Errol Barron

Nashville Wharf

2020

Framed dimensions are 16 x 20 inches Without an overt theme, Errol Barron’s recent work seeks primarily to convey the pleasures and mysteries of curiosity, speculation, and reflecti...

Framed sized is 16 x 20 inches. Framed in a white oak frame. In any landscape there are places and objects of quiet monumentality so ingrained into the scene that they are nearly invisible or regarded only as ordinary or outdated artifacts of the past. Some are small in scale, and some suggest a kind of architectural grandeur mixed with a pathos stemming from their obsolete utility and the evidence they bear of the passage of time. Some, like the abandoned oil rigs in and around the Gulf of Mexico, are poignant reminders of environmental optimism and tragedy. Primarily encountered on trips around our region, stretching up as far as the delta of northwestern Mississippi and southeastern Arkansas and as far south as the mouth of the Mississippi, these places and objects evoked the curiosity and affection, which prompted this show. The paintings, the result of a labor-intensive technique requiring many layers of color, are intimately sized though they often deal with subjects of great scale. Trained as an architect and a practicing architect until 2016, Barron now works primarily as a painter. For many years he has taught at the Tulane University School of Architecture and is a Fellow in the American Institute of Architects. In 2012, he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Louisiana Architects Association and in 1995 was awarded the prestigious Gabriel Prize from the Western European Architecture Foundation. Errol Barron...

This painting is a 20th century realist landscape depiction of a shipyard by Robert Lavin. The piece is executed in oil on board and measures 10" x 24". Robert Lavin was born in New York City. His education included Townsend Harris, a prep school in New York followed by college at City College of New York. He also attended the National Academy of Art, where he studied as a painter. Studying the social realists of the 1930’s, Lavin, a former Marine pilot, portrayed steelworkers, roughnecks and trainmen. Lavin often painted his “proletarian ballets”- as one critic called them – to illustrate magazine advertisements. The Smithsonian Institution and other museums collected Lavin’s original paintings, which portrayed the laboring subjects with dignity and integrity. Lavin also illustrated stock certificates and books. Paper Money magazine praised him as “one of the greatest vignette artists of the 20th century.” In addition to this, Lavin was for a number of years an Associate Professor of Art at City College of New York, a position he left in the mid ‘60’s in order to devote himself full time to his painting. His commissions took him around the world, from the North Sea to the coast of Africa, from the slopes of Alaska to the Sea of Japan. As part of a series for Gulf Oil, he painted the royal family of England for the opening of a new refinery in Wales. Another portrait of one of the early Americanastronauts, appeared on the cover of Time Magazine. Other major commissions during these years included Readers Digest books...

Oil on canvas