Twentieth Century French School

'Industrial Port with Boats', Large Mid-century oil, style of Bernard Buffet

Circa 1965

Signed lower right, 'J M Hubert' (French, 20th century) and painted circa 1965. A mid-century modernist, panoramic view of fishing boats before a sage green light house from this Fr...

Signed verso, 'Keith Longcor', dated 1989 and titled, 'Diamond Auto Electric'. A kinetic, post-industrial landscape showing a view of various automobiles parked on a garage forecour...

Oil landscape showing a view of several age-worn buildings near waters edge, with two sailboats making their way past, and gold and lavender hued hills in the background. Signed low...

Signed lower right, 'L. Curtis' for Lynn Curtis (American, 20th century) and painted circa 1985. Exhibited: Lodi Art Center, 11th Annual Art Exhibition (from accompanying label). Framed dimensions: 38.25 H x 60.5 W x 1.75 D Inches. A very substantial, oil and mixed media Modernist work showing a profusion of spring wild-flowers bursting through panels of wind-billowed canvas. A dynamic expression of spring's power of growth overcoming all physical restraint. Lynn Curtis holds a Bachelor’s Degree from Dartmouth College and a Masters in painting and drawing from The University of Iowa. She received a postgraduate certificate in printmaking from London's Slade School...

Signed lower right, 'T.K.S' and painted 2019. A large and vibrant study of sunflower blossoms contrasted against a background of midnight blue. (The following is the artists's self-description of her work and process.) Teresa Smith received her B.A. in Visual Arts at Naropa University. Informed by spiritual practice and a naturalist philosophy, her art combines the richness of oil paint as a visceral material with contemplative practice, producing paintings on ecology with nature as icon. Influenced by Turner, O’Keeffe, Cezanne, and The Canadian Group of Seven, Smith paints the soul in nature. An appreciation for aesthetics and the deep woods provide seeds for the work revealing color combinations, line, and form. Bold colors and lyrical brushstrokes, scratches and drips of oil paint mutate creating a language of vital sensuality. Teresa’s oil paintings are about the mystery beneath the surface, the layer woven between worlds. The romance and richness of beauty, earth, salt air, wild roses, cedar and tide. My Process I paint landscapes. I live on a rural island surrounded by wild creatures, huge trees, ocean, mountains and open spaces. I ride a black Arabian mare through the old growth forest trailed by an Irish wolfhound named Griffin. As we move through the woods and vistas I notice colors as they contrast with one another. I notice color, shapes, line and form that I would never have conjured on my own. I especially pay attention to the abstract spaces and patterns. We pause under ancient cedar and listen to water falling. Feeling into the spirit of the place. The forest, especially the ancient ones are rich with a presence. In the studio I stretch canvas and linen. I do this because I want the finest of quality and workmanship but also to honor and form relationship with surface. I use oil paint because of its buttery quality and vibrancy of color. I love the smell and the feel under my brush. I love that it is the medium of my lineage of painters. I love its softness and that it is archival and in my opinion the highest quality medium I can use. I love that I can create soft edges and blend beautiful passages. I use lavender essence or soybean oil to clean my brushes and make mediums of lavender, alkyd and walnut oil for making glazes. I worked in watercolors for many years and as with that medium see the benefit of glazing. That is using layers of paint and alkyd mixtures to create luminosity and light that makes a work “glow.” I work on several paintings at one time allowing them to dry between layers. It takes weeks, months or longer to finish a painting but in the end the work and time pay off. I am a contemplative painter. My time in the woods is separate from the studio but the influence is present. I paint from the heart. What comes up as first thought is what I put down. The thought that happens before it is analyzed and translated. I don’t usually have any idea of a direction when I start a painting. I begin with a thin drippy wash in a warm color like Indian yellow, ochre or transparent orange. I let the layer dry, then the next day create some chaos. Without any pre contrived ideas throw, squish, drip, scrub or scrape some paint on the canvas. The more chaotic the better. At this point I begin making order of the chaos one brushstroke at a time. This is where knowledge of color, composition, design and painterly quality come in. I begin to embellish and refine the shapes that were formed during the first couple of washes. Color is probably my most important consideration. I now focus on what color is a perfect combination to one that is down already. I contrast texture – thin wash next to impasto, for example. I work the shapes as if they are puzzle pieces, I use thin glazes to add luminosity and create colors that are unique and luscious. If things begin to seem too contrived I will grab a palette knife and arbitrarily add thick layers of paint. I will take a sharp instrument like a palette knife and cut through the layers revealing the colors underneath. There is really no beginning and no end. The work goes on for days, weeks or months. The closer to done a painting gets the slower I go. I stop when the painting feels resolved and seems to have a life of its own. EDUCATION 2012 Bachelor of Arts, Naropa University, Boulder CO...

Signed lower left, 'Swinson' for Marjorie E.G. Swinson (American, born circa 1904) and painted circa 1955; additionally signed, verso, 'Marjorie E. G. Swinson'. Marjorie Swinson...

Dai Xiangwen was born in Hunan in 1991 and graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts of Jianghan University, He is a member of China Artists Association, China Designers Association, a painter of Li Keran...

Dai Xiangwen was born in Hunan in 1991 and graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts of Jianghan University, He is a member of China Artists Association, China Designers Association, a painter of Li Keran...

Dai Xiangwen was born in Hunan in 1991 and graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts of Jianghan University, He is a member of China Artists Association, China Designers Association, a painter of Li Keran...

Dai Xiangwen was born in Hunan in 1991 and graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts of Jianghan University, He is a member of China Artists Association, China Designers Association, a painter of Li Keran...

Dai Xiangwen was born in Hunan in 1991 and graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts of Jianghan University, He is a member of China Artists Association, China Designers Association, a painter of Li Keran...

Six O-Clock, c. 1942, oil on canvas, 30 x 20 inches, signed and titled several times verso of frame and stretcher (perhaps by another hand), marked “Rehn” several times on frame (for the Frank K. M. Rehn Galleries in New York City, who represented Craig at the time); Exhibited: 1) 18th Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Oil Paintings from March 21 to May 2, 1943 at The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. #87, original price $450 (per catalog) (exhibition label verso), 2) Craig’s one-man show at the Frank K. M. Rehn Galleries, New York City, from October 26 to November 14, 1942, #10 (original price listed as $350); and 3) Exhibition of thirty paintings sponsored by the Harrisburg Art Association at the State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg in March, 1944 (concerning this exhibit, Penelope Redd of The Evening News (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania) wrote: “Other paintings that have overtones of superrealism inherent in the subjects include Tom Craig’s California nocturne, ‘Six O’Clock,’ two figures moving through the twilight . . . .” March 6, 1944, p. 13); another label verso from The Museum of Art of Toledo (Ohio): original frame: Provenance includes George Stern Gallery, Los Angeles, CA About the Painting Long before Chris Burden’s iconic installation outside of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Urban Light, another artist, Tom Craig, made Southern California streetlights the subject of one of his early 1940s paintings. Consisting of dozens of recycled streetlights from the 1920s and 1930s forming a classical colonnade at the museum’s entrance, Burden’s Urban Light has become a symbol of Los Angeles. For Burden, the streetlights represent what constitutes an advanced society, something “safe after dark and beautiful to behold.” It seems that Craig is playing on the same theme in Six O-Clock. Although we see two hunched figures trudging along the sidewalk at the end of a long day, the real stars of this painting are the streetlights which brighten the twilight and silhouette another iconic symbol of Los Angeles, the palm trees in the distance. Mountains in the background and the distant view of a suburban neighborhood join the streetlights and palm trees as classic subject matter for a California Scene painting, but Craig gives us a twist by depicting the scene not as a sun-drenched natural expanse. Rather, Craig uses thin layers of oil paint, mimicking the watercolor technique for which he is most famous, to show us the twinkling beauty of manmade light and the safety it affords. Although Southern California is a land of natural wonders, the interventions of humanity are already everywhere in Los Angeles and as one critic noted, the resulting painting has an air of “superrealism.” About the Artist Thomas Theodore Craig was a well-known fixture in the Southern California art scene. He was born in Upland California. Craig graduated with a degree in botany from Pomona College and studied painting at Pamona and the Chouinard Art School with Stanton MacDonald-Wright and Barse Miller among others. He became close friends with fellow artist Milford Zornes...