Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2018 i American Art Collector

Nicholas Procaccini recalls his father being very creative, making beautiful patterns in the plaster ceilings of their tenement apartment. He was also a talented pianist, playing with the Jimmy Smith Trio until he realized he couldn’t make a living as a musician and turned to tool making. Procaccini served in the Army in Vietnam. He joined as a private and was sent to officer school and served in the infantry. “It was the most significant experience for me. It gave me the opportunity to go to school and to develop a sense of responsibility and discipline,” he says. “One of the things I noticed on R&R in Australia was the presence of U.S. industry. I wanted to be part of that.” He received his MBA in international finance at George…

Jason Wheatley and I last met when I curated an exhibition in San Francisco 10 years ago. Since then, I’ve left the museum world, sold my house and most of my “things,” moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, to live in a converted adobe goat shed and to write full time for our magazines. The year after the exhibition, Wheatley began painting collaboratively with a group called the Oyster Pilots. “I also got rid of all my possessions, closed my bank accounts and streamlined my existence to a suitcase and a roll of canvases. I completely fell off the grid and began implementing ideas I had been toying around with previously,” he says. “My notion was that Art is Magic or more precisely Alchemy, as the artist creates gold from…

Janet Monafo writes, “There is no explaining my selection of materials and compositions except in visual terms.” And there’s no need to. The everyday objects in her elegant compositions may have no relationship to one another. She says, “Most of the pictures that I have made over the years have been composed of complex assemblages of things that I love looking at for one reason or another. Quite often these things or objects do not relate to each other except within the context of the picture by color, shape, texture or form.” At one point, weary of composing the objects, she dumped a number on the floor to paint from different angles—but she couldn’t resist tweaking the arrangement to make a better composition and to better translate to a two-dimensional…

There’s nothing quite like the beauty of a Southern night, when the glow of the moon settles over creeks and marshlands, starlight dazzles against the darkness of the ocean and fireflies swirl between the trees. Nightfall at Wells Gallery is a two-week show that captures these mystical scenes through the oil paintings of more than 10 artists including Debra Nadelhoffer, Rick McClure, Junko Ono Rothwell, Sally Tharp and Curt Butler. While most pieces portray the natural landscape, others explore the bright lights of an eclectic city scene. Moonlight Emerging, by McClure, depicts a serene night sky cast over lush, green swamplands. The painting was inspired by a trip the artist took with his wife to the colorful Kiawah Island, where they stayed in a home overlooking the marshes. “I would…

John Steinbeck, who understood horses, wrote, “A man on a horse is spiritually, as well as physically, bigger than a man on foot.” Artists have drawn and sculpted horses for millennia. In the academies, students study the skeletal structure of their subjects and the attachment of muscles and flesh before they paint the spiritual and physical thing that inspired them. Several years ago I visited Daniel Sprick in his studio as he was painstakingly assembling the bones of a horse whose carcass he had found, carried home in his pickup, cleaned and stored. The assembled horse and skeletal rider (whom Sprick did not find in a field) appear in his painting Snow Rider, 2016, as majestic as any fully fleshed horse ridden by a general or a king. Skeletons often…

Robert Lange recently finished a painting eight years in the making that was inspired by the heirloom vegetable tattoo of friend and James Beard award-winning chef Sean Brock. In Arm to Table Brock places a single turnip atop a colorful mound of vegetables meticulously arranged by Lange. “Sean is the pioneer of the farm to table movement that has occurred in Charleston. When he first took over the executive chef position at McCrady’s, he convinced the restaurant to purchase a farm and grow their own produce,” says Lange. “He then made the servers at the restaurant work a couple of shifts a week on the farm to truly understand where the food they were serving came from.” Arm to Table will be on view in RECIPE at the Vendue hotel.…

The real world has an endless supply of subject matter, from the most crowded Manhattan street corner to the most desolate Himalayan peak, where the nearest human is not only far from view, but beyond the curvature of the earth. Subjects can be people in an artist’s life, fruit from their local grocery store, or the store itself, its fluorescent aisles lined with stacked food items. They can be abstract ideas rendered into blocks of color, or hyper-detailed photorealism, in which paint is applied with almost microscopic accuracy. The one constant, though, is reality—subjects are drawn from the real world, an observable place governed by fixed systems that answer to biology, chemistry, physics, gravity and other aspects of the physical world. But reality has its limitations. Its borders don’t just…

In an Iroquois creation myth, Sky Woman fell through a hole in an island in the sky to a watery world below. The water animals saw her plight and tried and failed to create a place for her to land. However, Muskrat brought up some mud and Turtle agreed to have it put on his back. Sky Woman had grabbed some seeds before she fell and released them onto the soil on Turtle’s back when she landed. Many indigenous tribes refer to North America as Turtle Island. Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward put together the first terrarium in the 1840s to watch a chrysalis transform and was surprised when a fern began to grow in the container along with a sprig of grass. The closed environment of the terrarium provided the ideal…

Founded in 1991, Oil Painters of America has become one of the foremost organizations for traditional representational artists. With more than 4,000 artist members hailing from throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico, OPA aides in creating connections among its members through educational opportunities as well as elevating their artwork to national and regional platforms through yearly exhibitions. In promoting representational artwork, Oil Painters of America’s primary focus is “to draw attention to the lasting value of fine drawing, color, composition and the appreciation of light.” This means its members are adept in their work and have an understanding of classical, technical elements. The artists are also pushing the techniques to showcase their own individual voices within their art. Being such a large group, the members span from emerging through…

Oftentimes there is as a place or object that becomes a constant muse for an artist and it appears in their work repeatedly. Nicholas Evans-Cato’s playground is Brooklyn, New York—a location where he is captivated by the iconic bridge and the bird’s-eye views around the city. However, it isn’t just Brooklyn that has continued to draw in Evans-Cato, but also specific weather conditions that affect the atmosphere. In particular, Evans-Cato paints fog and snow, which allows the edges of man-made structures to fade into the distance. The artist also paints on location, so he waits for just the right conditions to bring out his canvas. “[T]here is a lot of planning ahead in my work because I work outside on site,” he elaborates. “I tend to not know exactly which…

May 1 through 31, Lotton Gallery in Chicago will once again feature the works of Russian artists Aydemir Saidov and Marina Marina. The husband-and-wife pair is united by their careful, tender portrayals of the female form. Saidov’s perception of life, and his tendency to bow to female beauty, is something that unifies all of his works. His two newest pieces, Lightness of Being and Twilight Magic, have this in common but are starkly different in appearance. Saidov points out that Twilight Magic is “a mystery, a challenge, a struggle of light which is being absorbed by the twilight,” while Lightness of Being is marked by gentle innocence, portrayed through pastel colors. “Inspiration grows as the image of the future work crystallizes,” Saidov says. The individuality of the model, light and…

The work of Brandon Gonzales—-a painter now in the final semester of the MFA program at Laguna College of Art + Design—-has been evolving quickly in the past year. Working on location, Gonzales has been developing a very personal and elegant plein air style that highlights his sensitivity to the passage of time. Starting with a place that catches his eye, he locates something—-a sense of light or texture—that he can latch onto and then acts quickly. “You have only two, maybe three hours to do a painting,” he explains. “After that nothing is the same.” Although Gonzales allows himself “a little tightening up” in the studio, his insistence on getting it right outside has forced him to develop a kind of artistic athleticism. His finished paintings are never fussy:…

Respect: Hip-Hop Style & Wisdom On view at Oakland Museum of California is the spring exhibition Respect: Hip-Hop Style & Wisdom, which explores the cultural and social movement of hip-hop. The exhibit uses six sections to dive into how hip-hop changed the world in a time span of 50 years and provides a platform for self-expression in today’s youth. It will remain on view through to August 12. Punk Graphics Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die: Punk Graphics, 1976-1986 opens June 16 at the Cranbrook Art Museum, displaying various visual design strategies and the influences of fiction, horror and comics on punk graphics. Punk graphics are not limited to the monochromatic palettes, but expand in color and new wave graphic techniques covering punk and post-punk bands and fashion.…

Greg “Craola” Simkins holds on to a “jar full” of childhood memories to draw from whenever he feels the pressures and realities of daily life closing in on him or dragging him down. These memories serve to help rediscover some of his childhood innocence long enough to create a new painting, come up with a character or devise a narrative for his works to follow. Simkins believes so strongly in these moments that he has named his new exhibition The Escape Artist in order to only further connect with these remembrances of times past. “The older I get the more affected I am by the responsibilities that my age requires and holding onto that youthful spark is like chasing too few fireflies without a net,” says Simkins. “I am lucky…

Astronauts arriving at the Mir space station and later at the International Space Station have been offered small packets of bread and salt, a traditional Russian welcoming ceremony. The tradition is also common in European and Middle Eastern cultures. David Ligare has painted the Greek tradition of xenia, gifts of hospitality, in his still lifes. Still Life with Fruit and Pot was an offering to the public by Hirschl & Adler Modern as it welcomed people to its new location in the Fuller Building in Manhattan, New York. Its opening exhibition was appropriately titled Bread & Salt. Ted Holland, artist manager and exhibition coordinator at the gallery, says, “We wanted to open our new space with a show that highlights and welcomes new beginnings. Titling the show after housewarming traditions…

Artists stretch proportions to new limits in the upcoming exhibition Epic at Robert Lange Studios, as they present works that are their largest creations to date. The show, opening with a reception on May 4 from 6 to 8 p.m., is a journey for each of the artists to push their artistic abilities in paintings ranging from lands and citys to surrealistic worlds. Measuring 48 by 36 inches is Endurance by Brett Scheifflee, who had initially painted the lone tree landscape as a 10-inch square work. “While painting this, I remembered stories such as the Dyatlov Pass mystery in Russia, the terrible fate of the Donner Party and my own memories of winters in Colorado,” he says. “In the high country, there is an eerie silence when the wind stops…

As a child, Robert Clark was infatuated with horses. He would go on to a career painting many of the best racehorses in the world. Former Jockey Club president Dinny Phipps once said that Clark was the only artist in North America he would have paint his horses. He went on to also partner with racing historian and author Edward Bowen on the book A Brush with Greatness: The Art of Racing from 2000 to Triple Crown that profiles 79 Grade 1 winners. In the book, which documents 15 years of horse racing history, Clark’s artwork colorfully brings to life Bowen’s words. The book is also a chronicle of the artist’s portfolio, which includes every Kentucky Derby winner since Fusaichi Pegasus in 2000 up to American Pharoah’s Triple Crown. Owners,…

Artist Carol Jenkins believes “Paintings are like a window that can transport you to another place in time.” Places and things in everyday life inspire her, as she wants to express the feelings they evoke. She says, “I love painting outside in nature, immersing myself in the landscape [and] capturing the atmosphere and mood of the day. There’s a certain grace and beauty that I see in the forms of the trees and clouds and all the harmonious colors around me and the sparkle of sunshine in the ripple of a stream. I want to communicate these things with a few strokes of my brush—-not all the details—-but the feel of the light and energy of the day.” Jenkins is often inspired by street scenes and alleyways because there are…