Cheri Christensen

"A Sunday Stroll II" small scale oil painting of a white duck with backlighting

2023

“I am inspired by the simple everyday interaction of the animals in their environment: the way the light dances across the form, the harmony of color relationships and the shapes of light and shadow. I prefer early-morning light or late afternoon settings, with extreme backlighting. My focus is on the farm animals, their character and the use of color, light and texture to convey a mood.” Cheri Christensen was born in Enumclaw, Washington, a small rural town of horse, dairy, and cattle ranches at the foot of Mt...

Carol O’Malia’s paintings depict ordinary objects, people, and places, and the ephemeral moments that are often overlooked in the rush of our everyday lives. These instants, like hea...

“I am inspired by the simple everyday interaction of the animals in their environment: the way the light dances across the form, the harmony of color relationships and the shapes of light and shadow. I prefer early-morning light or late afternoon settings, with extreme backlighting. My focus is on the farm animals, their character and the use of color, light and texture to convey a mood.” Cheri Christensen was born in Enumclaw, Washington, a small rural town of horse, dairy, and cattle ranches at the foot of Mt...

“I am inspired by the simple everyday interaction of the animals in their environment: the way the light dances across the form, the harmony of color relationships and the shapes of light and shadow. I prefer early-morning light or late afternoon settings, with extreme backlighting. My focus is on the farm animals, their character and the use of color, light and texture to convey a mood.” Cheri Christensen was born in Enumclaw, Washington, a small rural town of horse, dairy, and cattle ranches at the foot of Mt. Rainer. She attended the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and graduated with a B.A. from the University of Washington. Cheri studied oil painting and drawing intensely for three years with Ron Lukas...

“I am inspired by the simple everyday interaction of the animals in their environment: the way the light dances across the form, the harmony of color relationships and the shapes of light and shadow. I prefer early-morning light or late afternoon settings, with extreme backlighting. My focus is on the farm animals, their character and the use of color, light and texture to convey a mood.” Cheri Christensen was born in Enumclaw, Washington, a small rural town of horse, dairy, and cattle ranches at the foot of Mt...

“I am inspired by the simple everyday interaction of the animals in their environment: the way the light dances across the form, the harmony of color relationships and the shapes of light and shadow. I prefer early-morning light or late afternoon settings, with extreme backlighting. My focus is on the farm animals, their character and the use of color, light and texture to convey a mood.” Cheri Christensen was born in Enumclaw, Washington, a small rural town of horse, dairy, and cattle ranches at the foot of Mt...

Early Morning, Serengeti Search is inspired by Jan Coutts's travels to the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Conservation areas of Tanzania. Mixed media triptych on...

This fox in the chicken coop, oil on canvas, 105 x 156 without frame and 135 x 185 cm with frame, was clearly painted by Angelo Maria Crivelli (Milan 1660 - 1730) called Crivellone; painter from the Milanese stable but also very active in Piedmont thanks to the Savoy family. The theme in question was very successful in his time and he also developed it vertically, as we can see in some of his works at Castello Sforzesco; here the defense of the hen house...

17th Century Old Master, Figurative and Landscape Painting by Jan Van der Bent So far, little is known about the life and work of Jan van der Bent. He was...

The works of William Smith were regularly exhibited at the Royal Academy in London between 1813 and 1859. Yet little is known about this artist. He lived in Shropshire and was active...

Photorealist oil painting by Manon Cleary (1942-2011). Painting is signed on reverse "Cleary". Painting is stretched on aluminum stretcher and dates to the 1990s. Manon Cleary had a remarkable ability to draw and paint with photographic fidelity, but she was also known as a charismatic teacher at the University of the District of Columbia and as a free spirit whose exuberant life may have been her most enduring work of art. Since the 1970s, Ms. Cleary had been at the center of a group of artists in Adams Morgan. She exhibited her meticulous artwork throughout the city and around the world, but she also became known for her striking presence, her colorful love life and the rats she kept as pets. As an artist, Ms. Cleary borrowed classical techniques from her deep study of Renaissance masters to create paintings and drawings memorable for their frank realism and sometimes disturbing themes. In addition to her many nude self-portraits, Ms. Cleary made erotically charged paintings of flowers. She took inspiration from a painful personal history in a series of works depicting the terror of rape and, in later years, of not being able to breathe without mechanical assistance. Critics considered her a leading figurative artist of the photo-realist school, in which painters render their subjects with camera-like precision. In fact, Ms. Cleary occasionally won awards for photography when adjudicators didn’t realize her works were free-hand creations. She was “widely acknowledged to be among the best, if not the best, of the city’s figurative painters,” Washington Post critic Michael O’Sullivan wrote in 2006. “There is a tension between the cool, clinical detachment of photography and painting’s warm idealization of form.” Ms. Cleary exhibited her art in galleries and museums from Moscow to Paris to Hickory, N.C., but Washington was her home for the past 42 years. In 1974, she settled in the decrepit Beverly Court apartments on Columbia Road NW, where a coterie of artists soon grew up around her. She painted her walls purple, and her fourth-floor apartment — even with the pet rats — became something of a bohemian salon. “She was a star,” painter Judy Jashinsky told the Washington City Paper in 2004. “She was stunning, beautiful; long, brownish–black hair; real thin; wore . . . little sundresses and sandals. She was just very cool, and there was always a crowd around her.” Ms. Cleary had a long list of male admirers, including several whose confrontational attempts at “performance art” led to their arrests. She had a brief marriage in 1981 to a Danish artist known as Tommy — “just Tommy,” Ms. Cleary said — whom she divorced in less than a year. As a kind of graphic homage to her various lovers, Ms. Cleary made a series of intimately revealing portraits that were featured years later on the HBO program “Real Sex.” She met her second husband after a gallery opening in Baltimore. By way of introduction, Kijek, a dancer, stripped naked at a crowded party, walked up to Ms. Cleary and said, “Wouldn’t you like me to pose for you?” They were married in 2001. In spite of her unconventional life, Ms. Cleary was more than a mere provocateur. After a day of teaching at UDC, she would return to her studio, with its windows painted over to block out sunlight, and work late into the night, with a bottle of Dr Pepper at her side. She took nude photographs of herself from every angle, then painstakingly created lifelike images that seemed alive with the warmth of human flesh. After studying in Rome in her youth, she developed what she called “an obsession” with Caravaggio, an iconoclastic painter who lived from 1573 to 1610. She often copied paintings at the National Gallery of Art and, in her own work, blended Renaissance styles with a distinctly modern sensibility. Manon Catherine Cleary was born Nov. 14, 1942, in St. Louis. Her father was a doctor, and her identical twin sister, Shirley Cleary-Cooper, is an artist in Helena, Mont. She was a 1964 graduate of Washington University in her home town and, for the rest of her life, was proud of having been a member of the Pi Phi...

FOUND FAT 2020 Paris, France Bold, hand-painted, serif typography, painted over a lion's skull on a stained, gessoed canvas. The words read: "Found Fat," mirrored in a vivid green ...