Sadie Valeri - Pewter Pitcher

Raised in Salem, Massachusetts, Sadie Valeri graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in Illustration in 1993. Travel has been fundamental to Sadie's development as an artist ever since she lived in Paris for six months as an art student attending Parsons Paris. Since then she has traveled to Greece and Italy in addition to many trips back to France. All of her travels are art trips, focused on visiting the artistic masterworks of the world. Since October 2006 Sadie has recorded every aspect of her artistic development on her blog. Sadie lives in San Francisco, California with her husband and their three orange tabby cats.

Mia Araujo - Two Spirits

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Mia has long been fascinated by stories and characters, and the multi-faceted complexity that makes each person unique.

Mia believes that all individuals contain an entire universe within them, which is invisible to the naked eye. Her work concentrates on giving shape to the unseen forces within her subjects — their thoughts, memories, emotions, and complex histories. It is these qualities that fit together to form a vast, rich inner-landscape of identity and mythology for her characters.

Mia draws inspiration from everything, but especially fairy tales, performance art, vintage photography, music, literature, animation, and world cultures.

In May 2007, Mia graduated as valedictorian from Otis College of Art and Design, with a BFA in Illustration and a minor in Creative Writing. The 23-year-old currently shows her work in prominent pop-surrealist galleries across the US. Her work has been published in Spectrum, Society of Illustrators LA, and the Creative Quarterly.

Pieter de Hooch - Interior with Women beside a Linen Chest [1663]

Two women are standing in front of an open linen cupboard. They are putting the ironed linen away. Their clothes are elegant. The girl is wearing a shiny jacket and a trimmed petticoat. The lady of the house is dressed in a fur-trimmed jacket. The women have turned their skirts under to stop them getting dirty. In the open doorway a small child is playing with a kolf stick (a sort of hockey stick) and a ball. Kolf was a typical boy’s game in the seventeenth century. The child is therefore a little boy, despite its dress. Furthermore, he is also wearing a typical boy's collar with square corners.

Everything in the picture tells us that this is the house of respectable people. The house has more than one room for a start. Furthermore, the linen chest is a real showpiece. The arched panels on the doors and the ebony decoration indicate that the cupboard was made in around 1650. The same cupboard and the figure of Perseus above the door also appear in another painting by De Hooch from 1658. Pieter de Hooch made this painting soon after he had moved to Amsterdam from Delft. At this time he began to paint more opulent interiors than he had in Delft.

Billy Morrow Jackson - 3:30 pm [1971]

Of his work, Billy Morrow Jackson (Kansas City, Missouri, 1926 – 2006) said he liked to do paintings that function on more than one level. He painted prariescapes, cityscapes, and figurative works, often implying social commentary. Jackson was also a printmaker and mural painter. He received a Bachelor or Fine Arts degree from Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri in 1949, and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 1954.

[Oil on fibreboard, 106.4 x 122.3 cm]

Gallery Announcement

I have received an email from an old friend of mine - hope you can help:

Hello all. On 17th July I am running just a mile to raise money for Myeloma UK, the charity that does such good support work for Myeloma sufferers like myself. They are only a small charity and their Patron is Maureen Lipmann, whose husband Jack Rosenthal (of Londons Burning fame) died of the disease. I hope you can help, my target is £500, and I'm well on the way to that. The company I work for has also agreed to put in some money, and how much depends on how much I can raise. You can donate on the link below and also look at the donations so far. I will be running on my Club's track with the Junior section, who will no doubt want to beat me, and no doubt will!!

I hope you can help.

Best Regards - Pete

http://www.justgiving.com/MacrunnerPete

Kevin Peterson - The Devide III [2008]

Born in 1979 in Elko, Nevada, Kevin Peterson has made Texas his home since 1996. He has degrees in Fine Art and Psychology from Austin College. Using a painterly and precise technique, Peterson’s paintings speak the same language as early to mid 20th century work that glorified the American experience, yet with a 21st century edge. The palette is lush and used to underscore the sometimes dark subject matter. “My work deals with isolation, loneliness and longing teamed with a level of optimistic hope,” says Peterson. He continues, “This work deals with the idea of rigid boundaries, the hopeful breakdown of such restrictions, as well as questions about the forces that orchestrate our behaviour.”

See: http://www.texascollaborative.com

[Acrylic and oil on canvas, 48 x 60 inches]

Joy E Roma - The Dressing Room

Joy E. Roma The Dressing Room, originally uploaded by Art & Vintage.

Caravaggio - The Cardsharps [c.1596]

The painting shows an expensively-dressed but unworldly boy playing cards with another boy. The second boy, a cardsharp, has extra cards tucked in his belt behind his back, out of sight from the mark but not the viewer, and a sinister older man is peering over the dupe's shoulder and signalling to his young accomplice. The second boy has a dagger handy at his side, and violence is not far away. The psychological insight is equally striking, the three figures bound together by the common drama, yet each with his own unique play within the larger play - for if the innocent is being duped, the other boy is no older, another innocent being corrupted even as he cheats his opponent.

Henry Bacon - Beach at Etretat [1881]

Henry Bacon (Haverhill, Massachusetts, 1839 – Cairo, March 13, 1912) was an American painter. During the American Civil War, he enlisted in the Union Army and acted as a field artist while he served as a soldier within the 13th Massachusetts Infantry. Badly wounded at Bull Run, he was discharged on 19 December 1862. In 1864, he went to Paris, with his first wife Elizabeth Lord, to study figure painting. He was admitted to the National School of Fine Arts and was one of Alexandre Cabanel's scholars.

Domenico Ghirlandaio - Portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni [1488]

Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449 – January 11, 1494) was a renowned Florentine Renaissance painter whose contemporaries included Botticelli and Filippino Lippi. Among his many apprentices was Michelangelo.

Ghirlandaio's compositional schemes were simultaneously grand and decorous, in keeping with the 15th century's restrained and classic experimentation. His chiaroscuro, in the sense of realistic shading and three-dimensionalism, was reasonably advanced, as were his perspectives, which he designed on a very elaborate scale by eye alone, without the use of sophisticated mathematics. His colour is more open to criticism, but such evaluation applies less to the frescoes than the tempera paintings, which are sometimes too broadly and crudely bright. His frescoes were executed entirely in buon fresco which, in Italian art terminology, refers to abstention from additions in tempera.

Ghirlandaio died of pestilential fever and was buried in Santa Maria Novella. The day and month of his birth remain undocumented, but since he died in early January of his forty-fifth year, he most likely did not reach that birthday. He had been twice married and left six children. One of his three sons, Ridolfo, also became a noted painter. Although he had a long line of descendants, the family died out in the 17th century, when its last members entered monasteries.

Daniel F Gerhartz - Her Favourite Place

Born in 1965 in Kewaskum, Wisconsin, where he now lives with his wife Jennifer, and their young children, Dan's interest in art emerged as a teenager. Studies at the American Academy of Art in Chicago, Illinois and his voracious appetite for museums and the modern masters such as John Singer Sargent, Alphonse Mucha, Nicolai Fechin, Joaquin Sorolla, Carl von Marr as well as a host of other French and American impressionists have inspired him. His paintings are sensitive yet evocative creations, which dramatize his bold and ambitious technique. He is at his very best when he allows himself to explore the surface in a free and painterly manner, while retaining his sense of other worldliness.

See: http://www.danielgerhartz.com

Sergej Glinkov - Port au Prince [2008]

Sergej Glinkov’s work mostly consists of oil painting, but also includes drawing, watercolour and collage. His most recent works are the result of an artistic journey embarked upon in Kiev, the city of his birth, and continued in Venice, the city that adopted him. One of the central themes is the human figure interpreted as matter that is physically embodied through time. The spatial quality of Glinkov’s work is both figurative and anti-figural.

[Oil on burlap, 90 x 150 cm]

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes - Hope

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes - Hope [c.1872]

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (December 14, 1824 – October 24, 1898) was a French painter, who became the president and co-founder of the Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts and whose work influenced many other artists. He was born Pierre-Cécile Puvis de Chavannes in Lyon, Rhone, France, the son of a mining engineer, descendant of an old family of Burgundy. In Montmartre, he had an affair with one of his models, Suzanne Valadon, who would become one of the leading artists of the day as well as the mother, teacher, and mentor of Maurice Utrillo. His work is seen as symbolist in nature, even though he studied with some of the romanticists, and he is credited with influencing an entire generation of painters and sculptors.

Wassily Kandinsky - Orientallsches

Wassily Kandinsky was born in Moscow, on December 4th, 1866. It wasn't until 1896 that Kandinsky decided to seriously study art. The sudden change in his life had been triggered by his interest in the work of Monet, an artist who's work has had a profound impact on many others. Kandinsky was fascinated by the impressionist artist's style, as he had never before seen paintings which weren't meant to perfectly imitate reality. Kandinsky studied in Munich, under Anton Azbé, sketching, anatomy and life drawing. He then studied under Franz von Stuck, then moved on to found and the avant-garde Phalanx Exhibiting Society, and write about art. His administrative skills served him well as director of the Phalanx Exhibiting Society, while his writings about spirituality had prepared him for his works about colour theory. Wassily Kandinsky continued painting until his death, on December 13th, 1944.

[Colour woodcut, 125 x 190 mm]

Lorser Feitelson - Genesis #2 [1934]

A painter, Lorser Feitelson (Savannah, Georgia, 1898 - Los Angeles, California, 1978) became known for abstraction but briefly explored mural painting of regionalist subjects. In his signature work, Feitelson used many images and symbols that evoke dreams and address the subconscious mind. He was a key figure in modern art in California at a time when that area had little exposure to avant-garde styles of which he explored a variety including Surrealism, Cubism and Kinetic work.

[Oil on fibreboard, 102.1 x 121.8 cm]

Vincent van Gogh - Branch of an Almond Tree in Blossom [1890]

In January 1890, Vincent van Gogh’s work at last began to attract some attention. The critic Albert Aurier made him the subject of a long, rather overblown but insightful article, “Les Isoles: Vincent Van Gogh”, in the journal Mercers de France, and the avant-garde Belgian group Les Vingt invited him to exhibit at their show in Brussels.

Theo sent them a number of Vincent’s paintings, which stirred up some controversy: a Belgian painter, Henri de Groux, denounced them and as a result was almost involved in a duel with Van Gogh’s friend, Toulouse-Lautrec. At the exhibition itself, Van Gogh made his first sale in the public world of exhibitions and auctions: the painter Anna Boch, sister of the ‘poet’ whose portrait he had painted at Arles, bought The Red Vineyard for 400 francs.

Two months later, ten of his paintings were shown at the exhibition organized by the Salon de Independents. This was in no sense a popular success, but it represented a significant degree of recognition by his fellow artists. Pissarro and others examined the canvases by Van Gogh stored in Paris at Pere Tanguy’s; Gauguin wrote from Pont-Aven to congratulate and praise him.

Van Gogh’s reactions alternated between pleasure at becoming known and a masochistic rejection of it. In any case, his personal affliction was more immediately important. After three months of good health, two quite mild attacks in December 1889 and January 1890 led him to hope that he was beginning to get better. Then, at the end of February, he had a devastating seizure, worse than anything before, in which he tried to poison himself by swallowing his paints.

Significantly, this occurred shortly after Joanna van Gogh, wife of Vincent’s brother Theo, gave birth to a son. Almond Blossoms by Vincent Van Gogh was sent to Joanna as a form of congratulations from Vincent to celebrate the event.

Gerrit van Honthorst - The Matchmaker

Gerard van Honthorst (November 4, 1592 - April 27, 1656) was a Dutch painter of Utrecht. He was brought up at the school of Abraham Bloemaert, who exchanged the style of the Franckens for that of the pseudo-Italians at the beginning of the 16th century. Honthorst's works are numerous, and amply represented in English and Continental galleries. His most attractive pieces are those in which he cultivates the style of Caravaggio, those, namely, which represent taverns, with players, singers and eaters. He shows great skill in reproducing scenes illuminated by a single candle, amply employing the style of chiaroscuro. But he seems to have studied too much in dark rooms, where the subtleties of flesh colour are lost in the dusky smoothness and uniform redness of tints procurable from farthing dips.

Francesco Hayez - Susanna Al Bagno [1850]

As the story goes, a fair Hebrew wife is falsely accused by lecherous voyeurs. As she bathes in her garden, having sent her attendants away, two lusty elders secretly observe the lovely Susanna. When she makes her way back to her house, they accost her, threatening to claim that she was meeting a young man in the garden unless she agrees to make love to them. She refuses to be blackmailed, and is arrested and about to be put to death when a young man named Daniel interrupts the proceedings. After separating the two men, they are questioned about the details of what they saw, but disagree about the tree under which Susanna supposedly met her lover. The false accusers are put to death and virtue triumphs. The story was frequently painted from about 1500, not least because of the possibilities it offered for a prominent nude female. Some treatments emphasize the drama, others concentrate on the nude; a 19th century version by Francesco Hayez (National Gallery, London) has no elders visible at all.

Emilio Baz Viaud - Self-Portrait of the Adolescent Artist [1935]

Emilio Baz Viaud, Autorretrato del artista adolescente, 1935, originally uploaded by kraftgenie.

Born in Mexico City, Emilio Baz Viaud (1918 – 1991) was a little known painter whose work has only just started to be evaluated by experts. He studied architecture but was always interested in painting, and was a pupil of the artist Manuel Rodríguez Lozano, who guided him along the path to his real vocation as an artist. He did not give an individual exhibition until 1951, although he was featured in several collective exhibitions together with such eminent artists as Siqueiros and Diego Rivera. His meticulous technique in "trompe-l'oeil" style, achieved by applying oil paints to a dry surface, was praised by his colleagues and critics of the day, who unanimously compared his verism with the brushwork, to that of the great Renaissance masters such as Dürer and Boticelli. In the seventies he went through a period of abstract painting, but he is mainly known for his work done before 1955.

Juan Gris - Bananas

José Victoriano González-Pérez (March 23, 1887 – May 11, 1927), better known as Juan Gris, was a Spanish painter and sculptor who lived and worked in France most of his life. His works are closely connected to the emergence of the innovative artistic genre of Cubism, creating several of the movement's most distinctive works.
Born in Madrid, he studied mechanical drawing at the Escuela de Artes y Manufacturas in Madrid from 1902 to 1904, during which time he contributed drawings to local periodicals. From 1904 to 1905 he studied painting with the academic artist José Maria Carbonero. It was probably in 1905 that José González adopted the more distinctive pseudonym Juan Gris.

At first Gris painted in the analytic style of Cubism, but after 1913 he began his conversion to synthetic Cubism, of which he became a steadfast interpreter, with extensive use of papier collé. Unlike Picasso and Braque, whose Cubist works were monochromatic, Gris painted with bright harmonious colors in daring, novel combinations in the manner of his friend Matisse. He died in Boulogne-sur-Seine (Paris) in the spring of 1927 at the age of forty, leaving a wife, Josette, and a son, Georges.

Gabriel Metsu - The Old Drinker [c.1658]

On this minuscule panel, measuring just 22 x 19.5 cm, Gabriël Metsu painted with minute detail this everyday scene of an old man with his Gouda pipe and his pewter jar leaning on against a beer barrel. The old drinker looks rather the worse for wear; he sags rather than sits on the chair as he peers through his watery eyes, his chin unshaven, his collar open and his cap askew. Metsu presents the man with a direct honesty and realism that is not in fact harsh; the smile and the friendly eyes of the old drinker lend a certain sympathetic quality. In the seventeenth century, there was a belief that smoking and drinking in excess accelerated the aging process. Paintings of 'old drinkers' are often a reference to this idea. This work is perhaps a warning to avoid excessive indulgence in alcohol and tobacco.

Metsu shows the details of the drinker's surroundings with great finesse: the pewter jug, the felt buttoned coat, the fur trimming of the cap and the German stoneware pitcher. Beside the pitcher is a slate on which the number of beers is chalked up. The sign of a red deer is painted on the keg, a rather vague detail against a brown background. This was the trademark of the Amsterdam brewery 't Roo Hart (Red Deer). Around 1650 Metsu lived on Prinsengracht, near this brewery. The deer is a subtle aside in which the painter has quietly advertised his neighbour's business.

Rembrandt - The Jewish Bride [1667]

An elegantly dressed man and woman are in a vague, dark room. The man has lovingly placed his arm around the woman's shoulder and a hand on her breast. Very carefully she touches his hand with her fingertips. Both are staring straight ahead, they seem deep in thought. A few objects can be recognised in the obscure background: beside the woman is a plant in a pot and behind her an architectural fragment. The picture, called the 'Jewish Bride', was painted by Rembrandt in 1667.

It is fascinating to see how Rembrandt has employed different techniques in this painting. He has alternated broad strokes with fine lines, thick marks with dry, bristly strokes. The faces and hands have been quite smoothly painted, whereas thick clods of paint have been applied to the canvas for the clothing. In the thick layers of paint on the sleeve the print of the palette knife Rembrandt used to apply the paint is clearly visible. This is how he gave his canvases relief, a characteristic of Rembrandt's later work.

Maurice Lobre - Cabinet De Toilette De Jacques Emile Blanche [1888]

Maurice Lobre (1862 - 1951) was a French artist. He was born in Bordeaux and died in Paris. Lobre first gained recognition in the late 19th Century when his work was displayed at the Salon du Champ de Mars. In 1888 he received an honorary mention and a travel grant from the Salon. That summer he traveled to Normandy where he stayed with Jacques-Émile Blanche. By the this time, Blanche regularly hosted popular artists. Degas and Whistler were among his most prominent guests. When Europe descended into chaos in the summer of 1914, Maurice Lobre helped depict its atrocities.

J Theodore Johnson - Chicago Interior [1933-34]

The warmth from the radiator is almost palpable in this painting, contrasting with the snowy city seen through the window. The distinctive blue-tiled tower of the American Furniture Mart identifies the setting as Chicago, where artist J. Theodore Johnson (Oregon, Illinois, 1902 – Sunnyvale, California, 1963) and his wife, Barbara Salmon Johnson, came to attend an exhibition of the artist's work shortly after they had wed in New York in December 1931. The artist lovingly portrayed his beautiful young wife reading in their hotel room. The warm browns, yellows, and oranges raise the visual temperature, heightened further by hot touches of red in the drapery and in Mrs. Johnson's lips, cheeks, magazine, and chair. A heavy fur coat laid to dry by the radiator shows that Mrs. Johnson has recently come in to escape the frigid winds from Lake Michigan. Her husband was one of many artists who participated both in the Public Works of Art Project and in later Federal Art Projects.

[Oil on canvas, 71.2 x 86.4 cm]