Blend Cota

Joker and Harley - oil on canvas painting by Blend Cota

2017

Medium scale vertical contemporary still life oil painting of interior, the artist studio window during the 2020 quarantine. Moody color tones border the sunny window with a sheer white curtain revealing the pastel cityscape behind it. A deep green potted plant in a terracotta planter, slightly askew, sits in front of the window along with quarantine everyday life essentials, including toilet paper rolls and a bottle of kelly green dish soap. The sunny window brings hopeful light into the room from the Philadelphia architectural...

"The Schoolroom" by Theo Duverger Theophile-Emmanuel Duverger 1821 - 1886 was a leading French genre painter, exhibitor at the Paris salon and in the Musee D'Orsay. Oil on Panel, sig...

The oil paintings of the contemporary Dutch artist Paul Jansen invites the viewer to look beyond the standard picture within the frame. It feels as if the ...

"Two Girls in School" is a painting by Philadelphia born Expressionist painter Bernard Harmon. The 36" x 40.25" oil on board portrait of two figures is painted in a vibrant color palette. The painting is framed in a new, black wood frame and signed "Harmon" on verso. There is a second portrait the artist painted on the back of the painting. Figurative expressionism in the style of Alice Neel. Bernard Harmon was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1935. Harmon was primarily a portrait painter and a well loved teacher in the Philadelphia area. A graduate of the Philadelphia Museum School and Temples Tyler School of Art, Harmon traveled extensively in Europe and South America. Beloved by many, Harmon taught in the Philadelphia School District for 32 of his 54 years of life. Beginning his career as an art teacher at West Philadelphia High School, in the early 1960s he became one of the district's artists in residence, traveling from school to school to demonstrate for students how an artist works. Returning to the classroom, Harmon joined the art department at Central High School where he taught for 14 years and became an innovator in art curriculum, developing a program offering advanced placement art classes to gifted students. In his final years Harmon became a supervisor, mentoring teachers and overseeing programs in the Philadelphia school systems District #1. During his short life Harmon taught collage preparatory art classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, summer classes at the University of the Arts, and a Saturday program for gifted children at Drexel University. Among Harmon's portraits were commissioned by Philadelphia Jazz organist Jimmy Smith and Mayor Richardson Dilworth. Bernard Harmon was active in promoting African American Artist throughout his life time. He organized many early shows such as the "Afro American Artists...