Ahem, hello again…
Charles Weed is an American painter who studied in Minneapolis and Florence. He’s married to Louse Camille Fenne, who is also a gifted painter. I’m personally more drawn to his landscapes, but his figurative work is very strong too. He’s managed to carve out a distinctive look to his work without, it seems to me, forcing a style for the sake of it. A feathery shimmering light unifies his figurative and landscape work.
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.
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.
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.
Finding beauty in the rough and mundane industrial world of scrap heaps, Michael Kareken’s textural paintings and charcoals are worth checking out.
Landscape painters often talk of ‘capturing the light’, yet few do that so well as David Curtis.
He also does more delicate watercolours.
*Appologies for not having posted in so long. Summer travels have distracted me (very nicely!)
Frank Mason is something of a creative powerhouse. Now aged 87, he has had a remarkable career, putting his brush to almost any subject. From portraits of the great and the good, through still lives and landscapes, to vast neo-baroque religious compositions. A number of great commissions have given him the opportunity to really stretch his abilities. A commission in Venice resulted in him being rewarded with the Cross of Merit from the Order of Malta. All this work has been done with virtuosity.
He is known to many primarily as a teacher at the Art Students League of New York, where he has taught countless painters.
His work is very much in the baroque sensibility, with flare, dynamism and vibrancy. This big dramatic style can be a little overbearing, so it is his drawings that I personally find most interesting, though I encourage you to survey his great sprawling oeuvre.
Theme: Rubric. Blog at WordPress.com.
