Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2024 i American Art Collector

Welcome to the April issue of American Art Collector! This issue will appeal to collectors of all tastes with so many genres and events to choose from. We begin with previews of two top national art shows. First, Oil Painters of America’s National Juried Exhibition of Traditional Oils taking place in Wichita, Kansas, from April 5 through May 31 at Mark Arts. The richest of mediums, oil paint has an unparalleled ability to create the most vivid images while retaining softness. You can see works by a selection of the 200 artists in the show beginning on Page 36. The entire exhibition can also be viewed online on both the OPA and Mark Arts websites. International Guild of Realism, another significant organization in the world of representational art, is presenting…

Subscribe today to get the best contemporary American art magazine in the country, and the only monthly magazine that highlights the top artists, galleries, museums and fairs throughout the art market. Need proof? The proof is in your hands. Flip through this stunning issue to find the most thorough coverage of the contemporary realism genre through: » Previews of all the biggest gallery shows, art events and sales. » Destination guides for the hottest art markets. » Special genre sections to expand your collecting power. » 12 issues a year, each one presenting work from the top artists and the rising newcomers… and everyone in between! Join our huge community of subscribers s who have chosen American Art Collector as their go-to trusted source for everything they need to know…

The state of Texas is massive, both in physical size and in what it offers. It’s the second largest state after Alaska, divided into four major geographic regions: the Gulf Coastal Plains, Interior Lowlands, Great Plains, and the Basin and Range Province. Each of these areas have provided endless inspiration to artists, both past and present. Not only impressive in sheer scale, the Lone Star State is teeming with life—and so is its art scene. One of the most vibrant, unique cities in Texas is undoubtedly Austin. With an incredible arts and music scene, Austin is known for its creativity. The city is home to the famous Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin—as well as Big Medium, an Austin-based non-profit organization dedicated to supporting visual…

Once Lynn Boggess has set up his portable studio in the wilds of West Virginia, he begins painting as if he were Nature herself. He skims his white canvas with an aggressively applied dark violet ground and, painting wet on wet with cement trowels, he begins pulling basic colors down over the surface. From the chaos of form emerging from the dark, he says, “I start to make sense of it, bring it under control and refine it so it has a beauty to it.” The environments he chooses to paint are not pristine. “There is litter and trash,” he says. “You can’t go anywhere without seeing people abusing the environment. The plein air painter has to become hardened. You have to force yourself to see past those things—which can…

In 2021, Seth Tane sold the earthquake-resistant steel home he had built in Portland, Oregon, and bought a three-story, 300-ton liftboat—once used to service oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico—that was sitting in a shipyard in Louisiana Cajun country. After 14 months getting it ready, he motored Legs III around the tip of Florida and up the East Coast to New York, jacking the boat up on its “three legs” at various places along the Hudson, until landing in his current spot abutted against the busy commuter rail station of Riverside. This is only the latest adventure for Tane, now 71, in an exciting lifetime of them. The native New Yorker split his time between the City and Portland for many years and, older pieces like Lost Stop from…

Portrait Society of America’s annual Art  of the Portrait conference is the fullest expression of the organization’s mission “to foster and enhance an understanding of the practice, techniques and applications of traditional fine art portraiture and figurative works.” Their focus is educational in nature with the aim to improve the aesthetic and technical knowledge for artists of all skill levels. Curated to be an educational, inspirational and communal experience, the Art of the Portrait Conference brings together leading artists in the field of portraiture and figurative work, as well as aspiring artists, art suppliers and collectors. The 26th annual event will take place April 25 through April 28 in Atlanta at the Grand Hyatt Atlanta in Buckhead. This year, the conference faculty is comprised of 27 award-winning and nationally recognized…

As riotous blossoms finally burst forth from the fallow soil of winter, the arts scene also sees a vibrant revival countrywide. It’s not quite as romantic as witnessing it in nature but I see it in our Excel sheets as they expand to contain the content that grows exponentially as we near spring. There are more gallery shows. More art fairs. More national juried exhibitions. More plein air everything. You are holding the proof in your hands. The April issue of American Art Collector is a big magazine, packed with fresh content curated to get you as feverish about art as you are to get outside. Once a year, we broaden our scope beyond contemporary realism to include a special feature on modern art. When we realized how many galleries…

This past December, sculptor Mardie Rees unveiled a new commissioned work for Saint Anne Hospital in Burien, Washington—a likeness of their namesake patroness. Saint Anne, the mother of the Virgin Mary, was regarded to have the eternal presence of a grandmother full of devotion and wisdom, and is the patroness of unmarried women, housewives, grandmothers, mothers and educators. Virginia Mason Franciscan Health (VMFH), who commissioned the work, were aware that Rees sculpts from live models and proposed that their own Sister Anne (her name a fortuitous coincidence) model for the piece. “Anne McNamara is one of the Sisters of St. Francis to whom can be attributed the founding of many hospitals in the Puget Sound region,” says Rees. “Now 80 years old, Sister Anne has served the Franciscan Health community…

For his very first one-man show, hosted by New York’s Arcadia Contemporary, artist Mark Pugh presents roughly 20 fresh paintings that showcase his impressive technical and narrative abilities. As the title of the show suggests, The Girl and the Empty Mailbox and Other Stories, the overarching theme of Pugh’s new work involves a storybook anthology, while asking the viewer to craft their own interpretation. “Each painting tells its own little story, but rather than offer a complete narrative for each painting, I wanted to give just enough so that the viewer can formulate their own interpretation, completing and personalizing the stories themselves,” Pugh explains. “I mostly use children as subjects in my work, although I tend to juxtapose them with deeper, more mature themes.” The artist shares that paintings Girl…

“Architecture is not only a response to one’s spatial needs, but also a response to the surrounding environment of the time,” says realism painter Danny Heller. The California artist paints in a photorealistic style—clean and sharp. “The goal with my artwork is to capture and share how innovative midcentury design was and how relevant it still is,” he says. “By capturing things realistically, I act as sort of a documentarian—I want to communicate that these places and ‘scenes’ are all real.” A forthcoming exhibition at George Billis Gallery will be showcasing new paintings by Heller featuring various examples of architecture from in and around the New York City area. The show opens with a reception on April 4 from 6 to 8 p.m. and remains on view through April 27.…

Kristin Moore now has a new category to add to her portfolio of place-driven works. For her latest paintings, she has expanded her geographical reach beyond California, Texas and Nevada to zoom in on New Orleans, and its captivating architecture, history, lush landscapes and air of mystery. Moore found inspiration for her paintings of the American West during the many long drives between Los Angeles and her home state of Texas during graduate school. “A lot of it stems from wander-lust, nostalgia and the like,” says Moore. “Decompressing between semesters, I’d stop in places like Marfa. Take in the cities from a distance—taking in a place from a car or airplane window feels safe somehow. It’s kind of becoming my habit of how I see the world and I incorporate…

For 26 years, the American Impressionist Society has offered its artist members opportunities to reach a wider audience and advance their art practice through engaging exhibitions and events. Opening on April 25, AIS presents another edition of its Impressions: Small Works Showcase—featuring 150 impressionist works in varying painting mediums, hosted at a new location. “AIS works diligently with gallery owners to provide them with high caliber exhibitions,” explains Liz Ahrens, AIS executive director. “Rarely do we exhibit at a gallery more than once, so we are excited to be partnering with Anderson Fine Art Gallery. The stunning natural beauty of the Golden Isles on the shore of Georgia will provide our artists with remarkable scenery and settings to paint as our opening week includes a Paint Out for any AIS…

Beginning in late March and running through June 2, the Pastel Society of New Mexico (PSNM) presents its 32nd annual Enchanted Colors exhibition at the historic Millicent Rogers Museum, located just outside of Taos in El Prado, New Mexico. This year’s event received more than 250 submissions from which esteemed jurors Gwenneth Barth-White, Nancie King Mertz and Laura Pollak selected 65 works to be in the physical show. These pieces and at least another 40 of equal caliber that were submitted for the digital platform only, will be on view simultaneously online. After evaluating the paintings on display in the museum, judge of awards Heidi Marshall will select the paintings she believes show exceptional artistic merit, and divvy up the $10,000-plus in cash and sponsorship awards accordingly. The winners will…

Auctions have long been staple events in the worlds of Western and historic art, and now works of contemporary realism—in the style of what we cover in American Art Collector—are increasingly showing up among the lots in sales hosted by preeminent houses like Sotheby’s, as well as smaller, boutique operations nationwide. Larsen Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona, specializes in auctions of contemporary art, which they define as works created after 1945. At 10 a.m. Mountain Standard Time on Saturday, April 20, Larsen Gallery will open up its Spring Auction to registered bidders. This twice-annual sale features contemporary paintings, sculptures and limited edition graphics by international and national artists, living and deceased. In addition to pieces by big name Southwest artists such as Billy Schenck, Howard Post, Fritz Scholder and Allan Houser,…

A walk along a certain stretch of Manhattan’s Park Avenue has become an art experience. From 46th Street northward to 57th Street, the lobbies of giant block-long, 1960s-era corporate skyscrapers feature artworks that beckon not only to passing pedestrians, but just as importantly to the people who work in the buildings every day. For those 11 city blocks, passersby experience a variety of mostly flashy, digital artworks through tall, glass lobby windows. The ceiling, for instance, at 250 Park Avenue, presents a constantly changing digital scene by David Niles of birds in flight, views of the solar system and the sole perspective of a basketball player’s strides, an effect that acts almost like a kinetic Sistine Chapel ceiling. Up the street at 280 Park Avenue, a 20-foot pink sculpture, BFF,…

What constitutes modern art is a subjective determination. Perhaps less so is what falls into the category of abstract art, but even that, like all art I would propose, is a a matter of personal opinion. One individual might look at a Jackson Pollack and see clouds and faces and other forms in his poured paintings, while others might see nothing more than a random splattering of paint. With that in mind, and for the sake of this special section, our definition of modern art lies on a spectrum that ranges from the blurry edges of the representational to the more clearly abstract—works that lie outside the bounds of this magazine’s focus on contemporary realism. Here, through the works of top artists working in the genre and their galleries, we…

Painter Jhina Alvarado teaches at a San Francisco high school named after modernist sculptor Ruth Asawa. One might assume she teaches painting in the art department, but she teaches courses that couldn’t be much further away from blank canvases and palettes full of oil paint—AP calculus and algebra. She sees this as an opportunity, not a hindrance. “Because it’s an arts school, the students spend about half the day in their discipline—theater, arts, music—and then the other half studying the other subjects. I have students who are incredibly creative, so it’s rewarding to show them how important it is to be smart in the arts and then also math and science. And I get to show them that lesson by being a working artist myself,” she says, adding that whenever…

For his solo show, Light, Texture, and Emotion, hosted by Blue Rain Gallery in Santa Fe, Matthew Sievers unveils approximately 15 new landscape and tree paintings that have helped him explore and express his emotions. “[These pieces are] a celebration of life’s simple pleasures and profound connections, where every brushstroke is infused with the warmth of shared memories and the promise of new beginnings,” Sievers explains. The artist confesses that his recent divorce has been a huge influence on his decision to integrate more emotion into his work, and it even inspired a slight change to his already bold mark-making and layering process for which he uses only a palette knife and a squeegee. “It has opened up large, expressive scrapes and pushing paint to a turbulent space before I…