Alan Bray

A Rise, blue and green casein on panel impressionist waterscape painting, 2004

2004

The latest painting from Alan Bray is a rare and exotic sighting, indeed. He’s shifted his focus away from the human realm and up to the skies, capturing an empty bird’s nest camoufl...

The latest painting from Alan Bray is a rare and exotic sighting, indeed. He’s shifted his focus away from the human realm and up to the skies, capturing an empty bird’s nest camoufl...

A narrative from the artist: "It belonged to a Hermit Thrush, which has one of the most beautiful songs in all of nature. Give it a listen on Audubon. A...

Alan Bray’s landscape paintings of his native, central Maine explore the ever-ebbing dynamic between nature and humanity. His paintings capture an asymmetrical pas de deux. Painted with uncompromising precision by his quick-drying casein tempera paint, Bray’s trailheads, shorelines, and vast horizons show evidence of previous human presence as it succumbs to natural growth. Bray’s stylized scenes center on these afterimages of human interference as well as other natural phenomena. Inundated with detail, nature reclaims swaths of scarred land, fallen trees, and dilapidated structures, returning them to their wild form. Natural phenomena such as wild overgrowth, animal tracks, mysterious forms, bogs, and mist are resplendently captured as homage to the rugged and uninhabited corners of secluded Maine. Alan Bray builds his landscapes with numerous layers of quick-drying casein tempera. Often used in Italian Renaissance painting...

Gwyneth Leech tracks the progress of Manhattan construction with the sensitivity of an Impressionist painter. Initially struck by a skyscraper emerging outside her studio window, Lee...

Gwyneth Leech tracks the progress of Manhattan construction with the sensitivity of an Impressionist painter. Initially struck by a skyscraper emerging outside her studio window, Lee...

A fine naive landscape painting with a windmill by American artist Janet Munro (b. 1949). Munro was born in Woburn, MA, and her work focuses on the waterfront lives of everyday peopl...

AS THE DAYS WASH OVER ME‐ BY E. Melinda Morrison is egg tempera on a prepped aluminum panel This egg tempera paintings is 12 x 24 is painted by E. Melinda Morrison in her studio wh...

Once The Master - Mid Century Figurative Landscape "Once the Master" a portrait of a Zuni Master Potter in contrast with the emergent modernism around him. He is beneath an adobe an...

Vivid abstracted landscape of Monument Valley, Utah by N. Mallory (American, 20th Century), circa 1945. Signed lower left corner. Condition: Good: Some edge and corner wear consisten...

Early work of figures moving along the street in Cuernavaca to the Cathedral in Mexico by Goldie Anita Powell Harding (American, 1892-1974). Circa 1935. Tempera on Masonite. In a per...

"Springtime" is an original tempera on board painting of a Colorado mountain landscape painting by Ethel Magafan circa 1960. Abstracted mountain landscape with trees, painted in colors of green, purple, golden yellow, red, orange, blue, black and white. Presented in a custom hardwood frame, outer dimensions measure 23 ¼ x 50 x 2 inches. Image size is 30 x 48 inches. Provenance: Private collection, Maine Acquired in the early 1960s, by descent through the family to the present owner About the Artist: Jenne and Ethel Magafan were identical twins, born in Chicago to a Greek immigrant father and a Polish mother. Due to health concerns about their father, the family moved to Colorado, living first in Colorado Springs and then in Denver. He was a proud supporter of their artistic ambitions but died suddenly 1932, a heavy blow to both of them. They attended East High School in Denver, where they found a mentor in their art teacher Helen Perry. She had studied at the Art Institute of Chicago but had later abandoned a career as an artist, making her all the more determined to help the Magafan twins succeed artistically. While still in high school, the twins impressed artist Frank Mechau, and Helen Perry paid for their lessons with him. He subsequently invited them to apprentice with him at his Redstone studio. In 1936, Jenne won the Carter Memorial Art Scholarship and shared it with her sister so that they both could attend the Broadmoor Art Academy in Colorado Springs. Once they ran out of money, Mechau, now teaching there, hired them as assistants. Through their involvement at the Academy, the twins entered into careers as muralists, working at first with Mechau and then with Peppino Mangravite. From 1937 to 1943, Ethel was commissioned to paint her first of seven government sponsored murals. Located in the US Post Office in Auburn, Nebraska, this commission made Ethel (at age 26) the youngest artist in America to receive such an honor. Denver Art Museum director Donald J. Bear once commented that “[Ethel and Jenne's] study of local detail makes them appear as little Bruegels of ranch genre – natural and unforced.” As mural painting commissions diminished, Ethel began to do more easel painting for which she used a palette knife and tempera paints to great effect. After settling in California for five years, the twins permanently relocated to Woodstock, New York in 1945, where the sisters lived apart for the first time. Ethel developed an increasing focus within her work, particularly for horses and abstract landscapes. She met fellow artist Bruce Currie...