Donald Jurney’s landscapes show a very clear reverence for the work of the Barbizon and Hudson River Schools.  Some of his compositions are much like Daubigny’s, with solid design drawing one’s eye between feathery trees, gently rippling water and skies heavy with atmosphere.

His wonderfully muted colours have a brilliant but subtle vibration that keeps his work from ever looking dull as many low-chroma landscapes do.  Instead one feels the thickness of the air and the trickling flow of light.

There’s a great sense of focus in his work too.  Often it is a tiny detail, a small area of strongly contrasting colour or value, that rings out clear like the triangle in an orchestra, bringing a touch of poetry to the broader areas.

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Alejandro Decinti is a Chilean painter whose work I’m undecided about, but still want to post.  His paintings from a few years ago display a similar approach and tonality as the work of Antonio Lopez Garcia, as can be seen in works like this one:

Then his paintings show an increased interest in paint for paint’s sake.  The still life below of materials seems to play with the tension between materials and representation, with the blue of the bucket merging into the flat blue wall, thereby flattening the image.  This sort of thing is reminiscent of Manet’s work, and a tribute to the Bar at the Folies-Bergere shows Decinti’s interest in him.

Thereafter his work becomes more involved with its own material qualities, with abstract marks breaking contours.  His compositions have also become increasingly unsettling and often creepy.

Love his early work. Undecided about his later stuff. Opinions? Check out his website and see what you think.

Travis Schlaht is an instructor at the Grand Central Academy, married to Kate Lehman, studied at Water Street Atelier and has a show coming up at John Pence Gallery, so as the ‘classical realism’ scene goes, he’s got the credentials.  Oh and his paintings are pretty nice too.

I must admit, as far as subject matter goes, i’m not particularly excited.  It’s his paint quality that fascinates me, his marks having their own independent interest, yet never disrupting the illusionism, always subservient to representation but present enought for one to enjoy the interaction between surface and subject.  That may not be the most revolutionary thing ever, but I don’t mind at all, I’d rather quality and sincerity to ‘originality’.

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Another compelling painter of urban life today, Brett Amory.

There’s something of Kanevsky about some of his marks, but his compositions feel a bit more illustrational with their clear opposition of figure and (often white) ground.

I can’t say I know anything about him, but I like his work, and if you like it too you should go to his show in San Francisco.

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Scotting painter Jackie Anderson has produced works of such fragile delicacy, being so faint and stripped down in colour, that they make one slow down to really look at them.  Ethereal and ephemeral forms, overlapping observations and subtle tonal variations are combined with compelling compositions that seem to capture something of the impersonal nature of urban interaction.

I’ve never actually seen any of her work ‘in the flesh’ so to speak, but I would imagine they could be…well, it’s hard to avoid the word ‘haunting’ really.

If you like her work I’d recommend you check out Nicholas Uribe too, specifically his work from a few years ago.

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Finding beauty in the rough and mundane industrial world of scrap heaps, Michael Kareken’s textural paintings and charcoals are worth checking out.

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Nicola Hicks is known primarily for her extraordinarily textured sculptures of animals, people and hybrids thereof.  Here charcoal drawings and etchings have a brilliant balance between rough physicality and disintegrating ephemeral line.

There size is almost overwhelming, yet there is a delicacy in both the marks (despite their display of bravura) and in the material.  Thin brown paper was simply tacked to the wall of the gallery when I last saw here work.

There is some truth in Flowers Gallery’s claim that her work “often combines charm and menace in equal and sometimes devastating measures”.

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Reminiscent of Giacometti’s paintings, as well as Francis Bacon’s, Anthony Scullion’s figurative paintings is well worth having a look at.

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I haven’t posted a still life painter in ages for the simple reason that there are so many painters who seem to do identical, technically excellent, but unimaginative still lifes.  Sadie J. Valerie’s experimentation with creating dynamic shapes (i use that word ‘dynamic’ begrudgingly as i hate it and read it far too often, though here it does seem applicable) and lyrical compositions are far more engaging.  Certainly one to watch.

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Landscape painters often talk of ‘capturing the light’, yet few do that so well as David Curtis.

He also does more delicate watercolours.

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