Charles Culver

"Untitled (Red Flower)" Watercolor on Paper, Abstract Flower, Signed & Dated

1950

"Red Chair," though an interior scene, is arranged like a still-life with the furniture and objects slightly off-kilter in the creative manner of Marc Chagall's interiors, the Russian-French artist of Belarusian Jewish origin. These non-fixed objects lend a floating energetic atmosphere and the brilliant colors contribute to the liveliness of this warm inviting interior. Richard Jerzy was a well-known watercolor artist from the Detroit, Michigan area. His signature works were figures and still lives, and many famous Michigan families are collectors. "He was probably the most promising, successful, exciting artist in the state of Michigan," said Miriam Parel, a fellow artist and friend for more than 30 years. He grew up on Detroit's east side and developed an interest in painting as a teenager. He attended Detroit's Center (now College) for Creative Studies. Other well- known CCS faculty and graduates are Susan Aaron-Taylor, Harry Bertoia, Doug Chaing, Stephen Dinehart, Tyree Guyton...

The 16 in x 23 in watercolor displays striking and colorful qualities that influenced abstract expressionism for decades to come. In 2016 the Dennos Museum in Traverse City, Michigan, in homage to the very first exhibition in the Zimmerman Sculpture Court, installed the first two paintings by the former Michigan State University painting professor, Clif McChesney (1929-2011) on the Court walls, and the glass artistry of Dale Chihuly, featuring works from the Dennos Collection. In 1991, an exhibition of Dale Chihuly glass...

"Spring/Daffodils" captures the essence of the colors of spring and its meaning by choosing Daffodils, the first large common flower of the season that is so welcomed after a long hard mid-west winter. Flowers, also, are an iconic choice of subject matter for many artists from the Dutch Masters and their large vases of flowers to Alex Katz and his mammoth portraits of "flowers." Some of Manet's last paintings that were exquisitely rendered were of the common flowers lilacs and roses. Joyce Nagel...

The idyllic atmosphere of this local dock scene falls within a couple of styles one being regionalism, an American realist modern art movement that included paintings, murals, lithographs, and illustrations depicting scenes of rural and small-town America primarily in the Midwest and frequently associated with Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton. The other style is romanticism wherein the scene depicted is a more desired or dramatic version of what actually is. “Untitled (Dock Scene)” is typical of a small town dock scene from Michigan where Culver lived or from places as far away as Maine, but what makes it important is its easy familiarity: water, gulls or terns, slanting wood shanties, scruffy dirt patches and course grasses. It is not idealized, but does set the tone of fresh air, the scream of birds and the sun on water. This piece has been professionally reframed with acid-free matting and museum glass. In a 1952 Detroit Free Press article, entitled “Artist Explains His Work,” Culver was asked why he painted the way he did. He stated: “I try to ‘see’ though not too exactly; I try to think though not too ponderously; I feel emotion yet I try not to become overwrought. I interpret rather than describe, and design rather than depict. I work with values, not light and shade; hence, when I am successful, I achieve substance rather than three-dimensional form, and this satisfies me as being wholly sufficient. In my work I wish to be serious without becoming a bore, exuberant without being frivolous, humorous without being silly. I believe that good paintings are conceived, not contrived; and I am interested in art much more than in pictures.” Charles Culver...

Eve Nethercott, American (1925 - 2015) - Red and Yellow Flowers, Year: circa 1960, Medium: Watercolor, Size: 20 in. x 14 in. (50.8 cm x 35.56 cm), Description: Flowing out of t...

Flowers is an original artwork realized by Caroline Hill in the Mid-20th Century. Original mixed colored watercolor. Includes frame: 76 x 4.5 x 55 cm The artwork represents a colo...

Watercolor and ink depicting a floral still life with colorful bouquet in a blue and white vase set on a round pink/purple covered table, a blu...

In this artwork, Milwaukee-based artist Joan Dvorsky presents the viewer with a dance of colors. The title "Improvisation in Red" implies that the Dvorsky herself did not know what t...