Archie Musick

The Carved Door, Semi-Abstract Tempera Landscape Painting with Flora and Fauna

Original American Modernist tempera painting on masonite by Archie Musick (1902-1978). Signed by the artist in the lower right corner. Depicted is a landscape with penguins marching ...

"Untitled (Sueno del Caballo/Cranium or Expressive Cranium)", is a oil on board by Jose Garcia Narezo (1922-1994) of a horse skull and cloth in a wi...

Oil on canvas board painting by Ila Mae McAfee (1987-1995) titled "A Little Nippy" portraying four horses in different color tones. Signed by the artist in the lower left corner and titled verso. Presented in a custom frame, outer dimensions measure 33 ½ x 27 ½ x 1 ⅜ inches. Image size is 27 ⅞ x 21 ¾ inches. Painting is clean and in very good vintage condition - please contact us for a detailed condition report. Provenance: Private Collection, Denver, Colorado Expedited and international shipping is available - please contact us for a quote. About the Artist: As a girl growing up in a ranching community near Gunnison, Colorado, Ila McAfee loved to ride horses and to make sketches. Riding ten-miles round trip to school and back, she developed empathy for these magnificent animals, which remained with her and served as the basis for her life in art. Gathering any scraps of paper that she could find, she drew their forms, and her first full image of a horse was in the family Bible. As an adult, she declared, “I just imagine them as if their being existed in a mythological realm.” McAfee went to Los Angeles and studied at the West Lake School...

Black Dog, vintage 1961 original modernist painting of a dog in black, gray and white by Colorado Springs Broadmoor Academy artist, Charles Bunnell (1897-1968. Painted in oil on canvas paper, signed and dated by the artist lower right. Presented in a contemporary custom wood frame with all archival materials, outer dimensions measure 24 ½ x 28 ¼ x 1 ¾ inches. Image size is 20 x 16 inches. Provenance: Estate of Charles Ragland Bunnell Expedited and international shipping is available - please contact us for a quote. About the Artist: Charles Bunnell developed a love for art as a child in Kansas City, Missouri. Around 1915, Bunnell moved with his family to Colorado Springs, Colorado. He served in World War I and later used his GI Training to study at the Broadmoor Art Academy (later renamed the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center) during 1922 and 1923. In 1922, he married fellow student, Laura Palmer...

Spring Storm, original vintage painting by New Mexico & Oklahoma modernist, Doel Reed (1894-1985). Evening scene with hint of a moon, clouds and rain over a rocky western landscape with low mountains/buttes, dated, June 1980 and signed by the artist lower right. Presented in a custom frame, outer dimensions measure 24 ½ x 37 ½ x 1 ¼ inches. Image size is 14 ¾ x 27 ¾ inches. Provenance: Private Collection, Denver, Colorado Expedited and international shipping is available - please contact us for a quote. About the Artist: Early in his artistic career, Doel Reed knew he wanted to be a printmaker. Influenced by Goya's aquatints, he extended himself beyond his formal art training to learn this technique, and he established himself as one of its masters. For decades, he devoted himself to the art program at the University of Oklahoma, taking it from a faculty of one to a major mid-Western department. Upon retirement, Reed focused totally on his work, moving with his family to Taos, New Mexico, where they had previously summered. Marked by strong tonal contrasts, his landscapes of this region are deeply emotional renderings with a sense of mystery -- modernist forms combined with romantic moodiness. Born and raised in Indiana, Reed originally studied architecture, which he credits with a lifelong attention to "how something is constructed." His mature style can be characterized as architectonic in his concern with assembling volumes and planes. Even the intense northern New Mexico light becomes the means to articulate three-dimensional patterns into cubistic interplay. When painting, Reed used thick strokes of oil and casein as another structural element. Transferring to fine art, his studies at the Cincinnati Art Academy were then interrupted by military service in World War I. Suffering a gas attack in the trenches of France, Reed spent months in a hospital temporarily blinded. The effects of the gas also damaged his lungs, which later prompted him to live in the dry climates of Oklahoma and New Mexico. After the war, he returned to his studies, but it was discovery of Goya's aquatints rather than his art classes that inspired. Considered the master, Goya drew on the tonal range available with this medium to create powerfully haunting imagery. Perhaps Reed responded personally to the eloquent series "The Disasters of War." Now his course was set, and he built his own etching press, which he continued to use for the rest of his life. In 1924, he accepted a teaching position at Oklahoma State University, where he remained for thirty-five years. Emphasizing drawing, Reed encouraged students to go to nature and translate the scene through their own sensibilities. Beginning as the sole art professor, he developed the program when it became an independent department in 1930. Through his stewardship, the university gained a reputation as one of the best for printmaking in the country. During the forties, Reed also prepared a series of lectures and demonstrations on aquatint for the Association of American Colleges. His most public offering in art education is the book "Doel Reed Makes An Aquatint" (1965). Sabbaticals allowed him to visit Paris in 1926 and 1930-31. Summer travel took him to Nova Scotia and Mexico, but gas rationing during World War II necessitated a closer destination. Thus the Reed connection with Taos was established. Finally in 1959, he, his wife, and daughter moved there to Talpa Ridge, the same outlying area in which artists like Andrew Dasburg, Howard Cook, and Barbara Latham resided. Settling into a complex of three adobe buildings, Reed was welcomed by these artists, who referred to their community as Neurosis Ridge. Rena Rosenquist of Mission Gallery remembers that Reed was "the most affable man" who liked cold martinis. For Reed, the surrounding Sangre de Cristo Mountains offered "end of abstract pattern." His inventive mind came up with techniques to transform a natural scene into a richly dimensional object. He fashioned a rosin box and concocted his own formula of etching ground to achieve a velvety texture with his prints. Described as "not for the faint-hearted,”" casein became a medium with which built up paint surfaces that almost seem sculpted. Both the prints and drawings are characterized by a tension between the two-dimensional surface pattern and the articulated space it conveys. In addition to landscapes, Reed produced a number of works of voluptuous women with the figures echoing landscape elements. As a boy, his first art experience was a grade-school field trip to the John Herron Art Museum (now the Indianapolis Art Museum), where he expressed his admiration for a painting of a nude mermaid -- an image that made a lasting impression. Reed was proudest of his recognition by the National Academy of Design (now just the National Academy). In 1942, he was named associate member; in 1952, he was named full academician. ©David Cook Galleries, LLC Exhibited: Society of Independent Artists, 1927 & 1929; Society of American Etchers, 1930-1946; Kansas City Art Institute, 1932; “100 Etchings of Year,” 1932-44; Art Institute of Chicago, 1934, 1937, 1939; National Academy of Design, 1934-46, 1965 (Samuel Morse Medal); Tulsa Art Association, 1935 (prize); Paris Salon, 1937; Rome, Italy, 1937; Sweden, 1938; Chicago Society of Etchers, 1938 (prize); Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1940; Philadelphia Print Club, 1940 (prize); Venice, Italy, 1940; Carnegie Institute, 1941; Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, NH,1942, (prize); Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1942; Whitney Museum of American Art, 1942; Northwest Printmakers, 1942 (prize), 1944 (prize); Herron Art Institute, 1943; Library of Congress, 1944-46; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1944-45; Philbrook Art Club, 1944 (prize); Laguna Beach Art Association, 1944 (prize); Southern States Art League, 1944 (prize); “50 American Prints,” 1944; Oakland Art Gallery, 1945 (prize); Audubon Artists, 1945, 1951 (Gold Medal of Honor), 1954 (John Taylor Arms Memorial Medal); Albany Institute of History and Art, 1945; Pasadena Art Institute, 1946; London; Allied Art Association; National Society of Painters Casein; Mission Gallery, Taos, NM, and Blair Galleries, Ltd. Santa Fe, NM. Works Held: Carnegie Institute; Honolulu Academy of Art; Grinnell College; Library of Congress; Metropolitan Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Art, Houston; New York Public Library; Oklahoma Art Club; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Philbrook Art Club; Seattle Art Museum; Southern Methodist University; University of Montana; University of Tulsa; Bibliotéque Nationale, Paris; Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Further Reading: Harmsen's Western Americana: A Collection of One-Hundred Western Paintings with Biographical Profiles of the Artists, Dorothy Harmsen, Northland Press, Flagstaff, Arizona, 1971.; The Illustrated Biographical Encyclopedia of Artists of the American West, Peggy and Harold Samuels, Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York, 1976.; Taos Artists...

Oil on board landscape painting of a Pueblo near Santa Fe, New Mexico signed by artist Eliot Candee Clark (1883-1980), painted in 1932. Signed by the artist in the lower left corner. Composed of shades of brown, tan, and blue. Presented in a custom frame, outer dimensions measure 23 ½ x 25 x 1 3⁄4 inches. Image size is 17 1⁄4 x 19 1⁄2 inches. About the Artist: Son of landscape painter Walter Clark and Jennifer Woodruff Clark, a student of psychic phenomena, Eliot Clark was a precocious artist who became a landscape painter in the late American Impressionist style. Moving to Albemarle, Virginia in 1932, he was one of the few Impressionist artists of the Southern states. Likely this was a result of his association with James Whistler and his painting in 1900 at Gloucester, Massachusetts with John Twachtman, a family friend. Showing his obvious interest in Impressionism, he wrote a book about its exponents including Twachtman, Theodore Robinson, Childe Hassam, Julian Weir, and Robert Vonnoh. Clark was a teacher including at the National Art Club from 1943, the Art Students League, and New York City College. Early in his youth, Clark traveled with his father and other prominent artists to paint in the summer art colonies at Annisquam, Gloucester, Chadd's Ford and Ogunquit where he met artists of stature such as Edward Potthast and John Henry Twachtman. Clark's only formal instruction was a short two months at the Art Students League in New York. His landscapes evoked a "spiritualized rendition of nature" that was to stay with him for the rest of his life. Clark (perhaps related to his mother's interest in physic phenomena) developed an early interest in oriental philosophy that ended up having a major effect on his artistic development, the sense of spirituality in his landscape paintings slowly grew in importance. Clark was educated in the New York public schools, and at age 13 exhibited with the National Academy and the New York Water Color Club. By 1912, he had won national painting awards, and by 1916 was writing books on American artists as well as the history of the National Academy. In his early years Clark was privately tutored, and then later graduated from Washington Irving High School at the early age of fifteen. Although he later was quoted as saying "he had no formal training from his father", his early work was notable influenced by Walter Clark's tonalist style. Between 1904 and 1906, Clark studied in France in Paris and Giverny, and in London he saw the impressionist work of James Whistler. He wrote to his father about the Whistler Exhibit stating that some of Whistler's work impressed him, "not so much in the handling, but in the use of color, and subtle arrangement of line and balance of masses." He engaged in a "walking tour" of Europe with a fellow artist whom he met in earlier in Paris. They visited many of the major galleries in Holland and then traveled through the Alps, finally reaching Venice on August 10, 1906. I n Venice, he produced some Whistlerian style pastels similar to the ones he had seen in the Whistler Exhibition. He returned to New York in 1906, and a year later took a studio in the Van Dyke Studio Building on Eighth Avenue...

A modernist landscape painting by American WPA artist Earle N. Sherm

Sally Michel Avery (1902 - 2003) Bucolic Landscape with Cows, 1963 Oil on canvasboard 9 x 12 inches Signed and dated lower left Provenance: The art...

Melissa Sims’ work utilizes motifs from collage and pop art, in that several different images are combined into one cohesive but surreal landscape. Sims c...

Jungle with creative license of tangled growth and bright flowers and peaking out from the foliage is a strange hybrid of jungle cat. Playful and somewhat surreal. Jungle Creature -...

Three Roosters from the beautiful island of Kauai, being as goofy as the naturally can in this contemporary tropical jungle painting . Chickens on the Loose - Animal paintings - Ame...

Seagulls (Birds in Flight), 1982 By. Jim Palmer (American, b. 1941) Signed and Dated Lower Right Unframed: 32" x 36" Framed: 37" x 42.5" Born in 1941 in Columbia, South Carolina, Jim Palmer attended the University of South Carolina in 1960 before going on to study at the Atlanta School of Art in 1964. In 1966 he and his wife moved to Hilton Head Island, the second artist to do so during the Island's early years. Since living here, he designed the cover of the Chamber of Commerce' Islander Magazine, has been a contributing artist to the Island Events Magazine, and has painted many Low Country scenes that grace homes and businesses throughout the country. Palmer was the illustrator for two books written by local authors: A Corner of South Carolina and Moonshadows. His work has been included in exhibits at the Hunter Museum in Chattanooga, TN; Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC; Southeastern Artists Exhibition, Atlanta, GA; Greenville County Art Museum, Greenville, SC; Callaway Gardens, Pine Mountain, GA; and Bay Hills Club, Orlando, FL. His paintings are part of the private collections of C&S National Banks in Columbia and Hilton Head Island; Banker's Trust Tower, Columbia, SC; Palmetto State Bank, Bluffton, SC, among others. Several paintings are also included in the collections of former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Dwight Eisenhower, former South Carolina Governor Robert McNair and singer John Denver.