This painting by Tessa Nicole features a new kind of pointillism using just one palette knife. There is something about this style that fascinated me.
I saw this painting at the Scottsdale Ferrari Art festival last year. Tessa paints some beautiful landscape themes and you can see examples of her work on her website. Her work is beautiful.
Santiago Michalek is an artist who paints images that tend to stir feelings, memories and nostalgia. Many of his paintings feature vintage automobiles, especially Volkswagens along with trains that have the look of yesteryear.
This painting makes the rugged mountains the star with the train playing a supporting role. It stirs a feeling adventure and danger.
Santiago Michalek lives in Highland Utah and his paintings are featured in several galleries. I saw this painting at the Celebration of Fine Arts in Scottsdale.
I saw this painting three years ago at the Arizona Fine Arts Expo and it immediately grabbed my attention. I love the abstract nature of the painting and the bright colors all while beautifully depicting a handsome horse. This painting is the work of Lexi Sundell an artist known for her bright colors and layers of acrylic paint. Lexi lives in Montana with her husband who also happens to be an artist. She began her career painting mostly flowers but in 2012, a dream inspired her to make animals the theme of her works.
You can check her website and see many other wonderful paintings.
When I first saw this painting I immediately thought it looked like Palm Springs California but I later found out the artist is living in Tucson Arizona so it could easily be a scene from Tucson. The painting is called "The Green Car" and it was painted in 2018 by Andy Burgess.
Burgess is a British artist who now lives in Tucson. He calls his work "Pop Geometry" and is known for his abstract depictions of modernist architecture. He was born in London England the son of actor John Burgess and his wife Lana. He studied political science at the University of Leeds and actually interned for a Labour Party member, Jack Straw. However, he started taking night classes in art and switched his interests to the art studies.
He says he was inspired by artists like Piet Mondrian, David Hockney and Edward Hopper. I can certainly see a resemblance to the work of all three of those artists.
I found this painting at the Phoenix Art Museum.
The unusual nature of this piece is what caught my eye. It's the work of John Baldessari (1931-2020).
Baldessari was based in the Santa Monica area of California and he became known for art created using found photographs and appropriated images.
He worked in print making, film, video, sculpture and photography. "Brain Cloud" to the left, is a photographic print
This piece was on display at the Laguna Beach Art Museum back in 2019.
Back in 2016 I saw an exhibit of the works of Peter Krasnow a Los Angeles based artist known for his abstract wood sculptures and modernist paintings. Many of his pieces featured repeating patterns, something I have always found attractive.
Krasnow was born in Ukraine in 1886 and emigrated to the United States in 1907. He graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1916. His paintings and drawings were often based on Hebrew calligraphy and other subjects related to his Jewish heritage.
The exhibit this painting was included in was at the Laguna Beach Art Museum.
I did a post on my Phoenix Daily Photo site about this painting last year after I saw it at the University of Arizona Art Museum in Tucson. I immediately fell in love with the painting. The artist is Minda Hess who was born in 1906 and that is pretty much all that I've been able to discover about her. A search found three other paintings attributed to her that appear on auction sites but I can find no biography of the artist herself. Even her date of death is unknown. It's like she simply disappeared.
The painting is called "Le Grande Place" and it was painted in 1958. The highest recorded price ever paid for one of her paintings was $1,000. This particular painting was a gift to University Museum.
I simply love the painting and feel it deserves another appearance. I just wish I knew more about the artist.
I stood in front of this painting for quite a long time. There was just something about the way she was staring back with such an unexpected and self-assured look. It was tinged with just a touch of mischief. This painting was on display at the Courtauld Gallery in Somerset House in London. It was part an exhibit of paintings on loan from the Barber Institute of Fine Arts at the University of Birmingham.
The painting is a portrait of Countess Golovina and was painted in Moscow by the French artist Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun. Another artist I had not heard of before however after reading about her, I'm not sure how knowledge of her had escaped me. During her years on this earth she painted 660 portraits and 200 landscapes in addition to many uncatalogued works in private collections around the world.
Early in her career she painted several portraits of Marie Antoinette which opened a door to elite society and a vast social circle that spanned several countries. I have to say that her Wikipedia page is one of the longest I've ever encountered. She has paintings in the Louvre, Hermitage, the National Gallery in London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to name just few.
I love this quote from the Barber Institute's website "Countess Golovina sweeps up her shawl and looks at us with startling candor". What a perfect description.
In the future, I will be looking for Vigee Le Brun paintings whenever I visit major art museums around the world.
"Farm at Waltendlath" is a painting by a little known English artist named Dora Carrington (1893-1932). Carrington learned art from an early age and was encouraged by both her parents and her teachers. It wasn't until the 1970's that her work started to be appreciated. In 1978, the then director of the Tate Museum said Carrignton was "the most neglected serious painter of her time".
Reading about her, I feel like she was one of those people who should have been born in another time. If you are interested, you can read more about her here.
The painting above shows a farm in Keswick in the Lake District of England. Carrington spent a summer holiday near there. I found the painting at the Tate Britain in an exhibit featuring little known English artists. The serenity of the scene appealed to me.
This portrait of a young Maori dancer was painted by New Zealand artist Gottfried Lindauer. Lindauer was born in what is now the Czech Republic but he moved to New Zealand in 1874. Once there, he made a business of painting portraits of Maori people detailing their facial tattoos. A series of these paintings featuring chiefs and warriors was shown at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition by Sir Walter Butler. The Prince of Wales saw this painting of the young girl and was drawn to it so much so that Butler gave the painting to the Prince.
That explains how it ended up in an exhibition at the Kings Gallery at Buckingham Palace and where I saw it and admired it too. You can feel a certain warmth and confidence in her attractive face.
