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.

For two decades, watercolor artist Ali Cavanaugh (b. 1973) has created a significant body of work that features portraits of her children and friends. “Quiet Tide,” an exhibition highlighting this work, is currently at the Sam and Adele Golden Gallery (SAGG) in New Berlin, NY. The event is free and open to the public.

More from the organizers:

Cavanaugh’s solo exhibition at The SAGG features works created over the past 18 years. Using a palette with as few as six colors, Cavanaugh creates a range of expressive conditions for each of her subjects.

Her portraits capture more than the delicate features of people, but also the tender, unseen details that exceed understanding. The layering techniques demonstrated in her work breathe life into her subjects and create a deep and luminous aura that captivates viewers.

Originally trained as an oil painter, Cavanaugh’s first watercolor was created for a trade for some carpentry renovation on the family house. Having some leftover watercolor paper from the project, she produced several experimental watercolor paintings. In a 2006 exhibition in Austin, TX, of her oil paintings, those three watercolors were included and created considerable interest. Given the strength of the interest, Cavanaugh embraced the challenge of leaving oil painting behind and spent months exploring watercolor and in a short time, she found a renewed artistic voice. Since that time, Cavanaugh has exhibited her watercolors in dozens of solo and group exhibitions and has developed a program of mentoring other artists.

GOLDEN Co-Founder and CEO, Mark Golden shared, “It is with great joy that we showcase Ali’s artwork in our gallery. We began our journey with her over a year ago and so opening our gallery doors to her is an incredible celebration.”

Additional information about “Quiet Tide” and Cavanaugh’s journey with Golden Artist Colors is available on the Sam & Adele Golden website.

The Wausau Museum of Contemporary Art is presenting recent works by Jennifer Balkan (b. 1970), who grew up near New York City and is based in Austin. On view, “Thoughts in Between” features figurative paintings with deftly managed coloration and thought bubbles derived from comic books that let us know the subject is actively thinking.

“My newest body of work has been a journey that started in 2019 after I lost my dog companion and then took a turn once the pandemic struck, as I picked up another medium during isolation, fueling me to consider drawing in a way that would live side by side with painting,” Balkan said. “Within this time period, I created ‘Pandemonium,’ figurative paintings with graphic elements reminiscent of comic book art of the 1960s.

“I wanted to continue this thread where the viewer sees the subjects as actively thinking and the figures communicate across canvases — on a wall. I also wanted to merge my new obsession with paint pens with my beloved oil paint. Together on spray-painted elegant damask patterns, I intended it to evoke thoughts of mural art I imagined these images as those band and theater flyers I grew up seeing in Manhattan, posters layered on top of one another, peeling away, causing me to think about the sometimes-ephemeral nature of images.

“The thought bubbles illustrate the active thoughts of my subjects and the shared thoughts between subjects, between canvases. The individual portraits and figures have fully chromatic faces but live within limited and selected color palettes, monochrome and duochrome — playing with the psychological impact of isolating color.”

Also included is a group of works proposing a world in which dogs are the active thinkers, with humans along in supporting roles. “The highly chromatic dog paintings offer a world in which the dogs are subjects, and their humans reside in their world, encapsulating the closeness that is between dogs and humans,” Balkan said. “The dogs here are the active thinkers who draw the viewer’s attention. Chroma is pushed heavily adding to the dreamlike sentiment of these works.”

For more details, please visit wmoca.org.

Related > Check out the “Limited Palette Portraits” art video workshop by Jennifer Balkan:

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Drawings by Dan Thompson > “Upright: Adventures in Teaching”
Daughtrey Gallery, Hillsdale College
Hillsdale, Michigan
https://www.hillsdaleart.org/exhibits
through March 22, 2024

The renowned artist and educator Dan Thompson has opened a unique selling exhibition both online and in person at Hillsdale College in south central Michigan. Upright: Adventures in Teaching features 32 of his drawings in graphite or red chalk, primarily figures and portraits taken from life or memory, some during teaching demonstrations and others during Thompson’s private investigations.

Opened with a preface by fellow artist Jon deMartin, the exhibition catalogue can be downloaded for free from danthompsonart.com, and all works in it are for sale with no gallery markups.

Born in Alexandria, Virginia, Thompson graduated from the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C., and then earned his M.F.A. from the Graduate School of Figurative Art at the New York Academy of Art (NYAA). He has been involved in NYAA ever since, but has also co-founded two schools in New York City: the Grand Central Academy of Art (2006) and Janus Collaborative School of Art (2008). Thompson has held leadership posts at Studio Incamminati in Philadelphia and taught at such diverse institutions as the Art Students League of New York, National Academy School, and Parsons.

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On View: Mary Sauer Solor Show
November 3–28, 2023
Opening Reception Friday, November 3, 6-8pm

Sloane Merrill Gallery will open a solo exhibition for Utah-based painter Mary Sauer on Friday, November 3rd, 2023. The twenty-one paintings in the exhibition explore the beauty of both the human condition and the human figure. There are ethereal women, serene interiors filled with light, architectural details, and thoughtful children.

Mary holds a BFA in Illustration from Brigham Young University in 2009, furthered her studies at The Art Students League of New York and The Grand Central Academy of Art, and received an MFA in Painting and Drawing from The University of Utah. She also apprenticed in the studio of master painter William Whitaker for two years.

Sloane Merrill Gallery is located in Boston, Massachusetts. Visit sloanemerrillgallery.com for more details.

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Gallery 1261 is presenting a special showcase of contemporary artworks that explores the realm of high-definition realism. Curated by Anthony Waichulis, this new exhibition aims a spotlight on works some may often describe as “tight.”

Realism Art on View: “Tight”
October 21 – November 4, 2023
Gallery 1261
Denver, Colorado

From the gallery:

Representational painters have long had their efforts categorized along a spectrum of definition or abstraction. On one end of that spectrum, dubbed loose, we tend to find artwork with wonderfully bold abstractions and incredibly masterful brevity. In contrast, the other end, dubbed tight, is populated with impressive realizations of great complexity and meticulous precision. Virtuosity can be found equally across the entirety of this spectrum; in the artists who can abstract a subject down to ten brushstrokes, the artists who choose to manifest that same subject with a thousand, and the countless artists chasing their own blend of definition and abstraction in between.

“Tight” celebrates those who continue to redefine the landscape on the high-definition end of this spectrum of representation. The artists selected for this special showcase continue to awe and inspire with their endeavors, achieving levels of resolution and depth that elicit experiences of wonder and fascination for any viewer. Demonstrable virtuosity, compelling subject matter, and mind-blowing levels of resolution are sure to be present in many combinations—so do not miss this amazing collection of work.

Participating Artists in “Tight”

Julie Beck, Gregory Block, Alexander Chistov, Dan Christian, Francisco Collado, Helen Crispino, Tony Curanaj, Rodney O’Dell Davis, Natalie Featherston, Scott Fraser, Russell Harris, Sergei Marshennikov, Kevin A. Moore, Renato Muccillo, Stanley Rayfield, Megan Read, Duffy Sheridan, Joseph Todorovitch, Ruddy Taveras, Jason Walker, Anthony Waichulis, and Anna Wypych

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Art Exhibition: “American Identity”
Huntsville Museum of Art, Alabama
Through October 15, 2023
hsvmuseum.org

From the museum:

“American Identity” features over thirty traditional, symbolic, and groundbreaking portraits from the Huntsville Museum of Art’s permanent collection. This timely exhibition includes a wide range of media, examining the history of portraiture from the early 19th century to today, and poses provocative questions about the very nature of likeness, identity, and representation.

In one word, how would you describe yourself? How is the way you describe yourself different from how others describe you?

Identity is shaped, formed, and expressed in complex ways. For artists, portraiture has long been a powerful visual tool for defining identity but, for artists who live and work in the United States, contending with notions of identity has been further complicated by the country’s complex, often one-sided history.

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Cesar Santos: InFormal
September 22 – October 27, 2023
Robilant+Voena, Milan
robilantvoena.com

From the gallery:

This is the artist’s first solo exhibition in Europe, and marks a pivotal moment in his career, launching a new body of work in an innovative, highly unique style that the artist has developed over the past year.

Moving beyond the representational portraiture that has been the core of his oeuvre until recently, the works in this exhibition demonstrate Santos’s personal spirit unleashed through his creations. The paintings and drawings appear simultaneously familiar, evoking the aesthetics of the Old Masters, and unrecognizable, comprised of intangible forms that appear to shift and coalesce throughout each composition.

In creating these works, the artist begins by approaching the blank canvas with broad expressive brushstrokes, filling large areas with paint in monochrome shades; after this initial spontaneous stage, Santos refines the work using his intuition and artistic experience, giving order and coherence to the component parts. Each work is as much a surprise to the artist as to his audience; he does not embark on a work with a set idea of the outcome, rather the process is a journey of discovery, with the individual marks and gestures imbuing each piece with a unique atmosphere.

In the artist’s own words: “The materiality of the paint and the canvas becomes an eco-system of relationships, representing colors, space, and solidity with their potentiality in motion. I make new objects communicate in their environment, becoming stories of the visual system with open possibilities.”

Santos’ inspirations are drawn from the more awkward or subversive corners of art history, such as Old Masters who were the eccentrics of their era, such as Giuseppe Arcimboldo, or those whose style was at odds with conventional beauty, such as El Greco or Francisco Goya. Further, his paintings take influence from the fleshy forms of Peter Paul Rubens and the expressive grandeur of Michelangelo and Raphael.

Alongside his European Old Master models, in these artworks, the artist incorporates elements from the cultures of his native Cuba, and the United States, infused with his own interest in psychology. Santos synthesizes these diverse experiences with a rigorous understanding of design, color, and the structure of his materials, giving birth to his art.

The artworks presented in this exhibition suggest the notion that even though a painting is a static, abstract message of nature, it can appear fluid in its meaning, in a visual state of motion. Santos purposefully leaves ambiguity and openness in the finished work, allowing the viewer to comprehend it through their individual faculties.

Cesar Santos is a Cuban-American artist, born in Santa Clara, Cuba, and brought up in Miami, Florida. He studied at the New World School of the Arts in Florida, followed by a period of training in Florence. Subsequently, Santos moved to New York City, immersing himself in the vibrant art scene. While in New York, he received first prize in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s photography competition, ‘It’s Time We Met’.

Santos’s work has been exhibited in the United States, Europe, Latin America and Asia, including at the Museum of Art and Design, Miami; Palazzo Cipolla, Rome; the Villa Bardini Museum, Florence; National Gallery, Costa Rica; and the Beijing World Art Museum, China. His work features in the collections of significant institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sicily, the New Salem Museum and the Academy of Fine Art in Massachusetts, and the Museum of Design in Miami.

Santos currently lives and works in Florence.

Cesar Santos has a variety of art video workshops available through PaintTube.tv, including:

• Secrets of Portrait Painting (in English and Spanish)
• Secrets of Figure Painting
• Secrets of Figure Drawing
• Let Cesar Santos teach you how to paint: Start here

View more artist and collector profiles here at FineArtConnoisseur.com.

“Big Stories” presents a diverse array of artists whose large-scale figurative works capture the essence of storytelling in striking visual form. Curated by figurative painters Bo Bartlett, Noah Buchanan, and Carl Dobsky, the 18-piece exhibit explores the boundless possibilities of large-scale contemporary figurative painting, deeply rooted in the rich tradition of storytelling.

“Big Stories”
Through December 16, 2023
Bo Bartlett Center, Columbus State University
Columbus, Georgia
bartlettcenter.columbusstate.edu

More from the gallery:

“Since the dawn of civilization, narratives have been at the core of our existence,” explained Mike McFalls, director of the Bo Bartlett Center and a professor in Columbus State University’s Department of Art. “From the epic tales of Homer to the immortal works of Shakespeare and the timeless cinematic creations of Spielberg, stories have served as the essence of human experience — portraying heroic journeys that transcend cultures and connect us on a profound level.”

McFalls noted that each of the exhibit’s carefully chosen and thoughtfully presented artwork serves as a testament to the enduring power of storytelling.

“Whether the narratives are overtly portrayed on the canvas or subtly embedded within the layers of paint, the paintings of ‘Big Stories’ will provoke deep introspection — inviting viewers to ponder the meanings and significance of our shared human experience,” he said.

The artists showcased in this in this exhibition include Steven Assael, Bo Bartlett, Margaret Bowland, Noah Buchanan, Aleah Chapin, Alfred Conteh, Vincent Desiderio, Carl Dobsky, Michelle Doll, Najee Dorsey, Zoey Frank, Paul Fenniak, Andrea Kowch, Adam Miller, Odd Nerdrum, Amy Sherald, Tim Short, and Patricia Watwood.

“The exhibition and the stories behind each piece that forms ‘Big Stories’ are fascinating,” McFalls continued. “The return of Amy Sherald’s artwork in her hometown of Columbus, Georgia, will undoubtedly pique people’s interest.”

The Bo Bartlett Center will host a public reception on Thursday, October 5, 2023 at 6 p.m., where patrons can visit with the exhibition curators and explore the depth and significance of “Big Stories” together.

The exhibition will run through Saturday, December 16. It is available to visitors at no charge during the center’s operating hours, which are Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

J Louis’ solo exhibition of figurative art opens Friday, September 15th, 2023 at Principle Gallery (Alexandria, Virginia) with an Opening Reception 6-8:30 pm.

From the gallery:

American artist J Louis is best known for his oil paintings of female figures, focusing on the exquisite strength and alluring complexity of women through saturated color, flattened space, and texture.

His technical painting skills, his eye for capturing an expression that portrays an intimate story, and his material experimentation are combined to create a dynamic harmony between emotion and design. He is fascinated with moments of human connection and that fascination exhibits itself in his work through cleverly posed subjects, use of texture, and color amid abstracted space.

The figures in his paintings are always in contemplative and often curiously surreal poses. They conceal and reveal the environment, dissecting it through perspective, gesture, and form. They act as guides through the painted space; their elongated anatomy highlights divides or unites the composition.

J Louis was born in 1992 and earned his BFA from Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia. He currently lives and works in New York City. This figurative art exhibition is on view from September 15 through October 10, 2023.

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