Happening Next Week: Acrylic Live Online Art Conference

For artists, art lovers, and collectors: Watch and interact with world-renowned artists as they demonstrate their skills at the inaugural Acrylic Live online art conference, March 26-28, 2025, with an Essential Techniques Day on March 25.

Watch and interact with watercolor teachers such as Anne Blair Brown, Aimee Erickson, Jed Dorsey, Kevin Macpherson, and many more, hosted by Publisher Eric Rhoads, PleinAir Magazine Editor-in-Chief Kelly Kane, and Charlie Easton!

This is an experience this amazing event from the place where you are at your most comfortable and creative such as your own home or studio — no need to spend on travel, hotels. Each ticket tier includes several replay options so you can watch the demos again and again!

Artists, you’ll be able to ask questions, paint along, and quickly learn methods and techniques that took these painters decades to master — all thanks to their exceptional teaching skills.

PAINT ALONG & COCKTAIL HOURS!
Join Eric Rhoads, Charlie Easton, Faculty Members, & the other attendees each night for an intimate virtual paint along & cocktail hour… right over Zoom!

Learn more about Acrylic Live here and register today.

View fine art auctions and sales here at FineArtConnoisseur.com.

Published six times per year, Fine Art Connoisseur is now a widely consulted platform for the world’s most knowledgeable experts, who write articles that inform readers and give them the tools necessary to make better purchasing decisions.

Fine Art Connoisseur, March/April 2025

Get this issue of Fine Art Connoisseur here.

ON THE COVER
KIT KING (b.1987), “The Tangible Manifestation of Change” (detail), 2017, oil on linen, cut and riveted to an aluminum and steel support, 50 x 36 1/4 in. (overall), Collection of Carl B. Bedell

FEATURES

• ARTISTS MAKING THEIR MARK: THREE TO WATCH
  We highlight the talents of Lisa Lackey, Rachel Personett, and LaQuincey Reed.
• DAUD AKHRIEV: WANDERING SPIRIT
  By Rose Fredrick
• CITY LIVIN’
  By Max Gillies
• MUSKEGON MUSEUM OF ART & THE BENNETT PRIZE: AN IDEAL PARTNERSHIP
  By Leslie Gilbert Elman
• KYLE MA: A YOUTHFUL VISION
  By Thomas Connors
• REDISCOVERING ROCKWELL KENT
  By James Lancel McElhinney
• WHY SELF-PORTRAITS NOW?
  By Paul Rosiak
• THE HIDDEN COSTS OF VALUABLE ART
  By Daniel Grant
• BREAK THE ALGORITHM: MAKING ART THROUGH A LIFETIME
  By Julyan Davis
• CELEBRATING AMERICA’S GREAT COLLECTORS
  The flourishing of contemporary realism becomes even clearer as we highlight outstanding collectors living throughout the country.
• OIL PAINTING HEAVEN: A POEM BY GREGG KREUTZ
• GREAT ART WORLDWIDE
  We survey 6 top-notch projects occurring this season.
• SPRING INTO ART
  There are at least 8 great reasons to celebrate the American West this season.

Fine Art Connoisseur‘s jargon-free text and large color illustrations are attracting an ever-growing readership passionate about high-quality artworks and the fascinating stories around them. It serves art collectors and enthusiasts with innovative articles about representational paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints — both historical and contemporary, American and European. Fine Art Connoisseur covers the museums, galleries, fairs, auction houses, and private collections where great art is found.

The Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts has organized the innovative exhibition “Rivera’s Paris.” It gathers an array of paintings, drawings, and photographs to explore the Mexican artist’s formative early years in Spain and France, particularly his encounters with cubism that resulted in “Dos Mujeres” (1914), a signature artwork in the museum’s own Foundation Collection.

Dos Mujeres is a portrait of Rivera’s common-law wife, Angelina Beloff (standing), and their artist friend Alma Dolores Bastián. It earned acclaim when first exhibited in Paris and was gifted to the museum in 1955 by Abby Rockefeller Mauzé, sister to Arkansas’s future Governor Winthrop Rockefeller.

Rivera’s Paris
Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts
Little Rock
arkmfa.org
Through May 18, 2025

The Asheville Art Museum is presenting “Asheville Strong: Celebrating Art and Community After Hurricane Helene,” a poignant and inspiring exhibition on view February 13–May 5, 2025, in the Appleby Foundation Exhibition Hall. This non-juried exhibition showcases the works of artists from the Helene-affected Appalachia region, celebrating their resilience, creativity, and strength while highlighting the power of art to inspire and bring communities together.

The Museum issued an open call for artist submissions, collaborating with local and regional arts networks to reach artists from the Southern Appalachian community impacted by Hurricane Helene. The response was overwhelmingly positive, with over 150 submissions showcasing a diverse range of works.

“Hurricane Helene was devastating for everyone, and as a public-serving arts institution, we really wanted to recognize the impact the storm had on artists,” said Jessica Orzulak, Associate Curator and Manager of Curatorial Affairs. “Artists are an integral to the bedrock of our communities in WNC. Our goal has been to create space for impacted artists to showcase their work to a broad public, opportunities for artists to connect with each other and collectors, and a means for us all to join together in a collective act of resilience.”

Asheville Strong features a variety of mediums, including painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, and photography. Each work is accompanied by the artist’s information, allowing viewers to connect and learn more about the creators. For more information, please visit www.ashevilleart.org.

Blanche Lazzell Art on View > “Blanche Lazzell: Becoming an American Modernist,” the first major exhibition in nearly two decades devoted to this artist, will soon grace the Bruce Museum. On view will be more than 60 paintings, prints, and other works on paper, most characterized by Lazzell’s bold colors and flattened forms.

At a Glance:
“Blanche Lazzell: Becoming an American Modernist”
Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut
brucemuseum.org
February 6–April 27, 2025

Blanche Lazzell (1878–1956) moved from her native West Virginia to New York City, Paris, and Provincetown, Massachusetts. Her experiences enabled her to infuse American art with European modernism, and she is best remembered for experimenting with the white-line block technique, producing more than 100 such woodcuts. By cutting a design into a soft block of wood, then inking and transferring its individual sections one by one, Lazzell produced prints with translucent colors floating within the white boundaries left by her incised lines. At the Bruce, visitors will be invited to test Lazzell’s techniques in an adjacent interactive space.

Organized by the Art Museum of West Virginia University, this touring exhibition has been coordinated at the Bruce by Jordan Hillman. She has assembled a complementary display of paintings from the Bruce’s rich collection. Titled “Nature’s Impressions: The Modernist Landscape,” it reveals how late 19th-century American artists’ responses to nature were informed by both avant-garde experimentation and the particularities of place.

View more art museum announcements here at FineArtConnoisseur.com.

Brafa, Europe’s longest-running art fair, is celebrating its 70th anniversary. Its halls will feature approximately 130 galleries from across Europe offering works ranging from African art, Old Master paintings, and contemporary to antique and design furniture, metalwork, carpets, books, and jewelry. Free tours will be conducted in English regularly.

Belgium’s Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage will host a space inside the fair where, twice each day, its conservators will demonstrate their scientific techniques and findings during interactive workshops.

Details:
Brafa Art Fair
Brussels, Belgium
January 26–February 2, 2025
www.brafa.art/en

Discover the rich Tryon NC artist colony history at the Earl Scruggs Center’s ‘Masters in the Mountains’ exhibition.

For a half-century before the Second World War, the small town of Tryon, North Carolina was a haven for a community of visual artists. From its founding in the late 1870s its population was cosmopolitan, a “country colony” for Northern intellectuals and creative people, especially for those from Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago.

January 21 through February 1, 2025, the Earl Scruggs Center in Shelby, NC, is hosting “Masters in the Mountains: Early Work from the Tryon Artist Colony.”

More from the organizers:

When Amelia Watson from Connecticut arrived in Tryon in 1892, at the invitation of renowned actor William Gillette, the small town near Asheville, NC had already established a reputation as a welcoming environment for intellectuals looking for inspiration in nature. Watson would become the first in a long line of many serious artists that continued their craft when moving to the Western North Carolina mountains.

The community of Tryon was host to an eclectic community of artists, writers, locals, and even celebrities who were famous in the early half of the 20th century and still relevant today. F. Scott Fitzgerald would stay in Tryon when visiting his wife Zelda in the Asheville Sanitorium, leaving his daughter Scottie with famed actor and longtime Tryon resident “Lefty” Flynn. Nina Simone (born Eunice Waymon) studied classical piano for many years with Muriel Mazzanovich, wife of Impressionist painter Lawrence Mazzanovich. British actor David Niven playing a round of golf at the Tryon Country Club where Lady Nancy Astor was also known around the greens.

Zachary Dressel, Curator at the Earl Scruggs Center has developed this unique show from private and public collections with the assistance of Michael McCue and Cynthia Davis. Some of the artists included are George Aid, John Sylvan Brown, Stella Sassoon, Gabrielle Clements, Elliott Daingerfield, Alfred C Hockings, Lawrence Mazzanovich, and Amelia Watson.

For more information, please visit earlscruggscenter.org.

Attention Art Collectors!
May 20-22, 2025: Visit the Plein Air Convention & Expo’s robust pop-up art gallery at the Nugget Casino Resort in Reno, Nevada, where hundreds of artists, including our master faculty, will have studio and plein air works on display and ready to purchase. Register for the full event at PleinAirConvention.com now.

View more fine art gallery exhibitions here at FineArtConnoisseur.com.

Now representing more than 3,500 artist members, the nonprofit organization Oil Painters of America (OPA) is presenting its Western Regional Exhibition of Traditional Oils at the Phippen Museum in Prescott, Arizona.

On view are approximately 125 paintings created by members who live west of the Mississippi.

“This extraordinary event will feature approximately 100 of the finest representational oil paintings,” said the museum, “showcasing exceptional draftsmanship, color, and composition.”

Oil Painters of America Western Regional Exhibition
Phippen Museum
Prescott, Arizona
oilpaintersofamerica.com
phippenartmuseum.org
Through January 5, 2025