Gregory Frux

Norway I, blue tones, seascape and mountain

2020

Dr. Rowland S. Russell PhD. writes about his experience directly witnessing Greg's practice as a “plein air” artist: Whether he’s portraying quiet scenes from Brooklyn’s Prospect Park or the Botanical Gardens, intriguing remnants of New York’s varied industry (grain silos...

Mansard Window, Oil on canvas, cityscape Sixth Avenue, Park Slope, Brooklyn Dr. Rowland S. Russell PhD. writes about his experience directly witnessing Greg's practice as a “plein air” artist: Whether he’s portraying quiet scenes from Brooklyn’s Prospect Park or the Botanical Gardens, intriguing remnants of New York’s varied industry (grain silos...

Mansard Window, Oil on canvas, cityscape Sixth Avenue, Park Slope, Brooklyn Dr. Rowland S. Russell PhD. writes about his experience directly witnessing Greg's practice as a “plein a...

Mansard Window, Oil on canvas, cityscape Sixth Avenue, Park Slope, Brooklyn Dr. Rowland S. Russell PhD. writes about his experience directly witnessing Greg's practice as a “plein a...

keywords; surrealism, portrait, oil painting, representation painting, strangeness, contemporary surrealistic, unsettling, contemporary realist painting, dreams, symbolic composition, tonalist, grey, monochrome, nostalgic, vintage, early century, illustration, car, automobile, tractor, old car wreck...

George Picken Playground, Carl Schurz Park, 1938 Signed and dated lower left Oil on canvas 28 x 36 inches Provenance: Estate of the artist A native New Yorker, George Picken was born in 1898. His father, an artist and photographer, emigrated from Scotland; his mother came from Wales. They joined other European immigrants settling in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen. Picken enlisted in the army during World War I and saw action at Verdun. After the war, he stayed in France and like many Americans returning from the vibrant Paris art scene, was inspired by the radical movement known as Impressionism. Upon his return Picken decided to follow in his father’s footsteps and become an artist. George began his studies in 1919 at the Art Students League during Robert Henri, Max Weber, and John Sloan’s tenure. There he took classes in studio art, illustration, and etching through 1923 studying extensively with George Bridgman. The writings of French philosopher Henri Bergson were widely circulated among the artistic community and looking at Picken’s early paintings one cannot help but wonder if as a young artist he was influenced by Bergson’s ideas. Bergson said, "[There are] two profoundly different ways of knowing a thing. The first implies that we move round the object; the second that we enter into it. The first depends on the point of view at which we are placed and on the symbols by which we express ourselves. The second neither depends on a point of view nor relies on any symbol. The first kind of knowledge may be said to stop at the relative; the second, in those cases where it is possible, to attain the absolute.” Picken’s recognition came early with showings of his work while he was a student. His drawings were published in the New Masses, a significant left-wing publication. The New York Public Library honored him with one-man shows in 1924 and 1928 and his work was included in group exhibitions at the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, the Whitney Studio Club, Montross Gallery, and the Art Students League. During this time Picken married Viola Carton, one of Reginald Marsh’s models, and they lived in Westchester. Later they moved to Yorkville in Manhattan between 82nd street and East End Avenue where they began their family. Picken’s grandson Niles Jaeger recalled that, “Grandpa’s home and studio were in a five-story walk-up apartment, heated only by a coal stove. But there were wonderful views of the East River and the Queensborough Bridge...

This compelling fine art painting presents a rural above-ground pool, enclosed by a makeshift chain-link fence, set against a sunlit landscape of rolling green grass and dense tree l...

Intersection 18x14, oil on panel City Scene Landscape The artist is a regional landscape painter working in oils and pastels whose subject matter varies from the mountains and desert of west Texas to the wetlands along the Texas coast, with a strong focus on Texas forests and trees. and to the Rocky Mountains The artist is in corporate and private collections around the world. Garrett Middaugh is a regional landscape painter working in oils and pastels whose subject matter varies from the mountains and desert of west Texas to the wetlands along the Texas coast, with a strong focus on Texas forests and trees. His palette is muted, stark, embracing the neutral colors of everyday experience. Avoiding the romantic, his landscapes are often painted at high noon or in the dead of winter. He paints in a fluid hyper realist style and feels most influenced by other landscape artists such as Neil Welliver and Rackstraw Downes. He sees landscape painting as a form of meditation, projecting outward, while solving equations and mapping the scene, realizing accuracy of objects and relationships, of light, color, textures, distances. "Landscape painting is for me a means of projecting outward, of meditating, examining the here and now of place. The process often feels similar to the satisfaction of solving math equations, intuitively realizing accuracy of objects and relationships, of light, color, textures, distances. For the most part I paint Texas. For several years I devoted a significant amount of time to painting its forests -- the complexity of forest alleviated my sense and the nearness and density of growth was comforting. I have also ventured into west Texas and Big Bend, and occasionally have attempted to capture the mesmerizing serenity of central Texas farm and ranchland." Garrett Middaugh Also shown is a new Texas tractor painting...