Michael Kotasek

Metaphysics

2010

Painted from life, the artist standing on a street corner looking across to three buildings lit by ambient street lights. Rising up behind the city is a dark mass, a hill silhouetted against the comparatively brighter blue night sky. Signed "Personett" lower right corner. Framed in a traditional black frame w gold trim. Framed dimensions: 17 x 15 inches Rachel Personett was born in Hawaii, but raised in Colorado. Being the daughter of a pilot she has always traveled extensively. She has studied part time at the Savannah College of Art and Design, The Angel Academy of Art, and finally settled on the Florence Academy of Art, graduating in 2015. In January 2016 she apprenticed the painter Odd Nerdrum in Norway for eight months. Rachel Personett works strictly from life, and enjoys the challenged of painting the ephemeral. Working from life provides the opportunity to travel around the world painting the ever changing people and landscapes. Artist Statement My mother had studied advertising in college, so she knew a lot about arts and good craftsmanship. She did talks at my elementary school each week and on a different artist. I remember being very moved by the images of Van Gogh and Andrew Wyeth. At the Florence Academy I really liked Sargent, Sorolla, Willard Metcalf, Henri Fantin-Latour and Velazquez. At Odd Nerdrums I gained new respect for Rembrandt and was introduced to other Scandinavian painters...

A plein air depiction of an outdoor Dutch Cafe. Artist Bio Rachel Personett was born in Hawaii, but raised in Colorado. Being the daughter of a pilot she has always traveled extensively. She has studied part time at the Savannah College of Art and Design, The Angel Academy of Art, and finally settled on the Florence Academy of Art, graduating in 2015. In January 2016 she apprenticed the painter Odd...

"Two Sisters" is a contemporary realist painting of two young women sitting at a bar. One sister looks a bit reserved, her hair down, clasping her hands in...

Painted from life, from a beach, looking across a little harbor full of brightly colored boats towards a little whitewashed town. Along the shoreline are the remnants of a child’s sandcastle. Signed "Personett" lower left corner. Framed in a traditional black frame w gold trim. Framed dimensions: 13 x 12 inches Rachel Personett was born in Hawaii, but raised in Colorado. Being the daughter of a pilot she has always traveled extensively. She has studied part time at the Savannah College of Art and Design, The Angel Academy of Art, and finally settled on the Florence Academy of Art, graduating in 2015. In January 2016 she apprenticed the painter Odd Nerdrum in Norway for eight months. Rachel Personett works strictly from life, and enjoys the challenged of painting the ephemeral. Working from life provides the opportunity to travel around the world painting the ever changing people and landscapes. Artist Statement My mother had studied advertising in college, so she knew a lot about arts and good craftsmanship. She did talks at my elementary school each week and on a different artist. I remember being very moved by the images of Van Gogh and Andrew Wyeth. At the Florence Academy I really liked Sargent, Sorolla, Willard Metcalf, Henri Fantin-Latour and Velazquez. At Odd Nerdrums I gained new respect for Rembrandt and was introduced to other Scandinavian painters...

Chess Players WPA Depression Era Mid-20th Century American Scene Realism Modern. Signed upper right and verso 8 x 10 inches oil on board. BIO The son of a men's haberdasher, Mervin ...

This piece, "Fishing on Round Lake", is an 11x14 landscape oil painting on canvas by artist James Jahrsdoerfer. Featured is an afternoon view onto a...

Antique Guy Meeks oil painting of a woman at a well. Signed lower right: G Meeks, Roma, 1871 Framed dimensions: 24 1/2 x 21 in.

This is an oil on artist board (unframed) by the important Hungarian-born and internationally celebrated Denes de Holesch (1910-1983). Denes de Holesch was an international equestrian artist. His works have been exhibited all over the world, including in New York, Beverly Hills, Boston, Chicago, Paris, Mexico City, Montreal, Tokyo, Sydney, and Madrid. His horse paintings fall into one of seven themes, including polo, cowboys, circus, rodeo, hunt, bull-fight, race-course and running free. His mastery of the subject has been compared to that of Picasso, Delacroix and Franc Marc. 1910 Denes Dezo George de Holesch was born on 9 February, 1910 at Banska-Bystrica, Northern Hungary. He was the third child and youngest son of Hugo de Holesch, an architect and Margit, nee Wagner. Many generations of the de Holesch family had worked as professional architects. He studied at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest on a scholarship. Early in his career he traveled to China, Japan, Philippines, Java, Bali and Australia, where his reputation grew rapidly. Here he produced portraits in oils, and lithographs of the Chinese, as well as landscape works in oils,depicting the local countryside, and canal, street and city scenes. His exposure to the arts of the Chinese, with their simplicity of line, greatly influenced his later works. In 1939 he established a studio at Lavender Bay near Sydney. In 1940 he exhibited at the Macquarie Galleries in Sydney. In 1944 he married Joyce Greer, the Melbourne concert pianist. In 1945 the couple moved to New York where his interest in horses grew. He held exhibitions at Gallery Wildenstein, Herve, and FAR Gallery. In 1946 Holesch moved to Montreal where he exhibited at the National Gallery of Montreal. In 1947 he moved to Boston where he continued painting portraits and horses. He exhibited there at the Ehrmann and Vose galleries. Later in the year he moved to San Francisco where he was invited to participate in the "Renoir to Picasso" Exhibition held at the Maxwell Gallery.1946 He moved to Montreal, Canada and exhibited at the National Gallery of Montreal. (Frederic Remington and Charles Russell) 1947 Early in the year he moved to Boston and continued painting portraits and horses. In June, he painted the portrait of Harvard Law School Dean, Erwin N. Griswold, and in October his works were exhibited at Margaret Brown's Galerie Intime, Newbury Street, Boston. 1948 He produced a clay sculpture head of Egon Petri, one of a number of clay sculptures that he produced. He also produced a number of wood carvings. His paintings were chosen for inclusion in a Group Exhibition in the National Gallery of San Francisco, and in the important and prestigious 'Renoir to Picasso' Exhibition held at Maxwell's Galleries, 372 Sutter Street, San Francisco. 1953 His works were included in a Group Impressionists Exhibition held at the Ohana Gallery, London 1954 He travelled to New York, where he was commissioned to paint Herbert Gasser, Nobel Prize Winner in Biochemistry. 1955 He returned to England, and then travelled to Paris to exhibit works in the Galerie Marcel Lenoir. 1956 He again returned to New York to work on portrait commissions and for exhibitions of his works, mainly of horses. These exhibitions were held in New York, Boston, San Francisco and late in the year at the Galleries of Frank J. Oehlschlaeger at 107 East Oak Street, Chicago. During this year, visits with his family to Ringling Circus and to a rodeo in Tucson, Arizona must have impressed him greatly, for images of these events soon appeared on his canvases. His work was greatly admired by Hollywood film- stars, such as Ann Rutherford and Burt Lancaster, and David Niven purchased one of the horse paintings to give as his wedding present to Grace Kelly on her marriage to Sovereign Prince Rainier III of Monaco. 1959 The prints of 'Courtship' and 'Chargers' were produced. It has been estimated that close to a million copies of his prints were sold over the next ten years, with 'Courtship' being advertised by Stern's Book Dpt. on 5th Avenue, New York along with prints by Picasso, Degas, Goya, Modigliani, Renoir and Van Gogh. 1960 He moved to Antibes, on the French Riviera in the South-East of France. An exhibition of his works was held in the Galerie des Etats-Unis, Cannes and his works were now permanently exhibited at Galerie Madsen, Rue St. Honore, Paris and Galerie Davis, Place Vendome, Paris. 1961 Known to Picasso, he was invited to attend a special bull-fight held in the South of France, which was organized for Pablo Picasso's 80th birthday. 1975 He moved from Voulangis to Castelfontana in the Dorf Tirol overlooking Merano, Italy. He remained there for close to a year and exhibited his works in a group exhibition in Merano in which works by Salvador Dali and Annigoni were also displayed. 1979 He returned to the old farmhouse at Voulangis. During this time he painted the portrait of Pope John Paul II. 1989 a catalog and biography of Holesch entitled Holesch Horse Paintings 1910-1983 was published by Andrew Mackenzie...