Chris Ballantyne

Backyard Fences (Plank)

2011

Village is an original drawing in China ink on paper realized by an Anonymous artist of the XX century. The State of preservation is very good wit...

In BOOM BUST REPEAT17, Peña creates a silhouette of house and fills it with sharpe-edged shapes that contain gradients and saturated hues of red, green, and violet. He balances these colors with muted tones of orange and yellow . The viewer can create a house that is yet to be built in between the gaps here. In "Boom, Bust, Repeat", Peña remarks on a house and landscape that has yet to take place. The painting is created with watercolor and acrylic paint on paper. In the foreground we see Sintra board or flattened PVC that has been CNC routed. In the "soil" beneath the house are small circular lines that have been hand drawn with India ink. The Sintra board has been cut to reveal arrows in the negative space pointing upwards as to hint at a boom in the market. Peña’s works range from painting to multimedia installations that question the ever-changing psychological landscape of America; asking the viewer to re-examine their perceptions of the “American Dream” and the affects that pursuit has on our environment and national psyche. The realization that both the idealistic pursuit of happiness and the relevance of painting in a technologically driven world informs his practice. With each composition the labor begins with digital composites of a fragmented American landscape in peril —where tension lies in the contrasts between past and present, analog and digital, representation and abstraction, and stability and instability. In his most recent series the American home (stability) and fragmented and shifting landscape (instability) are veiled by a digitally produced mat. Traditionally a mat is, by definition, a flat, thin piece of paper based material included within the picture frame and serves as additional decoration when framing artwork. He activates this commonly overlooked material by using a non-traditional material, Sintra (flattened sheet of PVC), that has a negative digitally drawn image cut-out. This cut-out might, at first glance, look hand cut however, a more astute viewer would realize the precision is mechanical. The mat has been transformed from inactive decoration to digitally produced veil that represents the technologically anxious precision we surround ourselves with. Nick Peña...

Christof Mascher studied at the University of Art Braunschweig and graduated in 2009 as a Master Student of Walter Dahn. Like his famous teacher, he is foc...

India ink on paper

Original early modernist india ink drawing with brushwork by the well known American artist, Adolf Arthur Dehn. Signed by the artist, titled and dated 1925 lower right. Dehn spent his early career traveling and working in Europe during the three year time period 1922 to 1925 when this drawing was done in France. The Chateau d’Auguebelette build in the fourteen century as a fort sits high on the mountain range to the left. Condition is very good. Light toning of paper consistent with age. Under glass, not examined out of frame. The artwork is housed in a antique style silver leaf contemporary frame 16.25 by 22 inches. Adolf Dehn, painter, printmaker, author, illustrator and teacher, was born Adolph Arthur Dehn in Waterville, Minnesota on November 22, 1895. He was valedictorian of his graduating class at Waterville High School and attended the Minneapolis School of Art between 1914 and 1917. Dehn studied for a year at the Art Students League in New York beginning in 1919. While in New York he met Boardman Robinson who introduced him to the master printer, George Miller. The first exhibition of Dehn's lithographs was held at the Weyhe Gallery in New York City in 1921 and the Weyhe Gallery mounted his first solo exhibition in 1923. Throughout is life Dehn was a frequent visitor to Europe, staying for various periods of time. Upon his return from a three-year stay in Europe in 1925, he changed the spelling of his first name to Adolf. In 1934, Dehn established the Adolf Dehn Print Club and was one of the founder-member artists of Associated American Artists in New York. He was selected by Prints magazine as one of the ten best printmakers in the United States in 1936 and the following year he worked in the graphic arts division of the Federal Art Project. He taught summers at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri (1938) and the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center (1940-1942). For his lithographs, Dehn worked with the finest printers including Meister Schulz in Berlin, Edmond Desjobert in Paris, and George Miller, Grant Arnold...

Alfred Paul Emil Etienne Dumont (Swiss, * 13. Juni 1828 in Baulmes; † 7th August 1894 in Geneva) Vue de Cerlier au lac de Bienne avec Île Saint-Pierre (Figures at an open fire, wit...