"The Young Golfer"
By Ayana Ross (oil on canvas, 72” x 48”, 2023)
"Dappled Ride"
By Richard Barnett (24” x 48”, 2018)
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A graduate of the School of Visual Arts in New York City, Richard Barnett looks for special, but often overlooked, moments to bring to life again on canvas. Most of his paintings seen up close are a blur of brushstrokes and colors, which come into focus as the viewer steps back from the image. He traces this style to extreme nearsightedness in early childhood, which gave him a “fuzzy and indistinct” view of the world.
Barnett had solo exhibitions at the Studio Channel Islands Art Center (CA) in 2020 and 2022 and has participated in several group shows since 2015. In 2020, he was a finalist for the Boynes Emerging Artist Award and in 2021 won the Aldren Bryan Memorial Award for Traditional Landscape at The American Artists Professional League’s 93rd Grand National Exhibition for the painting featured here, “Dappled Ride.”
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Reflecting her background in fashion design, Ayana Ross often incorporates decorative designs and patterns into her figurative paintings. Through depiction of ordinary moments, her art reveals deeper, shared human experiences, such as passing knowledge and wisdom through generations, as in the featured painting, “The Young Golfer.”
Ross’s recent work is influenced by artist Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937), the first African American painter to achieve renown internationally. She updates his narratives, often religious in nature, to a contemporary context. Her portrayal of elders advising or encouraging children and teenagers, as in “The Young Golfer,” is a theme seen in Tanner’s “The Young Sabot Maker” (1895).
In 2021, Ross won the influential Bennett Prize, established in 2018 by collectors Steven Alan Bennett and Dr. Elaine Melotti Schmidt to reward and promote contemporary women artists working in the genre of figurative realism. Ross has a solo exhibition, “The Lessons I Leave You,” at the Muskegon Museum of Art (MI) May-September 2023, which is also the focus of a feature story in the May 2023 issue of The American Art Collector.
"Beholden to None"
By Nathaniel Skousen (oil, 24” x 20”, 2018
Interested in art from his youth, Nathaniel Skousen graduated with a degree in fine arts from Southern Utah University. A pivotal turning point in his artistic career came in 2015 during a class on color theory. For two years he did not paint directly, but studied the use of color by famous artists, such as John Singer Sargent and Adolphe Bouguereau, mixing his own paints in a variety of custom colors.
After renewing painting, his works have won numerous honors, including Signature Status (2020) with the Oil Painters of America and the Portrait Society of America, the PoetsArtists Award at the 15th annual Art Renewal Center competition, and the Portrait Society International Select 50 (2019).
The featured painting of Skousen’s son trout fishing depicts the boy, the rippled water, and dappled light in masterly fashion. The artist says of the painting: “There is nothing more relaxing and enjoyable then to be alone fishing in a trout stream in one's youth. … There is no stress of life and of its adult concerns.”
"Turkey Hunter"
By C. Michael Dudash (oil, 32” x 24”, 2016)
After six years in the music business, C. Michael Dudash worked as staff illustrator before embarking in 1977 on a successful, 25-year career as a freelance illustrator and oil painter. His clients included major corporations, such as NBC, Nike, Random House, and Warner Brothers. He was also a sought-after guest lecturer and art instructor. In 2002, he dedicated himself to oil painting, specializing in scenes and characters of the old West with the goal of creating “works of art that are moving, beautiful, timeless, and universal in their appeal.”
Dudash’s paintings are in the permanent collections of the Booth Museum of Western Art (GA) and the Pearce Western Art Museum (TX) as well as in 100s of private and corporate collections. His artwork has been featured in various art publications and won prestigious honors, including “Best Oil Painting Gold Medal” from Cowboy Artists of America in 2021, “Collectors’ Choice” and “Best of Show” at the 2017 C. M. Russell Museum Annual Benefits Show, the “Artists Choice” at the 2016 Quest for the West Show, and the 2004 “Best of Show” at the Oil Painters of America exhibition at Howard/Mandville Gallery (WA).
Dudash is represented by Legacy Gallery, Settlers West Gallery, Saks Galleries, and the Coeur d’Alene Galleries.
Dudahs’s Turkey Hunter, featured here, won the Spirits of the Buffalo Bill Art Show & Sale Award. It portrays a young, contemporary Native American woman hunting wild turkey.
"The Andalusian Horseman"
By James Tennison (oil, 30” x 30”, 2015)
Artist James Tennison is a painter of portraits, landscapes, animals, and genre scenes of his home area of Whidbey Island, Washington, as well as from his travels abroad, such as in the featured painting, The Andalusian Horseman, which also highlights his attention to light and shadow. His commissioned portraits include corporate and university leaders as well as Texas Governors Ann Richards and Rick Perry, which hang in the State Capitol in Austin.
Tennison’s art has won numerous awards, including “Most Original Award of Excellence” from the Oil Painters of America in 2022 and Best of Show from the RayMart Art Competition in 2013, and been shown in galleries and museums across the United States. He is represented by Rob Schouten Gallery. In 2017, Tennison was interviewed by fellow artist John Pototschnik.
"Racehorse 2"
By David Shevlino (oil, 12” x 14”, 2016)
Artist David Shevlino is a graduate of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, with additional studies at the Art Students’ League in New York. His style has evolved over the years from traditional, classically influenced paintings to more impressionist images had edge toward abstraction. This method combines dexterous handing of the human figure with broad brushstrokes and tonal harmony.
Shevlino has participated in many solo and groups exhibitions, and his work is in numerous personal and corporate collections. He is represented by Andra Norris Gallery in Burlingame, California, and Somerville-Manning Gallery in Greenville, Delaware.
"Night Games"
By Leonard Everett Fisher (acrylic of gessoed masonite, 40 x 60 9inches, 2013)
From the Bronx, New York, Leonard Everett Fisher had had an artistic career spanning seven decades. His artistic training began in childhood at the Heckscher Foundation in New York and continued at the New Art School, the Art Students League, and Brooklyn College. During World War Two, he served as a topographer for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, mapping key Allied campaigns in the European, Mediterranean, and Pacific Theaters. After the war, he earned BFA (1949) and MFA (1950) degrees from Yale University.
Over his career, Fisher created approximately 6,000 “scratchboards” (soft engravings) to illustrate some 260 children’s books. He also designed ten U.S. postage stamps and contributed paintings for the lobby of the Norwalk (CT) Transit District Building.
Fisher has won numerous awards, including the American Library Association’s Arbuthnot Citation, the Catholic Library Association’s Regina Medal, the Christopher Medal for Illustration, the National Jewish Book Award, and the New England Booksellers Association Children’s Literature Award, among others. He is Dean Emeritus of Paier College of Art and former Dean of the Whitney School of Art, both in Connecticut, and has served on various advisory boards.
Fisher’s original artwork has been part of several solo and group exhibitions. His work is currently available at Cavalier Galleries in Greenwich, Connecticut. A retrospective on his “Seventy Years an Artist” appears on the Hebrew Union College website.
A Day at the Beach
By Kadir Nelson (oil on canvas, 40” x 30”, 2016)
"The Stickballers"
By Kadir Nelson (oil on linen, 48” x 72”, 2015)
After earning his BFA with highest honors from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York, artist and author Kadir Nelson was hired as a conceptual artist by DreamWorks Pictures for which he contributed to the feature film “Amistad” and the animated movie “Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron.” Other clients have included Disney, HBO, National Geographic, and Sony Music. His art has appeared several times on the cover of The New Yorker magazine, including “A Day at the Beach” (featured here) for the issue of July 11 & 18, 2016.
Nelson’s work has won numerous awards: the Caldecott Medal’s Hamilton King Award, Coretta Scott King Author and Illustrator Awards, the Society of Illustrators in New York awards, NAACP Image Awards, The New York Times Best Illustrated Book Awards, an Olympic Art Bronze medal, and others. His art is part of several prestigious collections, including the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the United States House of Representatives, The National Baseball Hall of Fame, and the International Olympic Committee in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Influenced by Michelangelo, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Henry Ossawa Tanner, and Edward Hopper, Nelson’s figurative paintings often depict heroic figures and historical scenes from the American past.
Nelson is represented by RJD Gallery in Romeo, Michigan, and prints are available on his website.
"Basketball"
by Max Ginsburg (oil on canvas, 41' x 44', 2003)
Born in Paris, France, Max Ginsburg taught art in New York City for more than forty years and is recognized as one of the top painters of urban genre scenes. This painting depicts a neighborhood basketball game.