There is a lot of superb contemporary realism and figurative art being made these days; this article by Allison Malafronte shines light on a gifted individual.

Few artists have the gumption to explore such weighty topics as death, destitution, and decay, but these are concepts about which Georgia-based painter Miles Cleveland Goodwin (b. 1980) has much to say. With a B.F.A. in painting and printmaking from Portland’s Pacific Northwest College of Art, and many years of additional self-education and practice, Goodwin paints in a contemporary realist manner sometimes compared to Southern Gothic, the literary genre focused on the shadowy, scarred side of Southern culture and history. He brings a heightened level of awareness and philosophical pondering to subjects some artists are afraid to touch.

Born and raised in the South, Goodwin can also put pen to paper to create another kind of artistry; we can detect a preoccupation with darkness and death even in his poetic descriptions of his upbringing. “My painting was born in the cypress swamps of Mississippi, where I was conceived, under a white heron’s wing and a drunken parade,” his artist’s statement declares.

“The stories of slaves and farming, the seasons burning with colors and feelings, that resignation to the idea we were different. I found it later on the bottom of the Chattahoochee River, floating by a bible and a dream. Those brown waters against the warmth of fall leaves would ignite my love for expressionism and poetry.”

He continues, “The American South is hauntingly beautiful; it could supply a person novels, paintings, and songs for eternity. In winter the mountains were on fire with white. White against dark wiry cedars, against the black of my paint. And in the summer endless patches of Queen Anne’s lace, chimney swifts flying just below the old train bridges, the shimmer of brown trout at the surface of the cold river waters. In fall the maples melted between the old brick and wood of abandoned churches. I could start to hear mice in the walls, horses in their stalls fattening up, a whisper of death.”

One of Goodwin’s paintings is the eerily compelling “Beautiful Dying Man” (shown above). Many of his works explore old age and isolation, and here an elderly man figures prominently, this time — we gather from the title — on the brink of death. In Goodwin’s depictions, passing on is a struggle and strain, one that strips us of dignity and humanity.

The man here is naked, and his posture suggests resignation and dejection. To his left is a dog, likely a longtime companion, who seems to be sleeping or dead, and there is a shadowy man lurking in the mirror; one would assume the spirit of death. Why then does Goodwin call him a beautiful dying man if no indication of hope is entertained? As in many of his creations, there is thought-provoking irony in the dichotomy and parallels he sets up and asks us to consider.

Connect with the artist and see more of his figurative art at www.milesclevelandgoodwin.com.

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 artist and collector profiles and figurative art here at FineArtConnoisseur.com.

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.

As part of our effort to continue to help artists and art galleries thrive, we’re proud to bring you this week’s “Virtual Gallery Walk.” Browse the artwork below and click the image itself to learn more about it, including how to contact the gallery.

Want to see your gallery featured in an upcoming Virtual Gallery Walk? Contact us at marketinginfo@streamlinepublishing.com to advertise today. Don’t delay, as spaces are first come, first served, and availability is limited.

Fine Art Today brings you high-level content while providing you with timely developments, late-breaking stories, and recently announced events from the art-collecting world. Use the following links to find currently featured art exhibitions at galleries and museums.

Art Events, Auctions, Exhibitions, and More:

Click the month below to find what’s happening this year. We’re always adding new monthly listings, so bookmark this page and visit regularly.

• April 2025
• May 2025
• June 2025

Be sure to sign up for the Fine Art Today newsletter here so you don’t miss our weekly updates.

The Pastel Society of New Mexico’s 2025 “Enchanted Colors Exhibition” will be held at the Millicent Rogers Museum in Taos, New Mexico. There will be a display of 66 pastel paintings exhibited by fine artists from across the USA, with the majority of them being from New Mexico and immediately surrounding States.

More from the organizers:

Taos, a wonderful art community, has been host to our exhibition for now, going on its fifth year and we enjoy our relationship with the organizers and administrators of this great museum. The show will display works in two spacious gallery rooms.

The jurors of acceptance are Bruce A. Gomez, William Schneider, and Marie Tippets. The jurors “sculpt” the exhibition while the judge grants awards to several of the finest works. The Judge of Awards will be Lisa Gleim. Numerous Cash and Sponsor Awards are expected to total more than $10,000 in value.

The exhibition will run from March 22 – June 1, 2025 with the Gala Opening Celebration and Awards Ceremony held on Saturday, March 22. Additionally, there will be a Virtual Interactive Online Exhibition with 56 additional painting images by the artists who requested to have their works displayed “Digitally Only” showing all of the paintings in their relative sizes.

Learn more about “Enchanted Colors” here.

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.

Browse more western art here at FineArtConnoisseur.com.

Upcoming Art Auction > Only rarely does an extraordinary Orientalist watercolor appear on the market, and now that time has come. Painted in 1873 by the Englishman John Frederick Lewis, “A Reception in the Harem” has been in a private U.S. collection since 1961, when the current owner bought it from a London dealer. It has never been seen publicly since, and can now be visited by appointment at Bonhams London, which will offer it at auction on March 26, 2025.

JOHN FREDERICK LEWIS’S “A RECEPTION IN THE HAREM”
Bonhams, London
bonhams.com

In her catalogue essay, scholar Emily Weeks says this is a larger version of Lewis’s oil painting now at the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut. Lewis was a master in both oil and watercolor, renowned then and now for jewel-like color and intricate detail. Weeks adds that Lewis “perfected an idiosyncratic approach to watercolor that could rival oil painting in the intensity of its hues (achieved through mixing watercolor pigments with Chinese white)” and in its precise brushstrokes, making it appear as “finished” and laboriously executed as an oil. Blessed with such talents, Lewis “systematically produced two nearly identical versions” of every major scene, one in each medium.

Britons’ fascination with the daily lives of fashionable women in Middle Eastern harems grew from the 18th century onward. The reclining figure on the blue divan at the scene’s center is Lewis’s wife, Marian, and her ornate surroundings were inspired by the reception room of their Cairo home. The Lewises lived in the Egyptian capital for 10 years, and in 1846, no less a tourist than the novelist William Makepeace Thackeray envied Lewis’s “dreamy, hazy, lazy, tobaccofied life” there.

Before it came to America in 1961, this watercolor was owned by a series of well-known connoisseurs and ogled at well-attended exhibitions in 1878, 1887, 1891, and 1898. Because it may go right back into a private collection on March 26, art lovers visiting London this winter are strongly encouraged to go see it at Bonhams.

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 artist and collector profiles here at FineArtConnoisseur.com.

Hendricks Live!, a new performing and fine arts center in Plainfield, is hosting the exhibition “The Influence of Artist Richard Schmid.” Original works by Schmid loaned by private collectors are on view with paintings created by the Indiana artist Libby Whipple, who counts Schmid as her greatest mentor. During his six-decade-long career, Schmid inspired thousands of artists and won acclaim for the more than 3,000 landscapes, still lifes, and figurative works he painted.

In 2000, Richard Ormond, grand-nephew of John Singer Sargent and the premier authority on his ancestor’s art, presented Schmid with the American Society of Portrait Artists’ John Singer Sargent Medal. Ormond has written, “The principles of painting from life have been well mastered by Richard. He can translate what he sees into pictorial form with great panache. His fluent and incisive brushwork brings to life his chosen subjects with veracity and immediacy. You feel you are there in the picture, so convincingly alive is the space, so tactile the surfaces. Wizardry with the brush can sometimes rebound on the head of the painter. Success is attributed to technical facility, not to deeper artistic impulses…. Richard knows better than anyone that mastery of the medium is not the end of the story, though without it an artist is lost. Perception, feeling, imagination, these are the things that stamp a work of art and open the mind and soul of the spectator.”

Details at a Glance:
“The Influence of Artist Richard Schmid”
Plainfield, Indiana
hendrickslive.org
through April 9, 2025

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

How do you find inspiration?
Barbara Hack: As an artist, I have always held a deep passion for the figure, which is central to my work. My paintings serve as an ongoing exploration of people and their emotions, allowing me to connect with the essence of each individual I portray. I seek out a diverse array of figures, each representing a unique mood and context that resonates with my own experiences.
In every painting or drawing, I strive to capture an ephemeral moment—those fleeting expressions and gestures that tell a story. This relationship between myself and the figure is vital; it’s a dialogue that transcends the canvas, revealing the complexities of human connection. Through my art, I aim to make these moments last in time, inviting viewers to pause and reflect on the shared human experience.

What is the best thing about being an artist?
Barbara Hack: The best part of being an artist is the constant presence of inspiration all around you. It’s in the smallest details—the way light filters through trees or the the expressions on people’s faces. . Inspiration doesn’t have to be sought; it’s always there, waiting to be noticed. It’s in the quiet moments, in the unexpected, and in the mundane. As an artist, you’re always open to the world around you, finding beauty in the everyday, and turning it into something unique.

Inspiration and art are inseparable.

To see more of Barbara’s work, visit:
Website

The Lyme Academy of Fine Arts is presenting “True To Form: Academic Figure Studies from the Late 19th to Early 20th Centuries,” an exhibition that celebrates the significance of the human figure in academic art training. The exhibition is on view through April 27, 2025 and will feature a curated selection of 26 works.

More from the organizers:

The human body has been a central motif in art for centuries, serving a variety of symbolic, philosophical, and aesthetic roles. From the classical and Renaissance periods to the 19th century, the nude in particular became a key focus for developing technical proficiency and expressing universal human experiences. Within the academic tradition, institutions like the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris believed the ability to depict the human body was the benchmark of an accomplished artist, and that mastery of anatomy, proportion, and movement was essential to the visual language of art.

Curated by Lyme Academy Co-Artistic Directors Amaya Gurpide and Jordan Sokol, this exhibition explores a period in art history when technological, scientific, and societal changes inspired a transition from idealized representations of the body to more direct, observational studies. The works featured here – generously loaned by the Art Students League of New York and several private collectors – reveal this shift away from classical idealization toward a more naturalistic understanding of the human form. So too, they offer a glimpse into the academic training and philosophies that defined a transformative era.

“With this exhibition, we invite visitors to reflect on the enduring relevance of the human figure in art, and to appreciate the rich legacy of academic training that continues to inspire artists and educators today,” says Sokol. “The human figure remains central to the curriculum at Lyme Academy and continues to play a vital role in contemporary art. While modern expressions have become infinitely varied, this exhibition offers an opportunity to locate the figure’s origins in the foundational studio exercises that began centuries ago.”

For more information, please visit lymeacademy.edu/exhibitions.

J. M. W. Turner paintings on view > Celebrate the 250th anniversary of James Mallord William Turner’s birth by seeing twelve of his watercolors from the Taft Museum of Art and the Cincinnati Art Museum. On view at the Taft Museum of Art through June 15, 2025, “J. M. W. Turner: Watercolor Horizons” is the first exhibition to bring together the entirety of the two museums’ luminous works by Turner in this medium.

More from the Museum:

Considered one of Britain’s greatest landscape painters, Turner (English, 1775–1851) was a master of the art of watercolor. A prolific artist and intrepid traveler, he was especially drawn to mountains, alpine lakes, glaciers, river valleys, and the sea, as well as the human presence within these dramatic settings. Watercolor Horizons features views of Switzerland, Germany, France, England, Scotland, and Italy. The exhibition explores Turner’s skill with a brush on paper through these remarkable landscapes, examples of his innovative techniques, and painting tools from the era on loan from local collections.

“’J. M. W. Turner: Watercolor Horizons’ is a rare opportunity to see these treasures up close and in person,” said the exhibition’s curator Tamera Lenz Muente. “Each is filled with exquisite color and mind-blowing details that you can examine with magnifying glasses we’ll have in the gallery. Paired with a tea from the café or a family program, the Turner birthday experience at the Taft is one not to miss.”

For tickets to see these J. M. W. Turner paintings, visit taftmuseum.org/Turner250.

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 art museum announcements here at FineArtConnoisseur.com.