- an award presented to one student per year. After his formal education came to an end, Talmadge’s interests were pulled in many challenging directions. Projects included developing educational programs used by school systems across the United States to help disadvantaged and learning disabled students. While in his 20’s, companies such as Sony, Atlantic Records, Doubleday Publishing, Max Factor, JBL International, ABC, CBS and KCET employed the artist’s talents in various creative endeavors. His diversity and interests led him to explore many disciplines, from producing animated films for Sesame Street, Cheech and Chong and Sonny Bono to creating graphics for The Bill Cosby Show. During this period, Talmadge continued to hone his skills, painting every spare minute. The art finally demanded his full-time attention, and in his mid-30’s, began concentrating exclusively on his art. James Talmadge has had over 100 exhibitions since 1961 throughout the United States and the Far East. His works are in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; The Museum of Modern Art, Osaka; and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Jamaica. His artwork can be found in the collections of Charlie Sheen, Andre Agassi & Brook Shields, Mr. & Mrs. Martin Sheen, Louie Anderson, Elgen Baylor, Sony Corporation, Doubleday Publishing, Hormel Corporation, Los Angeles Times, Max Factor , Ampex Corporation, Atlantic Records, among others. When James Talmadge first picks up a stick of oil pastel or dips a brush in color, he says he literally doesn’t know what he is going to paint until the brush touches the canvas. So many images enchant him -- the romance of a night at the theater, umbrellas in the rain, the glow of lights on a rain splattered street.
Itzchak Tarkay Itzchak Tarkay was born in 1935 in Subotica on the Yugoslav-Hungarian border. Towards the end of World War II, Tarkay was sent with his family to the Mathausen concentration camp by the Nazis. Tarkay was only nine years old at this time. Tarkay’s family survived and returned home after the war and Itzchak developed a keen interest in art, He won a prize for excellence in painting while still in school in Subotica. In 1949 Tarkay and his family immigrated to Israel and were sent to the transit camp for new arrivals at Beer Yaakov.
The next two years were spent in a Kibbutz. In 1951 Tarkay received a scholarship to the Bezalel Art Academy where he studied for one year before he had to leave due to difficult financial circumstances at home. In order to continue his scholarship, Tarkay was allowed to study under the artist Schwartzman until his mobilization in the Israeli Army. After his service term ended, Tarkay returned to his familiar environment in Tel Aviv and enrolled in the Avni Institute of Art, which he completed in 1956.
Today, Itzchak Tarkay is one of the most popular and loved artists in the world. A modern master, very much alive and very much in the moment, Tarkay draws upon the entire realm of art history in a body of work that is not only aesthetically agreeable and compositionally seductive, but a cultural phenomenon responsible for countless love letters, innumerable nights of passion and incalculable furtive glances - the very substance of visual poetry.
As a successor to the giants of art history in popularity, Tarkay’s graceful personal iconography has generated over a hundred million dollars of sales in a decade during which the art market can be generously described as unstable. While the dollar value of art should, in a perfect world, have no bearing on the aesthetic value of creativity, Tarkay’s acceptance by serious art collectors despite that at that time the relatively low prices were charged for his originals and limited editions, all of this must be noted. What chord does this man strike in the common thread that weaves through our universal consciousness?
Tarkay’s roots as a painter take hold in the decisive years of modern art. The bright colors and flat patterns build on the paths forged by Matisse, Mouly, and the Fauves. Like Picasso and Tobiasse, the sculptural grows stronger than the pictorial. Tarkay constructs a perspective and then takes it away. The paintings go through an abstract transformation, the perspective dissolves into colors and shapes, her face remains, and the world reconstructs around her. She is the natural woman - satisfied, calm, and serene. With closed eyes, her blue eyelids open onto a different world. She is floating, peaceful.
There is an ancient mystery in the work of Tarkay that must be discovered for oneself. This is what Tarkay’s paintings achieve. Tarkay’s fertile female form is a timeless enigma. The poses that Tarkay’s figures manifest are every bit as classical as The Winged Victory or Venus de Milo. Tarkay dives deep into history, and brings up pearls for our times. The quality of his line is organic, the quality of his woman, his art, is magic. Visit American Fine Art to see Tarkay's most unique collection of paintings, mixed media and original serigraphs.
Ivan Theimer Ivan Theimer, Czechoslovakian (1944 - ) Ivan Theimer was born in 1944 in Olomouc. In the years 1963-1965, he ended the Ecole Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs of Uherské Hradišt and began to collaborate with a friend architect, Tomáš Cernoušek. But the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Soviet troops will soon touch the lives and the creation booming young sculptor Olomouc. In the autumn of the year 1968, Ivan Theimer decided to emigrate and share in Paris. There is studying in the years 1968-1971 at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, and later presents his works during his first exhibitions abroad.
In 1973, he participated in the Biennale de Paris, in the years 1978 and 1982 represents France at the famous international journal of contemporary art - the Venice Biennale. Ivan Theimer work from 70 years to many achievements in public success. In 80 years it will create for the seat of the French presidency - the Elysée Palace in Paris - a big group of obelisks. It should be mentioned, among his other creations on the territory of Paris, the Monument of Human Rights on the Champs de Mars. Monuments, reliefs and other achievements of more intimate Theimer located on the territories of several European states. It is also the Czech Republic, where the sculptor will visit after the fall of the communist regime in 1989. In 1992 was solemnly inaugurated the monument to the memory of Jan Komensky Ámos of Uherský Brod, in the presence of Václav Havel, and, since 2002, Olomouc can also boast of having one of his famous works of native - " Fontaine impressive Arion. In 1996, the Directorate of Prague Castle, in collaboration with the Institute french Prague and the Musée des Arts Olomouc, organized a retrospective exhibition of paintings and statues of Ivan Theimer.
Barbie Tidwell Barbie is originally from Tulsa, Oklahoma, with a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from the University of Tulsa. She began her artistic endeavors concentrating on oils and watercolors. This gave her a good foundation to develop her own style and sense of color. After college, she decided to go into commercial art, even though she had fallen in love with etching after taking a few etching courses at the university. She hoped that one day she would be able to continue with etchings. She worked for several years as a graphic artist in advertising and sign design. In 1988, she became acquainted with an established printmaker. It didn’t take long for her to begin working in the printmaker’s studio producing her own etchings. Barbie has since cut several of her own plates and established herself in the art industry as one of the printmaker’s in demand. Stating the process with zinc plates, fine Italian paper, and finishing the process with handcoloring each etching, Barbie has been able to satisfy the creative need she has as an artist that was never satisfied with any other medium. Presently, Barbie lives in rural Middle Tennessee fulfilling her dream of becoming a professional artist / printmaker. The art of etching is a very old process. One of the first known etchers was Rembrandt. A zinc or copper plate is used for the artist’s design, and acid does the work of etching the design into the metal. After it is completed, the plate is inked, damp paper is placed onto it, and then they are run through a press. The tremendous pressure pushes the paper into the etched lines of the plate picking up the ink into the etched lines of the plate picking up the ink onto the damp paper. Each one is hand-pulled, one at a time, therefore each etching will have small differences making each one an original.
Jiang Tiefeng Jiang was born in 1938, in Ningbo, Zhejiiang Province, in China. Even as a child he displayed a great love and talent for painting and drawing, and early on he knew the course his life would take.
In 1959, in a highly competitive exam he won admission to the prestigious Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. From 1962-64 he studied with the famous Chinese artist Huang Yong-yu, who first exposed him to the paintings from the Dunguang caves. In 1964 he earned his Bachelor of Arts degree. This was the last class to graduate before the cultural revolution. Jiang also learned about traditional Chinese art, an influence which would remain with him. Upon graduation in 1964 Jiang and a small number of other artists volunteered to go down to the Yunnan province. This turned out to be a blessing. This beautiful province is on the Vietnamese border. It is lush and tropical, filled with exotic flora and fauna,and is home to more than 20 different minority peoples.
His new home allowed his talents to burst forth. Jiang's talent was so obvious that from 1966-73 the Chinese Government assigned him to produce "Socialist Realism" propaganda posters and sculptures during the Cultural Revolution. He even painted the famous large red-faced poster of Chairman Mao. But this sterile exercise did nothing to release the emotional side of Jiang's nature, and at night he worked in his small room, on his bed, to create his own style. The natural beauty of the Yunnan province inspired him. With two other artists, He Neng and Liu Shaohui, Jiang secretly formed the nucleus of what was first called the "Heavy Colorist" school and is now known as the "Yunnan School," began.
The Progress of Jiang's Career
Jiang's work quickly gained prominence and even the repressive authorities had to concede his talent. He became one of the most well-known illustrators of children's books in China. In 1974 he illustrated "Two Little Peacocks." In 1976 he designed the animated cartoon of the same book. In 1978, Jiang began to teach as an Associate Professor at the Yunnan Art Academy, where he would continue until 1983. In 1979, the Chinese Government commissioned him to paint a mural representing Yunnan Province for the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. The project took seven months and used six full panels of silk. This was the "Stone Forest" mural, one of Jiang's finest works. Jiang himself says: "This mural was the first time I had ever let my own true style show publicly. The color, energy, and fantasy of my painting was not appreciated by the government during Mao's Cultural Revolution. While I was painting "Stone Forest" an official came by and said I shouldn't do it that way. I said "Okay" as if I would change it. But I didn't change a thing. Later he came back and said "Oh, that's much better." He didn't know what he was talking about. He was just comforted to think that he, a government official, had control over this strange, dangerous art."
For Jiang, success followed success. In 1979 he illustrated "The Secret of Jinchun Tree," which won the first prize as the best illustrated book out of Jiangsu Province. His painting "The Legend of the Water Sprinkling Festival of the Dai" was featured in the documentary film "Yunnan Scene." In 1980 the illustrated books "Little Red Riding Hood"; "The Ugly Duckling"; and "A Shi Ma" were published. For "A Shi Ma" Jiang was awarded Second Place in an international United Nations competition of illustrated books. In 1981, Jiang's work was featured in the "10 Artists From Yunnan" show in Beijing, and then, in 1982, was prominently featured at a show in Hong Kong, which also featured the Yunnan artists as well as some of their followers.
But as early as 1981 the Chinese Government had returned to its repressive policies. Government officials publicly stated that they feared China was losing its "socialist morality" and becoming "morally polluted." Art officials favored a return to Socialist Realism painting and they expressed their displeasure by refusing to select paintings by Jiang, Liu Shaohai, or He Neng for the permanent collection of the National Art Gallery. Jiang was the prime target of their wrath--his paintings were excluded from television coverage and a seminar was even officially organized to criticize his work. His work was criticized as "...too daring and audacious...a nightmare." Jiang did have defenders. Liu Shaohai said that he would be glad to have nightmares every night if he could paint like that. The President of the Central Academy of Art and Design, Zhang Ding, wrote an article praising Jiang's work but withdrew it on the eve of its publication at his wife's urging, who remembered how Zhang Ding had been beaten and publicly humiliated during the Cultural Revolution. Even so, Zhang Ding did on a number of occasions speak out and express his admiration for Jiang and some of the other young artists.
All of this was making life increasingly difficult for Jiang. In 1982 a National Geographic reporter who was doing a story on China saw Jiang's paintings, and brought some back to the U.S. A friend of the reporter brought them to the Fingerhut Gallery in Minneapolis, where Jiang's work met with great success. In 1983, Jiang came to the United States as part of a cultural exchange program with the University of Southern California, where he became a visiting Professor of Art.
Under the sponsorship of Allan Fingerhut, Jiang moved to Minnesota with his wife Zhaolin. For Jiang, success in America quickly followed. His rich, strong color, and exotic but intimate imagery struck an immediate response with the American public.
Jiang's talent and uniqueness quickly brought his work to the attention of critics and museum curators nationwide, and this resulted in many public exhibitions. In 1984, Jiang had an exhibition at the University of Southern California Gallery; in 1985 at the New England Center of Contemporary Art in Connecticut; in 1986 at the Portland Museum in Virginia; in 1987 at the Springfield Art Center in Ohio; in 1988 at the Connecticut College Art Gallery; in 1989 at the Museum at Northwestern University in Massachusetts; and in 1990-91 at the Everson Museum in New York; the Springfield Art Museum in Ohio; the Michelson Reeves Museum in Texas; the Valdosta Museum at Valdosta State University in Georgia; the Art & Cultural Center in Florida; and the Olin Fine Art Center in Pennsylvania. During this period Jiang also had 52 one-man gallery shows in cities all over the country.
Artistic Influences
Traditional Chinese Influences
Modern Western influences played a part in the formation of the Yunnan school, but traditional Chinese art--such as the sculpture from the Han Dynasty (221 B.C.-220 A.D.) played by far the most important role.
The "flung ink" technique.
This method, invented by the ancient zen artists more than 1500 years ago, is the precursor of abstract expressionism. By flicking the paint of the end of the brush the artists could create a totally energized surface. This is precisely what Jackson Pollock rediscovered in the 1940s and 50s. But the Chinese had always used this technique, and Jiang uses it masterfully.
The Dunguang Caves
But the greatest Chinese influence was the art created in the Dunguang caves in central China. In 1907 European explorers rediscovered the Buddhist caves on the Ancient Silk Road that led from China through Persia and finally to the West. At Dunghuang, the last caravan stop with a plentiful amount of water and supplies before travelers from China ventured into the perilous Takla Makan desert, the explorers discovered a group of more than 400 caves with paintings of extraordinary quality which had been very well preserved by the dry desert climate. These paintings had been created over a period of 700 years, from roughly 300 to 1000 AD. They were commissioned as devotional acts by pious Buddhists: warriors, princes, kings, merchants, peoples from all walks of life--created in the same spirit as were the Gothic cathedrals of Europe. But by the 12th century wars and other geopolitical forces caused the abandonment of the caves, and they lay forgotten until their rediscovery by the Europeans in the 20th century.
In 1942, a well-known and respected traditional Chinese artist Zhang Daqian led an expedition to the caves. He spent 2 1/2 years studying and copying the astounding paintings there. When his work became available to other artists and scholars it caused great excitement, for just as African and Iberian art and the cave paintings of Lascaux had inspired and liberated Picasso, so the revelation of the free flowing qualities of line and form and the rich mythic traditions of the Dunguang cave paintings inspired and liberated the young Chinese artists. Jiang was particularly moved by the colors, the linear quality, and the mythic stories of the cave painting--and we see this in his work. Jiang's colors are of unsurpassed richness. A colorist, Jiang's intention was to reverse the trend of the stale Chinese tradition of painting in gray, black, and white. Jiang says: "Chinese art had reached a sick level due to its lack of color." Jiang's credo is: "Long live the Line!" He is a genius at using line to give the illusion of depth to a flat two-dimensional surface--almost like an x-ray. Jiang's paintings are like cubism: by using superb drawing he creates transparency, and thus he reveals more than one level of reality in each painting. Jiang is a storyteller. His paintings are steeped in Buddhist and Chinese mythology. Each figure has a symbolic meaning. The paintings have so much complexity and visual fascination that the viewer is constantly seeing something new. Jiang says "For every picture there is a story, and for every story there is a picture."
But above all, the cave art was an indigenous Chinese tradition, a tradition that gave the artists similar freedoms to those won by the artists in the west, but at the same time it was a tradition that the artists could freely pursue without fear of being accused of being Anti-Chinese. The traditional mythic themes and images, and the rhythmic flow of the cave art have found their way over and over again into paintings of Jiang and the other "Yunnan School" artists.
The influence of the Dunguang imagery and style combined with European Cubist influences, such as the use of transparent washes of colors to allow for a multileveled view of reality, characterize Jiang's work to this day.
Jiang would also incorporate many of these traditional Chinese folkloric images into his art.
Jiang's Popularity
What is the secret of Jiang's popularity?
Jiang's colors are of unsurpassed richness. A colorist, Jiang's intention was to reverse the trend of the stale Chinese tradition of painting in gray, black, and white. Jiang says: "Chinese art had reached a sick level due to its lack of color."
Jiang's use of imagery. As noted above, Jiang is a storyteller. His paintings are steeped in Buddhist and Chinese mythology. Each figure has a symbolic meaning. The paintings have so much complexity and visual fascination that the viewer is constantly seeing something new. Jiang says "For every picture there is a story, and for every story there is a picture."
Jiang's vision has continued to grow and expand. Probably because of his personal experience in two cultures he has increasingly seen the world as a single system, as a meeting place of diverse forces. This is reflected in the number of environmental and ecologic themes which have recently begun appearing in his work, notably in such pieces as "Nature Suite," "Genesis," "Lovers Trees," and "My World."
The secret and essence of Jiang's work is best expressed by the artist himself:
"An artist is not a photographer; my work is my understanding of life. It is difficult for me to remember what distances I have traveled, how many mountains I have climbed, how many rivers I have crossed, and how many villages I have passed through. I can only recall the countless joyous moments and hardships of the past years from the many pictures I have painted. My deep love of the colorful earth and for Xishuangbanna, a region of the Yunnan Province, has encouraged me to explore and create unceasingly. Such a mysterious land blessed with unique beauty offers innumerable subjects to be painted. My paintings are not only pictures: they are also music and poetry that is bewitching, sweet dreams that are being dreamed."
Theo Tobiasse Tobiasse lived through the German occupation of France during World War II. On July 16, 1942 his father bolted the shutters to their small apartment in Paris as Tobiasse watched the Nazi soldiers rounding up the Jews. The family lived through these years of German occupation under the most incredible circumstances. The only light they had was that which filtered through the closed shutters. Their meager food was what little a resistance fighter left outside their door disguised as garbage. Many times they feared they were close to discovery. Yet during this time, Tobiasse retained his sanity and sense of hope by reading and drawing. For the first 15 years after WWII ended, Tobiasse earned a living as a graphic and window designer. By 1950, he had moved to Nice. He continued to paint for his own pleasure, and when he showed his work at an exhibition for young painters he won the grand prize. Within two years he gave up his successful commercial career and devoted himself exclusively to painting.
Ernest Trova Ernest Tino Trova, a self-trained St. Louis native, became one of the significant artists of the late twentieth century. Best known for his signature image, the Falling Man, Trova considered his entire output a single work in progress. A collector of classic American comic character toys, Trova admired their surrealism and used them in some of his pieces. He began as a painter, progressing through three-dimensional constructions to his mature medium, sculpture. Trova’s gift of forty of his works led to the opening of the Laumeier Sculpture Park. With his Falling Man, Ernest Trova created one of the defining artistic images of his time. His work is exhibited in all the Major Museums in the world.
Victor Vasarely Vasarely is one of the creators of Kinetic and Op Art. Before emigrating to France in 1930 , Vasarely attended the Academy of Painting and taught at The Bauhaus in Budapest in 1929. In his early works, he explored Symbolism, Post-Cubism, Surrealism and Gestural Painting. A superb graphic artist, Vasarely studiously developed his techniques since his first published print in 1949.
Poteet Victory Poteet Victory was born and raised in the middle of the Choctaw Nation in Idabel, Oklahoma. His direct paternal ancestors were relocated from their homelands in Mississippi to Oklahoma during the forced migration known as the Trail of Tears. Poteet is the last of the Victory’s on his paternal Grandmother’s side, which included such leaders as C.C. Victory, Vice Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation for 22 years. Within his Choctaw ancestry, on his paternal Grandfather’s side, Poteet Victory is related to the famous statesman Andrew Jolly Jones.
Jacques Villon French painter, born in Damville; died in Puteaux. Villon was the brother of Marcel Duchamp, Raymond DuchampVillon and Suzanne Duchamp. After studying law he settled in Paris in 1894, where he worked in Cormon's studio and earned his living as a draughtsman. During this period he contributed to the magazines Le Chat noir, Gil Blas, Lassiette au Beurre and Le Courrier franqais. In 1904 he became a founder member of the Salon d'Automne, in which he regularly exhibited. In 1912 he helped to organize the Section d'Or exhibition, and in 1913 took part in the International Exhibition of Modern Art (the Armory Show) in New York, at which he sold nine pictures. Between 1921 and 1930 he produced thirty-four prints for Architectures.
Andy Warhol Warhol was born in 1928 and died in 1987. He is best remembered for his declaration that everyone would have fifteen minutes of fame. Andy Warhol cultivated celebrity status and achieved a level of notoriety normally reserved for Hollywood stars. Born Andrew Warhola in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the artist began studies there at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1945. In 1949, Warhol moved to New York where he established himself as a successful commercial designer working for leading fashion houses. Taking his inspiration from commercial art and popular culture, Warhol produced a series of works that appropriated imagery from advertisements and tabloids, eliminating personal references and any trace of the artist's hand. His mechanically produced works were in stark contrast to the highly personal statements of the Abstract Expressionist movement that dominated the art world. A 1962 exhibition that featured his "Campbell's Soup Cans" and "Coca-Cola Bottles" brought Warhol instantaneous celebrity status and he was proclaimed the leader of the Pop Art movement. In 1963 Warhol established his New York studio which he called "The Factory" and increasingly relied on assistants to produce his work. In 1965 the artist shifted his focus to film and performance art. He produced numerous multi-media events he labeled "The Exploding Plastic Inevitable." The Andy Warhol Museum opened in the artist's hometown of Pittsburgh in 1994.
Barrie Wentzell Barrie Wentzell is an internationally recognized photographer born in the mists of Northern England, now living in Toronto. Barrie was the chief photographer for Melody Maker Magazine, forerunner to Rolling Stone Magazine from 1965 - 1975. During that time he had access to the public and private lives of the music makers of the Golden Age of Rock and Roll. His black and white photo journalistic portraits seen here are just a few from a Limited Edition print series, which provides us with an honest and unique depiction of the personalities whose lyrics and music inspired generations and gave voice to the future. Barries commitment to his work coupled with his uncanny ability to capture the essence of the subjects he portrays has gained him public and critical acclaim. As Barrie once confided, The picture gives you an impression, the music tells you everything. I wasn’t trying to make them God, I was trying to make them truthful. Barries Legends include Neil Young, Diana Ross, Led Zeppelin, Leonard Cohen, Jimi Hendrix, Robert Plant, The Beatles, Jimmy Page, Leon Russell, The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Elton John, Bo Diddley and Jerry Lee Lewis just to name a few. Individuals, as well as, public and private galleries and institutions worldwide collect Mr. Wentzells Legend Series. Barries photographic contributions are well circulated in magazines, newspapers, periodicals, books, records and c.d.s.
James Whistler James A.M. Whistler: 1834-1903 If James A. M. Whistler stands in the top rank of American painters, he was, and remains, a giant among 19th Century American artists in etchings and lithographs. For a half-century, he set the standard for the graphic arts with a singularly brilliant body of work. Some even have the tonal atmospheric quality of his paintings; others are distinguished by the precision of his drawing. Whistler's graphic work remains among the most influential of the 19th Century; so important that an entire room at the Pan-Pacific Exposition of 1915 was devoted solely to his works and those of his well-known protégé, Joseph Pennell.
Lee White born in Miami in 1948, White began his artistic career at the age of only 12 after receiving the Mayor’s trophy for artists sponsored by the Miami Herald.
He began his formal studies in California at the California College of Commercial Design, the City College of Los Angeles, the Santa Monica Art League and the University of Southern California, advancing to a fine art degree at the California Institute of Arts. During the 1970’s and 1980’s, he studied and developed his serigraphy talents under the supervision Mr. Warren Woodward, a famed master of printmaking.
When humanistic art is expressed in figurative form, White defines the complete figurative. His works are textured emotions from the invisibly smooth to the rawest raw, compelling the observer. His prolific work, original figuratives, abstract expressionism, still lifes and collage are in private and corporate collections and exhibited throughout the world.
Michael Wilkinson Wilkinson's acrylic sculptures are something of an anomaly: cast in one of the newest substance in the arts it nevertheless represents a return to the romantic tradition. One of the very few artists working in clear acrylic, Wilkinson is also an accomplished sculptor in bronze, to which he brings the same sensitive and elevated spirit. However in his work in acrylic, he is able to create illusions impossible to an opaque medium. Wilkinson was influenced by Michelangelo and Rodin in his developmental years.
Barbara Wood BARBARA A. WOOD is a native of Columbus, Ohio. Barbara never knowing her real father, was raised by her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. Her mother having to work in order to make ends meet, would often leave Barbara in the care of the grandmothers. The personalities of the three women formed a catalyst for her art.
As an only child and sometimes a lonely child, she was afflicted with bouts of pneumonia and asthma and spent many hours secluded in her room longing to be with her friends. "It seemed I was always on the inside looking out."
Perhaps that could explain the sensitivity in so many of her paintings. Barbara remembers her mother encouraging her to sketch and paint and always keeping her in ample supplies of artist materials. Sometimes her only friends were the ones she created on her drawing board.
Following high school she attended Traphagen School of Fashion on a scholarship, however one of her instructors encouraged her to turn her talents to fine art. We are grateful to this instructor, whoever he is, for now we are the recipients of an art rich in imagery.
Taking this advice, Barbara transferred to the New York Art Students League. She continued her studies, marries and moved to California. Barbara continued to paint and study while raising her three children. She attended the Otis Parsons School of Art and later the Pasadena School of Fine Arts.
Over the past three decades Barbara A. Wood has painted with vitalized energy, becoming an international artist. Her list of collectors is a virtual "Who’s Who" of celebrities and collectors around the world. She has traveled from London to Scotland to Alaska to Japan exhibiting in one women shows. Through her works of art she has been able to reach an audience far and wide. Now, we can enjoy the fruits of her creativity and special gift.
Hiromichi Yamagata Yamagata was born in 1948 in Maibara, Japan. After finishing high school in 1967, he began his study of art at a private school. Yamagata's work has been heavily influenced by the Belgian born painter Pieter Brughel, who lived in the late 1400's and painted during the early renaissance period with bright colors and vivid detail. Invited to study, tuition - free, at the prestigious Ecole de Beaux Arts, Yamagata moved to Paris in 1972. By 1973 he had become well known in Paris. In October, 1978, Yamagata left Paris to work in Los Angeles, California. In just a few short years since he first emigrated to America, Yamagata has become one of the best known and best selling artists in the United States.
Michael Young A master of nostalgic perspective, hidden themes and subtle wit, Michael Young creates an environment that entices viewers to vicariously share in his vision. A native of Kansas, Young honed his draftsmanship skills under technical tutors who emphasized rigid laws of perspective and respect for detail. His later tenure in commercial art provided the self-imposed discipline required for successful illustration. After formal training at the Art Students' League in New York, Youngs first presentation was entirely purchased by a national gallery chain. Exhibited widely throughout the United States, Europe and Japan, his work can be found both in private and corporate collections. His impeccable technique and meticulous attention to period detail has attracted an ever-growing legion of appreciative fans. Perhaps it is because his art heightens and focuses viewer perception. To look is to enter . . . to enter is to linger . . . to linger is to be etherally touched by America's eloquent past or untenable future.
Yuri Yuroz Yuroz has an international reputation. His works have been exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide. His art has been the centerpiece for many popular events, including Baywatch, The Grammy Awards and Comic Relief. Collectors worldwide have sought out and aquired Yuroz's work -- from Italy, Greece, Japan, Holland, Switzerland, Canada and South Africa, to name only a few.
He has made a distinctive impression in the international fine art community. Recently one of his pastels was chosen for a traveling museum exhibition of the Degas Pastel Society, and other museum shows include the Fine Arts Museum of Long Island; the Fuller Art Museum; and the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry(OMSI). His work has been featured in numerous one man shows as well as art fairs in New York, Los Angeles, and Japan -- and Barbizon, France, at one of the oldest art shows in the world, where the artist was the guest of honor.
Laurie Zeszut Zeszut's work is exuberant and vivid. It first captures the eye then the imagination. Perspective varies as objects freely careen across the surface. With work as inspired as that of Matisse or Picasso, it is surprising to know that Zeszut is actually a self taught painter. A shortage of gift wrap led to her first artistic endeavor as she quickly covered butcher paper with watercolor patterns in a hasty effort to deliver a birthday present. The friend was so impressed with the makeshift paper that Zeszut was encouraged to attend a watercolor class which further pushed the artist towards what would soon become a career.
Joanna Zjawinska Joanna Zjawinska was born in Poland where she began to paint at the early age of six. She earned her B.A. degree in 1972 from the School of Architecture in Warsaw. To follow her own dream of being an artist, Joanna then studied at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts where she perfected her unique style of oil and watercolor painting. In 1978 she was awarded a masters degree in Graphic Design with honors in painting from the academy which is one of the most prestigious school in Europe. In 1979 Joanna came to San Francisco with her husband, Mark, and daughter, Sonia, and formally launched her career.
Joanna’s paintings transport us to worlds of fantasy and elegance in images that explore complex, passionate relationships. Inspired by artists such as Vermeer, Degas and Sargent, Joanna expresses her passion for life, her family, her homeland and her adopted home. Her world is feminine and seductive.
Where her early paintings were filled with beautiful and chic people, theatrical scenery and voyeurism, her current work tells a simpler story. Still influenced by cinema, fashion and music, Zjawinska strives to create beauty in face and form, in landscape or abstract setting, and this theme remains integral to her work. She relies on strong composition and a deeper palette to create visions of mysterious women who seek and reveal passion.
Joanna’s paintings are housed in many prestigious private and public collections including the National Museum in Torun, Poland; the Polish Institute of New York; Guerlain Perfumes, Paris; Elizabeth Arden, San Francisco; Nordstrom, Inc., Seattle; Warner/Vanderbilt, New York; and the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas. She has exhibited in numerous galleries both international and national. In 2001 she had a retrospective show "The sweet taste of freedom" in famous Napa Valley winery of Robert Mondavi and in 2003 her show "A handsome husband is better than a mink coat" was at Saks Fifth Avenue in San Francisco.
Ms. Zjawinska has received renown for her rich, expressive oils and watercolors as well as for her outstanding collections of limited edition serigraphs.
Aaron Zule Memories can often be more vivid than the realities that inspired them. Evocative, heartfelt remembrances, especially those from childhood, burn deeply in most peoples souls - and even more deeply in that of an artist. Zule's feet (or should we say brushes) are firmly rooted in Buenos Aires, Argentina from 1925 through the 1930's. The energy, romance and excitement of life in “Caminito”, the artist's quarter, is evident in each of her works. Growing up in a city affectionately dubbed the “Paris of South America”, Zule was greatly moved and inspired by the city's most famous artist of the time - Kinkila Martin. In the early 1920's Martin felt Caminito needed an infusion of life - a stroke of vibrancy. Armed with a wide array of paints he strolled through the entire neighborhood making a splash of color on each house - an aesthetic suggestion to the homeowner as to what might spruce up the neighborhood. - literally, and perhaps more importantly, spiritually. Abetted by his vaulted position, his bold action took hold and the artist's quarter was transformed into the place etched in Zule's memory and artwork. Cafe society took hold of Caminito and Zule captures that laissez-faire attitude with her flowing pastels and bold paintings. Using only her thumbs as tools to create the pastels, Zule, like Martin before her, makes rich color slashes as individual gestures that when taken as a whole, form an ever pleasing panorama. Women always dominate the works, with men playing a supporting, albeit, chivalric role. Horse drawn carriages and gas lit lampposts evoke a time that Zule will never let die. Trained and schooled in Argentina, Zule's dream of becoming an established and successful artist has come true. In 1962 she realized another dream, and moved her entire family across the world to the land of Israel were she still lives today.
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Artist's Biographies
