Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2020 i American Art Collector

Transforming Coachella Valley into an art oasis in the desert this February 13 through 17 is the 9th annual Art Palm Springs. Each year, the art fair attracts thousands of collectors, curators and designers to the region. Coinciding with Modernism Week, the 2020 rendition will bring a plethora of modern and contemporary works from nearly 80 galleries to the Palm Springs Convention Center. Among the featured exhibitors are Arcadia Contemporary, George Billis Gallery, Nancy Hoffman Gallery, Caviar20, Adamar Fine Arts, Melissa Morgan Fine Art, ARTMIX, Peter Blake Gallery and Modern West Fine Art—to name a few. “Each year we look forward to coming to Art Palm Springs in February—it’s such a fabulous time of year to be in the desert,” says Leah Steinhardt, Art Palm Springs group show director. “The…

In Renaissance Italy, art patronage gave merchant bankers the appearance of royalty, which didn’t exist in the Republic of Florence. It also enabled artists to create many of mankind’s masterpieces. Patrons commissioned buildings, paintings and sculpture for public places and work for their private enjoyment. They often invited the artists into their palaces to live and work. Nearly always, the commission was something to suit the patron’s wishes. This element of patronage gave rise to negative interpretations of the practice, connoting the superiority of the patron and the inferiority of the recipient. Enter the “matronage model” espoused by the IBEX Collection. Since 2013, German businessman and art connoisseur Albrecht von Stetten and his co-collectors—Kiki Kim from South Korea and David Willson from Australia—have traveled the world and assembled a group…

Vast and varied, the state of California has an abundance to offer when it comes to the fine arts. There are flourishing metropolises that have dedicated themselves to their cultural districts, while other smaller towns have local art scenes that are not to miss. Museums and annual events also keep visitors flocking to the state, and the multitude of terrains—mountains and beaches—inspire the artists who call it home. Los Angeles is one of the most dynamic spots in California, having established itself as a go-to city for events, museums and galleries. One of the longest running events is LA Art Show, a contemporary and modern art fair that brings together dealers from around the world for a weekend of art. This year’s event, taking place at the Los Angeles Convention…

When we are children one of the first writing implements that we pick up is a colorful crayon—often scribbling it on paper, across coloring books and sometimes, to the chagrin of parents, walls. These sticks of wax captivate our attention as we can draw out and color in images in a multitude of ways; the opportunities are endless and open up our imaginations. From there, some of us continue down an artistic path and later in life become artists. For artist Ben Steele the humble art tool has become one of his most constant muses. “Crayons are part of the core, image-wise, of what I’ve been doing for the past 15 years. Generally most of my pieces—like 24 Surreal Colors, with a Magritte crayon box—has the art history or pop…

Arcadia Contemporary is hard to miss at LA Art Show. “We have eight booths. I’m not sure if we’re the largest but it sure feels like we’re the largest,” says gallery owner Steven Diamant. “It’s a big space and when you walk in you feel like you’re on this island. It’s a huge undertaking, but it pays off otherwise we wouldn’t do it year after year—17 in total.” At this year’s LA Art Show, which takes place February 5 through 9 at the Los Angeles Convention Center, Arcadia will be showing more than 100 new paintings and drawings from some of the most popular and successful realist artists working today. Artists include Malcolm Liepke, Tim Rees, Daniel Bilmes, John Brosio, Katie Whipple, Casey Childs, Shaun Downey, Alex Venezia, Aron Wiesenfeld…

Principle Gallery in Alexandria, Virginia, hosts the Washington Society of Landscape Painters show, exhibiting works from artists who are part of one of the oldest active art organizations in the greater Washington metropolitan area. Artists in the upcoming show include Web Bryant, Lisa Egeli, Brenda Kidera, Christine Lashley and Sara Linda Poly. An oil on panel by Kidera, Tranquility, is a top-down scene of water flowers and lily pads over a serene pond. “The gardens and wildlife on my property provide endless inspiration for my work. Tranquility is a bird’s-eye view portrait of one of my lily ponds,” Kidera says of the piece. “It is an enjoyable interplay of dramatic light, shadows and reflections. With the exception of a very small area, no green pigments were used. I worked on…

“I was raised in New York and have lived in New England since 1978. My first art experience was reluctantly agreeing to paint with my mother on a rainy vacation day in February of 2016. That was a life-changing experience,” says artist Debbie Mueller. Within a matter of months after first picking up a paintbrush, her commitment to becoming a fine artist was forged, and she has set out to make up for lost time. As a resident of the Seacoast Region of New Hampshire, Mueller, a practicing OB/GYN, can readily take advantage of the beauty that surrounds her, painting landscapes from the rural portions of Northern New England, the rocky coast of Maine, the boats in the many harbors and the location that inspires her most: Monhegan Island. Her…

Artist Ginny Page, who lives in Denmark, says her artwork often combines surrealistic, narrative or decorative elements to create stories—personal or otherwise—that are either sensitive and melancholic or playful and quirky. Her interests include still lifes and life-size portraits, which allows her to draw on a traditional approach. “Inspiration is in abundance and the list is endless,” Page says. “I especially love to observe the natural world in all its beauty at close hand. I find great joy in watching butterflies, birds, bees and insects busy at work in my own little garden of paradise. I also collect antique glassware, hand-painted vintage porcelain, pewter and lace plus many other natural objects such as feathers, bird skeletons, insects and seashells to gather inspiration for my paintings.” Her latest still life paintings…

Subscribers get direct monthly access to America’s best traditional fine art in their mailbox AND on our homepage. You can even buy single issues to read right on your screen. Choose the Print + Digital magazine OR the Digital magazine only. Both have identical content that you can read on the screen of your PC, tablet or smartphone at any time. Either way you can navigate from story to story and see all the beautiful new paintings available for you to collect. PRINT AND DIGITAL 1 YEAR $36 (US$49 CAN) | 2 YEAR $68 (US$96 CAN) AVAILABLE IN NORTH AMERICA ONLY DIGITAL ONLY 2 YEAR $38 ONLY $20 1 YEAR SUBSCRIPTION AVAILABLE WORLDWIDE Preview New Works Coming Up for Sale and Special Sections that Focus on Different Art Subjects and…

Mary Chiaramonte grew up on a farm in West Virginia with no TV or other distractions and instead relied on her imagination and observation of the world to entertain her. This has permeated into her paintings, which through figures “offers a provocative daydream, communicating both the human disposition and the mysteries therein.” In 2018 she began working on pieces that “mimic the idea of double exposures in photography,” such as one of her newest iterations, Our Very Own Secret Hideout.…

Matthew DiVittorio spent time on the East End of Long Island when he was growing up and spent summers there during college breaks. Today, he and his partner live in a home on 2 acres that reflects the natural history of the island and is the site of ongoing projects to create habitat for local fauna from water turtles that lay their eggs in June to a “pet” seagull. “I was having a barbecue one day and a piece of chicken fell on the floor,” he relates. “I looked up and saw a seagull on the roof and tossed it up to him. He never stopped coming back. Now he knocks on the door and dances around until I open it and feed him from my hand. “When I would…

As collectors of figurative realist paintings, and as sponsors of a prize for women figurative painters, we must stay current with the contemporary art market. As one effort to do this, we annually attend Art Week during December in greater Miami. In the first week of December 2019, we saw as much as we could during this frenetic, whirlwind gathering of gallerists, dealers, collectors, artists and beautiful people from all around the world. The United States is host to categorically incredible art fairs but, for sheer volume and breadth, Miami Art Week is the place for modern and contemporary art. Anchored by the flagship show, Art Basel Miami Beach, which takes over 500,000 square feet of the cavernous Miami Beach Convention Center, and surrounded by 17 “satellite” shows scattered across…

Nathaniel Currier published Frances Flora Bond Palmer’s lithograph American Winter Scenes: Morning in 1854. At that time, James Merritt Ives was his bookkeeper. In 1857, Ives became a full partner and the firm of Currier and Ives was born. The company produced thousands of hand-colored lithographs in unlimited editions ranging from 20 cents to $6 each. Palmer (1812-1876) produced over 200 of the company’s scenes although her name doesn’t appear on all of them. She and her husband were commercial illustrators in London and moved to the U.S. in 1844. A critic once wrote that her work had “a boldness and freedom not often exhibited by a female pencil.” Palmer’s output included her famed winter scenes and ranged from floral still lifes to smoky locomotives. Commenting on the popularity of…

The bold and undeniably eye-catching acrylics of Arizona-based artist Claudia Hartley will be on view at an upcoming exhibition at Bonner David Galleries in Scottsdale, Arizona. From Sunrise to Moonrise, which will feature a new body of work from Hartley, runs February 6 to 18 with an artist reception the first day from 6 to 9 p.m. Having spent most of her life in Atlanta, Hartley began her art career working with oils, painting trees, gardens and portraits of people and pets in what she describes as a more impressionistic style. Nowadays, however, she lives in the Cottonwood and Sedona area of Arizona and has shifted her attention toward acrylics after oil paints began to affect her health. “After I moved to Phoenix, I wanted an excuse to be outdoors…

Growing up, Lisa Alonzo dreamed about one day becoming a veterinarian, librarian or cake decorator. Unbeknownst to her younger self, she would instead go on to become an artist. Although she has since traded cake for canvas and frosting for acrylic paint, much of the methodology for Alonzo’s works of art mirrors that of a cake decorator. Using her own variation of the impasto technique, she begins her confectionary-like creations by applying acrylic paint to panel through a pastry piping bag. She then builds up the work, layer upon layer, color upon color. Hand-mixing her paint to create the perfect shade, each batch is a one-of-a-kind creation. Because of this, Alonzo generally has two to three works “baking” at the same time. The result? A highly detailed, scrumptious array of…

Black history is a living history, one that is added to with each new experience, story or milestone. History takes time to form, but the layers add up quickly. Eventually the layers tell their own stories. Those layers will be celebrated with the exhibition A Time and A Place — The Layers of Black History at RJD Gallery in Bridgehampton, New York. The exhibition, which opens February 16, smack in the middle of Black History Month, will feature the work of three prominent black artists: Florida watercolorist Dean Mitchell, Jamaican oil and mixed media painter Phillip Thomas and Georgian oil painter Stefanie Jackson. Each of their works is uniquely different, and their artistic voices have a texture and timbre that is exceptional to each of them. For Mitchell, he uses…

6 LOS ANGELES, CA LA CONVENTION CENTER LA Art Show Los Angeles’ largest and longe-strunning art show celebrates a milestone of 25 years showcasing contemporary international art from some of the most prominent galleries of today. www.laartshow.com Through February 9 7 FEB 2020 SCOTTSDALE, AZ SCOTTSDALE WATERFRONT 9th annual Scottsdale Waterfront Fine Art & Wine Festival The Scottsdale Waterfront is transformed into a festival of juried art, fine wine, food and music. www.thunderbirdartists.com Through February 9 8 BOSTON, MA MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON Personal Space: Self-Portraits on Paper Traditional self-portraits by major artists like Käthe Kollwitz and Jim Dine are on view along-side experiments in the genre. www.mfa.org Through June 21 13 PALM SPRINGS, CA PALM SPRINGS CONVENTION CENTER Art Palm Springs Postwar and contemporary artwork arrive in Palm Springs during…

The city of Los Angeles is getting ready for one of its biggest years in art. Not only will 2020 mark the milestone 25th anniversary of the internationally renowned LA Art Show, but also it is being touted as the year of the city’s “largest lineup of art and cultural programming.” Kim Martindale, who founded the show with the Fine Art Dealers Association, has anticipated this moment and the wave of collectors who buy art in the West Coast city. “Twenty-five years ago when I began the LA Art Show, there weren’t any big art fairs here,” says Martindale. “This is one of the most creative cities on the planet, and I always hoped that we would become a major arts capital. I felt it was important for the city…

Painting often captures a singular moment in time. What happens, however, when an artist wants to explore something more abstract? When they want to move beyond a static image to a sequence of events? How do they capture that idea on a two-dimensional surface? In the new exhibition SHIFT at Susquehanna Art Museum, director of exhibitions Lauren Nye pairs the works of Tiffany Calvert and Alex Kanevsky to show how artistic confines can be broken. As the museum explains, “The visual disturbances created by each artist shift the viewer’s perceptions of classical forms. The human body, nature and architecture are reimagined with a contemporary style that references technology and the persistent passage of time.” Both artists paint recognizable subjects—including still lifes and the human form—but abstract the images to formulate…

Of his aerial cityscapes, Joel Babb says, “There is a sense of detachment in a broad view like that—so that one doesn’t think of individuals on the street, or being in the city, but one sees the city as an organism with a life of its own…You think of the passage of time, and from the distance the city and all its inhabitants seem like part of the pattern of nature.” His views of Boston were originally captured from a helicopter. Most recently he has sketched from the top floors of the city’s tallest buildings. Church and State, Boston from the Harvard Club is a view from the 38th floor of a building in downtown Boston overlooking a large chunk of its history. People may not be visible but their…

Bennett Vadnais approaches the streets of Baltimore as masses of forms that he captures in often-monochromatic sketches that serve as his references back in the studio. If he remains unsure of a particular detail or light condition, he will return to the site at the same time of day to experience it again. When he painted in New York, his subjects were far away, but in Baltimore his access to the buildings is more intimate. His skies are featureless to bring more attention to the light on the structures themselves. In his painting Brewers Hill, the buildings are massed against the sky as shadows begin to work their way up their sides. The shadows give him the opportunity to portray the shifts in color that occur as the light recedes.…

Italian portrait artist Gianni Strino always tries to tell a story in each of his paintings. He focuses on the emotion that speaks through the person’s face and soul, as well as their relationship with the outside world, such as nature or animals. Throughout February, Lotton Gallery in Chicago will present his newest paintings of women and children. Painting a child, he says, is a different experience than painting an adult because of how light hits the subject and how they express the world around them. Children seem to have a freshness and wonderment “that is impossible to find in the face of an adult,” Strino explains, while adding that he tries to find moments of his own childhood in each of those paintings. Among Strino’s latest are works that…

“I’m all about the light. I enjoy painting the effects of the light in the landscape, rather than merely recording the literal image,” says Barbara Jaenicke. A favorite subject for the artist is snow, which she says provides her with plenty of spectacular light effects. In 2015, she convinced her family to move from Atlanta to Bend, Oregon, so she could have more opportunities to paint snow, as well as plenty of other amazing scenery. “Although I often enjoy zooming into an image to capture the nooks and crannies of the landscape, I’m also inspired by the broader mountain vistas,” says Jaenicke. Her style is impressionistic, as she enjoys capturing a moment in time in an edited, painterly style. As an artist, her goal is to leave many areas of…

Traditional and contemporary elements have been T influential to Bay Area artist Julia Albo, with her goal being to blend the past and the present with her techniques. Subjects on her canvases range from heavily patterned still lifes to portraits and statues. “I have a series of paintings inspired by my time visiting the National Archaeological Museum in Naples, Italy,” she says. “Both the frescos from Pompeii as well as Roman sculptures had a strong impact on me. I use molding paste to make the surface of the painting look like a crumbling fresco in an effort to blend the past with the present.” One such work is Anxiety I, which shows one of the famous statues from the area. Her other series of paintings, including the works Oranges and…