2015 In Good Company catalog

&Company

Quidley

Fine Art

In Good Company

&Company

Quidley 38 Newbury Street Boston, MA 02116 617.450.4300

Fine Art

26 Main Street Nantucket, MA 02554 508.228.4300 www.QuidleyAndCo.com

inquiries@quidleyandco.com

385 Broad Ave. South Naples, FL 34102 239.261.4300

“The artists I’ve known... they’ve wanted something that would hit your eye, the way Titian hit your eye. Or Velasquez. Or Goya, or Ingres, or Delacroix. And when I say hit your eye, I don’t mean that they had spectacular innovation or anything… You like it, that’s all, whether it’s a landscape or abstract. You like it. It hits you.”

Clement Greenberg, American essayist and art critic (1909-1994)

Dear Collectors and Friends, Welcome to another season at Quidley & Company Fine Art! Each spring we publish a new catalog in order to highlight the very latest from a selection of our most well-known, sought-after artists, as well as from a few artists I have more recently discovered. I am often asked how I choose artists for representation by the gallery and it occurs to me it may be just as simple as Clement Greenberg remarks: I see something in a piece and I like it, it hits me. One of the best parts of my work is the opportunity to provide others with this same experience.

This past winter brought with it a number of changes. It is with much sadness that I note the passing of Michael Keane (1948-2015), a talented marine artist who shared his gift with art lovers and collectors for more than 30 years. For the last decade it has been a joy and a privilege to mount frequently sold-out solo shows of his exquisite seascapes, and I am grateful to have had the good fortune of calling him a friend. In the wake of that loss, however, the 2014 spring season brought with it an opportunity to expand our reach and offerings to both longstanding and new art lovers and collectors in Florida--this fall Quidley will open a new gallery in Naples, Florida.

This spring I realized that the number of Quidley artists under the age of 40 is at an all-time high: six of our artists were born post-1977, a year that included, among other events, the introduction of the first generation of mobile phones! Among this group and new to the gallery is Shawn Huckins, an artist whose representational work not only reflects a preoccupation with the Internet and other modes of communication in contemporary culture, but is injected with a healthy dose of humor. Also new to the gallery is Stephen Coyle, another representational artist who finds inspiration in the everyday objects and the people he is surrounded by, expressing the extraordinary in the depiction of the ordinary.

While Quidley & Company continues to exhibit paintings by the foremost land- and seascape and contemporary realist artists working today, we are also excited to introduce you to new artists. With much to engage and entice you in the gallery, my hope is that some of this work will hit you too, and you will like it just as much as I do.

Chris Quidley

David Graeme Baker (American, b. 1968) David Graeme Baker was born in 1968 in Cape Town, South Africa and grew up in Pennsylvania. After earning a BA in fine arts from Wesleyan University, Baker graduated from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, following in the tradition of Thomas Eakins and other American Realists. He is a figurative painter who has been living in coastal Maine with his wife, Sarah, and their two young sons since 2000. The artist explains that his paintings are the result of a lengthy process of collecting and cataloging narrative and visual ideas around a theme. Clearly influenced by his family and surroundings, Baker’s paintings are emotionally evocative in their depiction of local settings and interior scenes of domesticity. Though his wife and children often serve as models, as a piece progresses the artist remains open to inspiration from varied sources, including art history, literature, photography, popular media and music. Baker has explained that often as he works a seemingly random snippet or idea will cause a burst of discursive thought that is eventually layered into his thinking about the painting; as the work progresses there is a consideration of multiple narrative possibilities and modifications to the image. The result is a transformation of the personal into the archetypal. Baker endows humble interiors and the lives that are lived in them with a mysterious sense of dignity and purpose. The precision and lush detail evident in Baker’s paintings transport the viewer beyond what is merely observable into a deeper experience.

“The narrative painter is like a novelist, he must explore the psyche of the characters in order to give them credibility. The outcomes, rather than clean, iconic meta-images or narratives, are paintings with more purposefully modest, tangled, personal threads that function as springboards for empathetic contemplation. The resulting paintings are a mix of reality, memory, and fiction.” - David Graeme Baker

Town Hall 22” x 45” oil on canvas

Sean Beavers (American, b. 1970) Sean Beavers attended the School of Visual Arts in New York on scholarship where he received a BFA in fine arts and graduated with the Rhodes Family Medal for outstanding achievement. Creating artwork has been Beavers’ focus and expressive outlet since childhood. The artist was drawn to the New England coast a decade ago; he now resides in Southern Maine and teaches painting at the nearby New Hampshire Institute of Art and at the University of New Hampshire. Beavers’ technical virtuosity and keen sense of composition and design are demonstrated by his recent work, which includes hyper-realist still lifes and landscapes. His trompe l’oeil paintings of exquisitely rendered fruit depicted within rustic boxes tempt the viewer to reach in to touch the objects; his mastery of light and color creates a feeling of transcendence in his seascapes.

Beavers designs and handcrafts many of his frames, lending the work a truly sculptural quality.

“When I study something in nature there is a connection or understanding that I can’t describe, the beauty just moves me... I am trying to create through the language of light, color and space. I think of my work as symbolist. The subjects of my paintings usually represent something other than the objects themselves, like dreams, desires, frustrations, spirit, emotions, whatever I’m thinking about at the time.” - Sean Beavers

Have You Forgotten 40” x 24” graphite and acrylic on paper

Philip Buller (American, b. 1954) Born to diplomat parents, Philip Buller spent his formative years in vastly different cultures in India, Africa, Washington DC and New England. The young artist was encouraged by his family to explore his creativity in a variety of areas, and Philip developed an avid interest in music and visual arts. He studied graphic design, toured as a musician, and worked as a builder before formally studying painting and drawing at the California College of Arts and Crafts, where he received his MFA in 1994.

Buller’s representational paintings are devoid of historical references, transcending literal narratives and signifying universal themes. Compositionally intriguing, his paintings at first glance present a visual chaos of patterns and figurative elements. Upon closer inspection, however, they resolve into a sometimes dense layering of forms and figures, some distinct and detailed and others merely hinted at with lush, summary brushstrokes. His compositions cohere as a result of the dynamic relationships between forms and color, and by a rhythmic quality that pulses across the canvas. Buller’s paintings are executed in part by utilizing a technique that involves painting directly onto metal screen mesh, which is then applied directly onto the canvas, transferring the imprint of the mesh along with the image itself. The process, which has its roots in printmaking and reflects the artist’s background in graphic design, allows Buller to marry traditional subject matter with a more modern technical approach.

Buller explains, “I apply paint, remove paint - creating and obscuring forms. A form must be fully realized before it can be obscured. The ambiguity of a blurred image often encourages me to reach below a literal interpretation of form.”

Water’s Edge 68” x 80” oil on linen on panel

Matthew Cornell (American, b. 1964) Matthew Cornell was born in Fairfield, California in 1964. His first memories are of traveling by car across the United States, trips which profoundly affected his way of seeing and representing landscape and nature. After graduating from California State University at Long Beach with a BFA, Cornell moved east focusing on portraiture for a number of years in Florida and Kentucky. He eventually experienced a shift away from figurative painting, and began exhibiting his landscapes at art fairs across the country where he garnered an impressive number of prizes, including five Best of Show awards. Over time, the atmospheric effects created by light and weather became the dominant influence on his landscapes. Cornell’s current work is small in scale, rich in detail, emotionally evocative. His new streetscape paintings are closely observed, faithful renderings of nighttime scenes, painted largely in situ in the artist’s own neighborhood. Cornell’s personal experience of the quiet suburban streets he depicts imbues his paintings with a sense of intimacy. The moody canvases are illuminated by pools of light surrounding a single streetlamp, and punctuated by the glow of windows of darkened houses.

Cornell continues to explore his relationship to nature through his art. “I have always loved the ocean... the essence of creation and destruction, a concept that permeates a lot of my paintings. Maybe there is a rhythm to the waves that connects it to your own rhythm. The crashing waves on the shore like a heartbeat. It is about balance... equilibrium... The ocean reaches for us and we reach for it. When we get close enough, it literally pulls us in. Maybe that is why I paint waves.” - Matthew Cornell

Bonfire 12.5” x 12.5” oil on panel

Stephen Coyle (American, b. 1956) Currently residing in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, Stephen is a representational artist who finds inspiration in the everyday objects and the people he is surrounded by, expressing the extraordinary in the depiction of the ordinary. Stephen was born in Waltham, Massachusetts in 1956. It wasn’t until he was 22 and living in Los Angeles that he began to draw, and soon after, to paint. He studied at Parsons School of Design and has shown extensively both in California and New England since the early 1980s. His award-winning paintings in alkyds are unique in their personal vision of the quotidian. The focus of his paintings is the stuff of his everyday life: beds, roadways, kitchen tables, cars, tricycles, ironing boards. Perceived through his personal experience and portrayed on canvas, Coyle endows each element in his compositions with a place of importance and an historical significance.

“Spending a day at the beach is comparable to spending a day at the zoo. The way we observe the wildlife at the zoo is akin to the way we slyly observe one another at the beach. I want these paintings to be a summation of humanity through our poses, and gestures. The beach is where we are closest to our natural state at birth: naked and vulnerable. The spacing between each figure and each figurative grouping is important.

The space and distance between us are where the stories are told. The beach paintings are an examination of us as we walk, crawl, run, crouch, and lie upon the earth. The beach is humanity’s anthill. The building paintings echo the emotions of those that live within and the phone paintings symbolize the loneliness of the human experience.” - Stephen Coyle

Old Milwaukee 22” x 28” alkyd on canvas

William R. Davis (American, b. 1952) William Davis was born in Somerville, Massachusetts and grew up on Cape Cod. He is a self-taught artist who spent the early part of his career as an art dealer and collector of 19th century American works. Inspired by the artists he was collecting, he began painting full time and in 1983 he had his first show and began exhibiting his work in solo and group shows across the country. From the start, Davis’ work reflected his deep admiration for and influence by the 19th century American Luminists James Bard, Martin Johnson Heade, Antonio Jacobsen and Fitz Hugh Lane. He continues to use many of the techniques traditionally used by these painters to realize his personal vision. In 1987, Davis made history with the first one-person show ever mounted at the prestigious Mystic Maritime Gallery in Mystic, Connecticut. Over the course of his career Davis became enamoured of plein air painting, partly influenced by his friendship with artists Joseph McGurl and Donald Demers with whom he painted in various New England locations.

Since that time, Davis has enjoyed a national reputation as a preeminent contemporary marine artist. His work has been featured in books and in well-regarded publications, and he is the recipient of numerous awards and honors. Davis continues to be inspired by the natural beauty of his native Cape Cod’s pristine coastlines, and by the forests and mountains of northern New England.

In a tribute to Martin Johnson Heade he wrote for the magazine American Artist, Davis refers to sunset as “the hour when night usurps day,” observing that this is the “best time of day for painters to capture the ‘inner state’ of a landscape” and represents “an unequaled opportunity to sensitize the eye to the delicate mysteries of light and shadow.”

Transfering the Catch 10” x 20” oil on canvas

Shaun Downey (Canadian, b. 1978) Shaun Downey spent his childhood in Oshawa, Ontario and is a graduate of Sheridan College’s interpretive illustration program. After high school, he enrolled in Angel Studios, a classical drawing and painting school headed by painter Michael John Angel. A student of the great Italian painter Pietro Annigoni, Angel also headed a school in Florence, Italy. While in college, Downey studied at the Academy of Realist Art in Toronto. Downey’s first show at the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition in 2003 was a critical success, and he soon moved to Toronto’s west end, showing at several group exhibitions around the city. In 2010, his painting Blue Coco was selected for exhibition in the BP Portrait Award, an annual show held in June at the National Portrait Gallery in London, England.

Blue Coco was one of about 50 paintings selected from over two thousand entries to this prestigious exhibition. Downey acknowledges, “It is a great honour to be a part of such an important exhibition, important both for myself and for the increased appreciation of figurative painting in general.” In May 2011 Downey had his first solo show at the Engine Gallery in Toronto.

Influenced by the great painter/storytellers of the past, including Vermeer and Norman Rockwell, Downey strives to breathe fresh life into Realist painting by infusing images from his own life with classical ideas and modern cultural references. He currently resides in Toronto with his wife and fellow painter Kelly Grace.

Red Room 39” x 72” oil on canvas

Flick Ford (American, b. 1954) Born in Atlanta, Flick Ford was raised in Westchester County, New York. He fell in love with fishing at age five. His father, an accomplished fly-fisherman and talented commercial artist/ copywriter, instilled in him a deep respect for nature and nurtured his early creativity.

Throughout the 1960s and 70s Ford fished the northeastern United States and Quebec, while pursuing two other passions: music and art. He took formal watercolor classes and figure drawing and graphic design classes before studying art at Evergreen State College in Washington. Ford moved to New York City in 1978 and dove into the audio/visual scene of independent film, video, underground publishing, cartooning, illustration; and he reconnected with music.

He left New York in 1993, heading for the Hudson Highlands where he quickly became obsessed with fishing the New York City watershed. Ford began painting the fish he caught, striving to capture their “iridescent beauty.”

He fishes more than one hundred days a year and ties his own flies. Along with painting, Ford is a talented musician and graphic artist. His love of angling and the natural world has led him to specialize in fine art paintings of fish. Flick Ford’s work has been published in two recent bestselling books, Fish: 77 Great Fish of North America (Greenwich Workshop Press, 2006) and Big: The 50 Greatest World Record Catches (Greenwich Workshop Press, 2008).

“We live in a time when our few successes with riverine rehabilation must be tempered by our failures to protect our waters overall. If we do not act quickly to reverse our follies in water management for the benefit of all living things we will perish along with the fish we cherish.

“I’m hoping that viewing the breath-taking beauty of these creatures as portrayed simply in the style I employ will strike a sympathetic chord with all who view them.” - Flick Ford

Shortfin Mako 40” x 100” watercolor

Scott Fraser (American, b. 1957)

Lemon Fall 51.5” x 66” oil on canvas

Scott Fraser is a nationally-known still life artist who combines the traditional with the contemporary. Born in the Chicago area, he grew up making frequent visits to the Art Institute of Chicago, and eventually attended the Kansas City Art Institute from 1976-1979. Following continued studies at the University of Colorado at Denver in 1983-84, Fraser spent a year enrolled in a program at the Atelierhaus in Worpswede, Germany. During his time abroad he started to develop his own vision as he studied works by artists such as Anselm Kiefer and Joseph Beuys. Fraser remains a passionate student of art history; sprinkled throughout his compositions are visual references to artists and artistic styles that may reach back 500 years to the Dutch masters, or be as recent as works by American modernist Georgia O’Keeffe. He pushes traditional still life paintings into the post-modern era by rearranging classical tableaux in contemporary settings, often with quirky juxtapositions, or dark or subversive humor—though his works radiate a particular luminosity expressed through the artist’s palette and the surface quality of the paintings. His still lifes frequently feature objects with personal or autobiographical meaning, from his grandfather’s favorite chair to Goldfish crackers (his children’s snack of choice when they were toddlers).

Fraser has exhibited in group and solo museum shows around the country and his work can be found in major private and museum collections nationwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of New Mexico in Santa Fe and the San Diego Museum of Art. He lives outside Denver with his wife Bronwyn, also an artist, and their two children. “Often I feel like an outsider realist,” Fraser says.

“This is a conscious choice. There are two camps, and I have a foot in each of them. One represents the desire to revive the traditional painting of the old masters and embrace beauty and craft, while dismissing everything post-1913 Armory show. The other camp is modernism and all its forward-moving, don’t-look-back trappings. This is the more forceful of the two. It is fast-paced, born of concept, theory, influence, and high-stakes bidding.”

Tracey Sylvester Harris (American, b. 1966) Raised by two professional artists--her father was a commercial graphic artist and her mother was a popular impressionistic painter—T.S. Harris’s art career began at an early age. Harris’s parents moved to California when she was a teenager and opened an art gallery featuring her mother’s work. Far from being an “easy in,” Harris worked hard to create an artistic identity separate from her parents’ and to hone the quality of her paintings to earn an invitation to exhibit in the family gallery. Since that time Harris has been represented by galleries nationwide, exhibiting in group shows from San Francisco to New York City. Solo exhibitions of her work have been held in New York, and on the west coast in Carmel and her hometown of San Luis Obispo.

Harris’s recent series, entitled “Lost Holiday,” was inspired by a candid photograph of a woman from the 40s or 50s that the artist discovered on line. She was struck not only by the subject matter and composition, but by a sense of identification with the idea of the woman herself, in spite of the gap of almost two generations. The resulting painting was the beginning of Harris’s self-described obsession with bridging the past and present.

“The exciting challenge is to keep the paintings relevant and current even though the subjects come from another era.

To avoid sentimentality, I keep the compositions bold and cropped, the paintwork loose, drippy and rough, even pushing some areas into abstraction... The large format paintings of beach, poolside and travel portraits express a bit of California glamour, they also carry hints of nostalgia and contemplation.” - T.S. Harris

Wahini Flower 30” x 24” oil on canvas

Greg Haynes (American, b. 1980) Greg Haynes is an oil painter based outside of Boston, Massachusetts. He graduated from the Hartford Art School in 2003 with a BFA in photography. His highly rendered works are modern day still life paintings featuring mundane household vessels such as pitchers, bottles and jars. The artist often includes, contained within these vessels, everyday objects--buttons, coins, candy--with all their charm and idiosyncrasies.

Haynes presents his subject matter at a larger-than-life scale, depicted at close range with extraordinary detail, precision and verisimilitude. His compositions are tightly cropped, zooming in on textures, surfaces, and the play of light and shadow that, while utterly and convincingly portrayed, surpass mere mechanical representation of form. Haynes’ paintings read as portraits; his objects express a life of their own, projecting their unique personalities and characteristics, and compelling the viewer to look more closely, explore more thoroughly.

Greg explains his current interests: “For the past few years I’ve been working with a number of themes that involve the reflections and visual distortion that various objects create.

Glass and metal are two of the predominant materials of choice. I like the idea that you can achieve natural effects that play tricks on the eye. A successful painting to me is one the really engages the viewer and makes them stop to figure out everything that is happening within the plane of the canvas.

That is one of the great things about art, you can spend years on one idea and still have many different directions to take it in. Whether it is graphite or oil paint, realism is a style that has interested me throughout my life. It is certainly not a new form of expression but no doubt one that I have just begun to explore.” Greg Haynes’ work has been exhibited internationally and is in private collections around the world.

Three in One Oil Co. 56” x 40” oil on panel

Shawn Huckins (American, b. 1984) Shawn Huckins was born in New Hampshire, and received his BA in studio art from Keene State College, graduating magna cum laude in 2006. Huckins was first introduced to painting after inheriting his grandmother’s oil painting set at the age of nine. As an adult, his exposure to the arts has taken a route through studies in architecture and film, and included a stint living on the other side of the world (at the University of Wollongong in New South Wales as an exchange student in 2004.)

Eventually Huckins gravitated back to painting, and has taken inspiration from a wide range of styles and movements, from 18th century American Neo-Classical painters to 20th Century Pop artists. His work reflects his preoccupation with a contemporary discourse on American culture as he explores the new American Frontier—the Internet. Using historical paintings and photography from the 19th century, including images of Native Americans, Abraham Lincoln, and Civil War heroes, Huckins recreates classic works for the 21st century.

He transposes the language of Facebook, Twitter, and texting onto his replicated paintings, folding history upon itself in hilarious juxtapositions for a series called “The American __ tier.” Huckins explains that he usually starts with a painting, meticulously copying historical works. He then places his text over the finished canvas, picking from a collection of found tweets. His work addresses the evolution of communication, from families on the frontier who wouldn’t hear from relatives for weeks on end to the instantaneous interaction of a text message. It also speaks to the evolution of language, elevating words like “selfie” and “LOL.” Huckins currently lives and works in Denver, CO.

Sunrise on the Matterhorn: Laughing Out Loud, Duh 40” x 32” oil on canvas

Donald Jurney (American, b. 1945) Donald Jurney was born in Rye, New York, in 1945, and was educated at Columbia University, the Pratt Institute, and the Art Students League. Nearly thirty years ago, he began his career with a one-man show at a temporary gallery space—the first of some twenty sold-out solo exhibitions. Over the years, Jurney has lived and worked in the Hudson River Valley, England, and in the Berkshires in western Massachusetts, and has painted extensively in France and the West of Ireland.

His work is firmly rooted in the great plein air landscape tradition. The overall effect of Jurney’s paintings is serenity and beauty, though close observation reveals an expert handling of paint; with sure skill he combines dry brush, impasto, and glazing techniques. The artist’s process typically begins on location, with a pencil sketch; back in the studio, Jurney begins to bring the painting to life. Guided by intuition, he might place a stroke of lively orange, scumble a highlight across the surface of a lake, or create a dense matrix of delicate green brush strokes that coalesce into a tree in full leaf. Bearing the impression of the particular setting in which they were conceived, Jurney’s paintings are a summons to celebrate the poetry of the everyday beauty of nature.

The artist now lives and maintains a studio on the North Shore of Boston where he continues to focus on sharing his distinct and inspiring vision of the landscape.

“Often a painting is a conversation between disparate shapes and forms, ... here brilliant, there disguised---in a carefully-conceived dance of light. This may be a celebration of a place, perhaps, or an investigation of an evanescent mood.

For the viewer who has both the time and inclination to really look, one hopes to afford, by way of a painted surface wrought of subtleties, the opportunity to explore at leisure the wonder of the world in which we live.” - Donald Jurney

Schooner Days 30” x 36” oil on canvas

Oriana Kacicek (American, b. 1986) Oriana Kacicek burst onto the contemporary realist art scene with still life paintings which are intimate in scale and immense in impact. Presented in sumptuous detail against a contrastingly minimalistic background, her primary subject matter is a “foodie’s” dream: mouthwatering examples of ice cream cones, berries, and the cocktail hour’s most popular libations precisely depicted, and often in highly saturated color.

With extraordinarily tight brushwork and an impressive facility for capturing her subject’s smallest nuance--the sheen on a chocolate-iced donut, the glistening droplet from a freshsqueezed lemon on a plump, raw oyster--Kacicek brings a wide array of objects to life on the canvas.

Born in 1986, Pennsylvania native Oriana Kacicek spent her early years in a nurturing environment of great art, dance, music and literature. Inspired and encouraged by her mother, also a painter, she began painting and drawing at the age of one and continued the practice throughout her teenage years.

She trained for her career as a ballet dancer at the School of American Ballet in NYC, performing on the New York State Theater and Metropolitan Opera House stages, and continued to perform as a professional at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. During a trip to Europe and the Netherlands, hours spent at the Louvre, Musée d’Orsay and the Rijksmuseum inspired Oriana to return to painting as a career. Influenced by the light and color of the European Impressionist and Dutch painters, her hyper-realist style is infused with wit and energy. Oriana describes her philosophy of art: “I’ve discovered that all art forms are fundamentally the same; they are about revealing truth and beauty, demand the utmost in time and attention, and must be grounded in good technique. I aspire to create paintings that are full of joy, color and light.” With work in numerous private collections across the country, Oriana is inspired by the growing demand for her paintings, and continues to refine her technique and expand the range of her subject matter.

Powdered Jelly Donuts 16” x 12” oil on panel

Patrick Livingstone (Irish, b. 1956)

Butterfly Effect 22” x 29” oil on panel

Patrick Livingstone was born in Lurgan, Ireland, in 1956. He spent all his childhood summers in Donegal, in the thatched cottage of his maternal grandparents, literally a stones throw from the sea. His grandfather was a lobster fisherman, and this early connection with the sea left a lasting impression.

Livingstone began his painting career at the tender age of four, and was enormously encouraged by the reaction of his mother, to his somewhat immature efforts. This led to Livingstone practicing his watercolor technique to a degree not usually seen in one so young, with the aim of astonishing his parents further. He sold his first painting at the age of twelve, and immediately spent the money on a set of oil paints.

His art teacher instilled a solid sense of composition and design, but it was the renowned landscape artist Cecil Maguire, who guided Livingstone through his early years as an oil painter, inspiring a love of classical technique. To this day Livingstone uses only the finest ground pigments and best quality linen canvas, using layers of glazing and scumbling to develop the luminous depth and richness in his work. Moving to London at the age of nineteen, Livingstone realized that the art schools of the day seemed only to encourage work of an abstract nature, and knew he would have to continue his training alone. He did this by spending hours in both the National Gallery of London and in the Tate, studying the techniques of the old masters.

After five years of this study, supporting himself by various occupations ranging from publishing to house painting, Livingstone’s talent was recognized by Christies Contemporary Art and London Contemporary Art, who went on to publish over sixty of his watercolours over the next ten years, in a series of limited edition prints which have long sold out. His first major commission was to paint all seven of the marine paintings which hang in the boardroom of Visa’s European headquarters in Chester, England.

In recent years he has moved to the southwest of France, where he lives with his wife Regine and daughter Sophie, in an old stone house surrounded by vines, close to the port of Bordeaux. It is here he has built his most recent studio.

Lu Cong (American, b. 1978) Lu Cong was born in Shanghai in 1978 and immigrated to the United States at the age of 11. After graduating from the University of Iowa in 2000 with degrees in biology and art, he moved to Denver, CO after deciding to pursue portrait art rather than medicine. In 2002 Lu enrolled at the Denver Art Students League, focusing his studies on life drawing, and has exhibited his work at that arts venue for the past decade.

Lu’s early works were large and sensational; though they were painted with exaggerated melodrama and pathos, the artist’s keen insight and sensitivity towards his subjects were nonetheless evident. Between 2003 and 2007, Lu was recognized by a number of art publications as a notable emerging artist.

Since then, the artist has developed a distinctive look that many have described as an original approach to figurative realism. Lu’s style pays homage to 18th century Romantics, yet is unmistakably conceived in and relevant to the contemporary era. His portraits do more than simply capture the physical and emotional state of the subject; they establish the complicated psychological interactions that ensue when one comes face to face with the sensual, inexplicable, and unsettling. Today Lu is considered one of the distinctive young artists working in America.

“As my life and my art progress, I have come to cherish and kindle that familiar sentiment I have always felt since I was a boy; it is the longing for something that can never be fully obtained, but only vaguely hinted in the portraits that I try to make.” - Lu Cong

Makena #9 36” x 36” oil on panel

Jeremy Miranda (American, b. 1980) Jeremy Miranda is a painter based in the seacoast area of New Hampshire. His work ranges from loosely painted narratives on paper to more heavily worked, atmospheric compositions on canvas. He is interested in the landscape and how people control, fetishize and dwell within it. Miranda was born in 1980 in Newport, Rhode Island. He began his art studies at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and went on to receive his BFA in 2004 from the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston.

Miranda works almost exclusively in acrylic paint on panel and canvas. His artistic process includes layering paint onto the canvas, then glazing and sanding to achieve an engaging, complex surface quality. Miranda’s paintings reflect his interest in the juxtaposition of interior and exterior space, the dialogue between the past and the present, and the relationship between technology and nature. The artist is clearly influenced by the sea, which has been a part of his environment from the beginning. He also has a long standing, deep appreciation for turn-of-the-century New England seascape painters. He is inspired by memories, and indeed his work is notable for the non-realistic, often dreamlike subject matter and inscrutable narratives embedded in his compositions. Miranda explains that he is compelled to capture on canvas the metaphorical “space” that memories occupy in the subconscious, as well as the ways in which they are constantly being “re-written.” The latter results in the depiction of spaces that alternate between the familiar and the unknown, the past and the present, creating a sense of shifting environments unmoored in time and space.

Grapefruit and Rose 16” x 14” oil on panel

TM Nicholas (American, b. 1963) TM Nicholas is an esteemed artist who has won critical acclaim for his impressionist landscapes. Nicholas was raised on Cape Ann, in Massachusetts, and quickly grew to appreciate the unique landscapes of coastal New England. This peninsula, 30 miles north of Boston, has one of the richest artistic histories in America--the Cape Ann School is America’s oldest, continuously active art colony, and includes such painters as Fitz Henry Lane, Winslow Homer, and Charles Gruppe. Nicholas has been immersed in the art and culture of the area since birth. Today, as a representative of the Cape Ann School, Nicholas is considered the finest painter of his generation and is proud to carry on its 150-year tradition.

Nicholas received his formal training at the Gloucester Academy of Art and the Montserrat School of Art. He studied with many of the area’s renowned painters, including his own father, Tom Nicholas, a National Academician. Though deeply influenced by his artistic forbears, he ultimately developed a unique style that solidified his professional reputation among critics and collectors alike.

Nicholas’ humility and passion for painting are as important to his success as his artistic roots. He loves the process, the exploration, the challenge, and the discovery inherent in plein air painting. Nicholas’ paintings reflect his sensitive response to the natural environment, inimitably capturing light, color and atmospheric effects. He counts among his influences Aldro Hibbard and Water Palmer, and is particularly interested in those artists’ studies of snow and its endless variations of tone and hue, a pursuit that also compels Nicholas. Whatever the season or setting, Nicholas’ paintings portray New England in all its magnificent colors and rich textures.

With an international reputation and devoted collectors in New England, Nicholas’ auction record remains strong. His works are in the Peabody Museum, the Cape Ann Historical Society, the Dover Public Library, and the MIT Lincoln Laboratory.

Summer Shadows 36” x 36” oil on canvas

Anne Packard (American, b. 1933) Anne Packard brings to her work instinct and skill drawn from a deep family well of American and European painters. A third generation painter, she is a bona fide Cape Cod artist. Her grandfather, Max Bohm, was a leading turn of the century impressionist painter, who in 1916 came to Provincetown, MA with other European and American artists. Born and raised in Hyde Park, NJ, Anne Packard spent summers as a child in Provincetown. She moved there permanently in 1977 with her five children and soon after committed to life as an artist.

Though largely self-taught, Anne studied informally with Phil Malcoat, and also attended Bard College.

With their iconic coastal imagery, Anne’s paintings have inspired countless artists. To view an original Packard is to experience unequaled mastery of the medium and feeling for the subject matter. Her spare, serene images express the very essence of sea and sky; economical composition and lush brushwork capture the expansiveness of her seascapes. While her style remains firmly grounded in the representational tradition, Anne’s paintings vibrate with a certain mysterious, abstract quality. With deft paint handling she creates complex layers of undulating tonalities. Her paintings evoke a sense of transcendence, drawing the viewer in with their hypnotic quality and creating a space for meditative awareness.

“My paintings have nothing to do with Nature. It’s something to do with forever going...the space behind the sky.... It’s an inner world of emotion and yearning. I yearn to express solitude. I want to create in my... paintings that privileged isolation. And awe. I am in awe out there.” – Anne Packard

Outgoing Tide 48” x 72” oil on canvas

Scott Prior (American, b. 1949) Scott Prior is a Contemporary Realist painter who lives and works Northampton, Massachusetts, where he has been a resident since 1971. His paintings depict a world that is intimate, simple and personal, where objects are transfixed and transfigured by light. Born in Exeter, New Hampshire, he received a BFA in printmaking from the University of Massachusetts in 1971. He has artwork in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the DeCordova Museum, the Danforth Museum, the Rose Art Museum and other major public and private collections. He has shown extensively in one-person and group shows in the United States and abroad; in 2001 he had a mid-career retrospective at the DeCordova Museum.

“It wasn’t until I saw a lot of Edward Hopper’s paintings in one place that I recognized the significance and emotional power of light. That was thirty years ago, and I am still fascinated by the varied and countless effects of light on the tangible world of my experience. In the same year as my discovery of light I changed from being an ironic observer into an emotional participant.” Scott Prior “The light in his paintings has an expressive quality that is rarely seen in photorealistic works. ... (Prior) goes beyond mere hyperrealist bravura and concentrates instead on crafting visual poetry. His enamel smooth surface of his oil on panels erases the hand of the artist and focuses instead on the artist’s eye. The many visual delights, especially his quasi-surreal luminosity of the paintings are more than enough to make great paintings but he goes even further; to what Scott Prior has put it, “discovering the spiritual in the everyday” that gives the artist his power to speak to us of common experience.”

- Larry Groff, paintingperceptions.com “Scott Prior is a realist painter of prodigious talent and consummate skill. But what raises his work beyond the beauty of its presentation is this most romantic vision, a belief that love and laughter lie just beneath the surface of the mundane.

He is a conjurer, stirring magic from the ordinary.” - Richard Morange, Scott Prior: New Paintings

Beach at Twilight 30” x 48” oil on panel

Peter Quidley (American, b. 1945) Peter Quidley was born on Boston’s Beacon Hill in 1945.

Though he studied drawing throughout his college years, Quidley is largely a self-taught painter. Working as a professional artist for more than four decades, his goal has been to create paintings of beauty and enduring quality. Over the course of his career, Quidley gravitated toward a subtle narrative form, depicting peaceful and serene scenes, redolent of mystery, mischief, and simple innocence. All of his paintings—land- or seascapes, still lifes, or figurative pieces—convey a palpable emotional significance.

Quidley’s characteristic style involves stripping his paintings of subject matter, iconography or clothing styles that place his scenes in a particular era; in so doing, the artist imbues his paintings with a sense of timelessness. He demonstrates a deep respect for the classical painting tradition through his practices of painting on panel, grinding his own pigments and choosing gold leaf water gilded frames. In a uniquely personal gesture, he often affixes to the back of a finished piece the brushes used to create the painting.

According to one critic, “The first thing you notice about Peter Quidley’s oil paintings is the shimmering, lustrous character of the light which seems to radiate from the inside out, as if each picture is infused with its own individual incandescence.”

Quidley’s work has been exhibited in numerous group exhibitions nationwide and internationally, and in solo shows across Massachusetts, including the Cape Museum of Fine Art, the Addison Gallery of American Art, and the Cahoon Museum of American Art. He holds the distinction of Copley Master, and is a member of numerous artistic societies. The artist is a renowned portraitist and does select work on commission.

His works are in private collections around the world.

Beach Treasures 20” x 24” oil on canvas

Janet Rickus (American, b. 1949) Janet Rickus is an exemplar of contemporary realist painters with an established reputation. She was born in 1949 and raised in Chicopee, Massachusetts, but moved as a young girl to West Springfield, where her parents operated a grocery store. She graduated with a BS from Central Connecticut State University in 1971, and began painting still lifes in 1983. In minute detail, with a sumptuous color palette, Rickus presents life-size depictions of fruits, vegetables, and humble household vessels and kitchen linens. With loving treatment of her subject matter, Rickus endows these everyday objects with a certain nobility. Her often idiosyncratic compositions at times subvert the typical representation of objects, such as when she presents carrots vertically alongside slender vases, or balances a small lime atop a rotund melon. Presented in intimate relationship with one another and enjoying pride of place, Rickus’ objects exude an elegant geometry and order.

With a forthright presentation, and painting strictly in natural light, Rickus rejects the darkly mysterious effects of the chiaroscuro technique, displaying a more modern sensibility.

There is a sense of immediacy and familiarity in the paintings that creates an irresistible draw for the viewer.

Throughout her 30-year career, Rickus has exhibited in dozens of group shows. She was honored with an exhibition of her work at the Springfield Museum of Fine Arts in 2001, and her solo shows in New York and Massachusetts have received great critical acclaim. Her work has been featured in prestigious publications, including ARTnews and Art and Antiques.

Her painting entitled “Three Pears” was the cover illustration of Harvard professor Marjorie Garber’s book, “Vice Versa: Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life,” and images of her paintings were featured in a presentation by Garber at a colloquium at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Rickus’ artwork is included in a number of private collections, including those of television personality Jane Curtin and the late actor Jason Robards.

Tea with Lemon 15” x 26” oil on canvas

Forrest Rodts (American, b. 1960) Forrest Rodts graduated from Hobart College in upstate New York in 1983 with a BA in economics and a minor in fine arts.

Growing up, he spent summers in Siasconset on Nantucket and in 1982 began showing his paintings with the Artist Association of Nantucket. In 1988 he had his first solo exhibition in Nantucket and he has been painting professionally ever since.

Rodts’ finely detailed land- and seascapes reflect his love of the ocean and the unspoiled serenity of New England’s coastline, and have earned him an enthusiastic following. Over the years he has developed a personal style that combines color, light and composition with meticulous draftsmanship, bringing the familiar to life in a brilliant acrylic palette. Rodts’ landscapes capture the realism of sunsets, stormy skies, sparkling blue oceans and white-capped waves. The artist has recently turned his attention toward producing dramatic works that reflect his long-standing interest in marine history and the sailing tradition.

Rodts has won numerous awards as a member of the Copley Society of Boston, the Artists Association of Nantucket and the Marblehead Arts Association. His work can be found in private collections throughout the United States, Canada and Europe. He lives with his wife and two sons in Massachusetts.

“My paintings represent my continued study of water and light combined with my love of sailing, history and the ocean.

My goal is to be as realistic as possible while still producing an aesthetically pleasing painting which will draw the viewer into its mood.” - Forrest Rodts

The Beach 18” x 36” acrylic on panel

Sergio Roffo (American, b. 1953) Sergio Roffo is perhaps the foremost American coastal landscape painter working today. The youngest of six children, Sergio was born in San Donato, Italy. As a child, he immigrated with his family to Boston. In the 1980s Sergio studied art formally at the Vesper George School of Art under the tutelage of Robert Douglas Hunter. After graduation, Roffo began working with watercolors in his paintings of Boston cityscapes; he switched to oils when he and his family moved to the coastal community of Scituate.

Roffo has been inspired by the work of the American traditional painters George Inness and Albert Bierstadt, among others.

Over the years he developed a mastery of portraying the New England coastal landscape both near his home and farther afield. With a solid grounding in the fundamentals of his craft, Roffo captures the small details—the texture of dune grass, the particular quality of light of a Nantucket Harbor sunset— that bring a scene to life. Roffo is a plein air painter of the first degree; he displays a clear talent for expressing the elegance of nature through his masterful brushwork and ability to capture light and atmospheric effects. His intimate relationship with his subject matter—the sea, sky, beaches and boats that surround him—is evident in all of Roffo’s work. This emotional component, along with a uniformity of excellence, lends the work a greater degree of complexity, and has earned him an enthusiastic following. Roffo’s paintings continue to be highly sought after by devoted collectors.

Sergio lives in Scituate with his wife and two daughters, where he continues to paint, teach workshops, and enjoy various other interests, including gourmet cooking, opera and classical music, gardening, tennis and sailing his 18 foot Marshall Sanderling catboat.

“My mission is trying to convey to the viewer the spirituality and sacredness of my work, indicating the harmony of nature through color and light. As artists, our creative goals will never be accomplished. We will always be students of nature.” – Sergio Roffo

Burning Mist, Monomoy 30” x 40” oil on canvas

Gary Ruddell (American, b. 1951) Gary Ruddell was born in San Mateo, California, in 1951, and spent much of his time growing up drawing and painting. He received the BFA degree from California College of Arts and Crafts in 1975. The artist acknowledges the influence Bay Area figurative painting has had on his work, heightening his attraction to surface and materials, as well as the sensuality of objects. Over the years, he has developed a loose, expressionistic style, and cites Richard Diebenkorn, Gerhard Richter and Fairfield Porter as a few of his favorite painters.

Ruddell first attracted attention for his science fiction book covers, displaying a flair for depicting action and combining realistic figures with less representational backgrounds. His vision, and his talent, however, soon drew him away from this early commercial work, and for close to two decades now he has been exhibiting his paintings in solo and group shows in prestigious galleries nationwide.

Ruddell’s large, square canvases are windows onto scenes both familiar and mysterious, stage sets on which characters play out their personal narratives. Figures, distinctly rendered, hover in an amorphous landscape, setting up a relationship between representation and abstraction. With a distinct lack of sentimentality, Ruddell ups the emotional ante of each painting through the placement of his subjects in the composition. In sharp focus against the blurred, abstracted space they inhabit, in turning away from both the viewer and each other, Ruddell’s figures become symbols of the complex human experience.

“For me, the act of painting is a way of knowing a process, of seeing. I like to think of my paintings as stills in a film, suspended moments, a private glimpse into the human condition. I paint figures as I see myself interacting with objects, almost as if it is a play in progress... What I am after are images of man’s relationship to his environment and his system of life in a ritualized role.” - Gary Ruddell

Study for Architects 44” x 44” oil on panel

David Shevlino (American, b. 1962) David Shevlino was born in Jersey City, New Jersey in 1962.

A graduate of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the University of Pennsylvania, he also studied at the Art Students League in New York. Growing up near New York City, Shevlino was exposed to art as a teenager. He began making trips to art museums at age 15 and developed a love of traditional figurative painting. During this time, he found himself especially drawn to the old masters; his interest in modern art was cultivated considerably later. Those early museum visits provided a sense of the origins and history of painting, and instilled a love of drawing and the creative process.

In Shevlino’s current work, the canvas has increasingly become a place to experiment with different techniques of paint application. He is particularly interested in exploring the line between the traditional representation of the figure and the abstraction of it, and his paintings reflect his simultaneous use of both approaches. There is a spontaneous, gestural quality to David’s technique. His paintings are characterized by broad brushstrokes, a sensuous application of paint, and an obvious feel for tonal harmonies. At the same time, the artist demonstrates a firm sense of control, tightening up the composition through his deft modeling of the human form.

David Shevlino has exhibited work nationally in both solo and group shows over the past two decades, and currently lives in Wilmington, DE.

Blonde Surfer 15” x 16” oil on panel

Hunt Slonem (American, b. 1951)

Slumber 40” x 30” oil on canvas

Hunt Slonem was born in Maine in 1951. He studied at Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture in Skowhegan, Maine; Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN; and received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Tulane University in Louisiana. In 1973 he moved to New York City, and since 2011 has been living and working in a 25,000 square foot studio in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood. His studio, filled with mid-19th century antiques acquired at antique fairs and flea markets, is a veritable museum. These objects both satisfy his hunger for collecting and serve as a source of inspiration for his own work.

Slonem is an artist of prodigious output and infinite imagination, with a strong affinity for nature. His work has long been influenced by his travels to such exotic locales as Hawaii, Nicaragua, Mexico and India. He is best known for his Neo-Expressionistic paintings of animals, butterflies, and birds in particular, all of which act as a sort of leitmotif. Canvases are filled with these objects, which are reproduced over and over in an act of repetition that has been prominent in his work for over 30 years now. His paintings are layered with thick brushstrokes of vivid color, often cut into in a cross-hatched pattern that adds texture to the overall surface of the painting.

Slonem has had a long, illustrious and varied career. He has been commissioned to paint large-scale murals and has collaborated on product design with major retailers, including a stoneware collection for Tiffany & Co. and a custom–painted A5 sedan for Audi. Since 1977, the artist has had more than 350 exhibitions at prestigious galleries and museums internationally. Globally, more than 100 museums include his work in their collections, among them the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. Slonem is the subject of a number of monographs, including “Hunt Slonem, An Art Rich & Strange” which features text by Donald Kuspit, and his work has been featured in countless prestigious publications. Hunt Slonem divides his time between New York City and Louisiana, where he owns two plantation homes on the historic register.

Robert Stark III (American, b. 1964) Predominantly a realist still life painter, Robert Stark III confronts the tradition of still life painting by challenging the viewer with dubious arrangements. His arresting compositions portray both interior and exterior settings, capturing the subtle effects of light and shadow to create a particular atmosphere or sense of place. Stark imbues simple objects with personality through his extraordinary ability to render in minute detail their smallest elements and imperfections.

These exquisitely realistic, often small-scale paintings invite close scrutiny. Stark strives to pull the viewer in through an implied narrative; his remarkable technical proficiency results in paintings that can be deceivingly loaded with content, action, and intention.

Stark draws strongly from the Dutch still life painters for technique. Through repeated applications of oil glaze the artist has developed a chiaroscuro style that gives the painting and the subject itself a strong sense of depth. Glazing permits the manipulation of pigments to either reflect or absorb light, producing a strong illusion of three-dimensionality. Stark’s compositions also remind us of early Spanish still life painters in their simplicity. He “peoples” his paintings with few objects that, in their placement, seem both random yet distinctly interrelated.

Raised on Nantucket, Robert Stark attended the Taft School and Georgetown University, where he majored in Chinese/ Asian studies and Fine Arts. He has since returned to the island to focus on his painting.

Concerned Citizen 8” x 8” oil on panel

Tim Thompson (British, b. 1951) Tim Thompson is a respected, world-renowned oil painter, and one of the undisputed leaders of today’s generation of marine artists. Born in Hull, England in 1951, Thompson spent his childhood in the Channel Islands, where his interest in the sea and sailing first developed. A self-taught painter, Thompson began his artistic career when he was 27, establishing his reputation with nautical paintings whose subjects ranged from the fighting ships of Drake’s era to modern racing yachts and the America’s Cup competitions. His works also include various historic and period seascapes and marine art, including heroic rescues at sea. While Thompson enjoyed success early on, 1982 proved to be a turning point in his career. That year, at a regatta in Cowes, England, he met media mogul and sailing enthusiast Ted Turner, who ultimately commissioned him to paint a number of his yachts.

Thompson’s work is characterized by his use of traditional oil techniques. Placing layer upon layer of translucent wash on canvas, he produces a luminosity rarely seen in contemporary marine paintings. He has been much praised for his meticulous attention to detail and his ability to create dramatic and atmospheric images. Displaying an elegance and sophistication reminiscent of works by the 19th century masters of marine art, Thompson’s works are widely collected by marine art connoisseurs around the world. Thompson has co-authored three books, The Paintings of the America Cup, Gold Medal Rescues, and The Story of Yachting, and was the official artist of national race teams many times. He now lives in Saltash, Cornwall in the UK, with his wife and two daughters.

“Color and movement are vital components in my work. It is important that I see exactly how the sails of a yacht are formed when she is rounding a mark or how the ocean appears during a storm.” - Tim Thompson

An Early Start 30” x 40” oil on canvas

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