Anthony Ackrill

Cupcake By the Sea - unique oil painting on silver tray

2019

Ackrill presents to us his humor in "Water Melon." A juicy slice floats gently upon a surreal body of water, beneath a blue sky. The scene rests within a food tray, which makes us wo...

An oil painting of a belly button on an antique silver platter. The painting continues the concentric circles of the platter, melding the 3D with the 2D. ...

"Watermelon by the Sea" is a surrealistic still life on the beach. Ackrill takes inspiration from his beach surroundings in Florida. Artist Bio Anthony Ackrill was born in Alaska i...

A Still life painting of a small cheesecake, adorned with strawberries, blueberries, and cream. Placed upon a layer of parchment paper, against a grey backdrop. Sarah Lamb is known for her poetic still lifes that utilize classical painting techniques, yet are very contemporary in mood. Framed dimensions: 17 x 25 inches Sarah Lamb is a talented and dynamic realist painter. With classical skill—and through transparency, depth and texture—she captures the minute details of everyday objects in her dramatic still lifes and luscious landscapes. She makes us love the familiar and see beauty in the mundane. Born in Petersburg, VA, with a passion for art and an appreciation for the past, Sarah spent a semester at the Studio Art Center International in Florence, Italy before graduating from Brenau Women’s College with a BS degree in Studio Art in 1993. Following a summer workshop in Santa Fe, NM with renowned classical painter Jacob Collins, she spent two years painting at The Ecole Albert Defois in the Loire Valley with classical realist artist Ted Seth Jacobs. In 1997 she moved to New York and spent the next 6 years studying and painting under Jacob Collins at the Water Street Atelier. During this time, she had successful one-woman shows in major galleries in Atlanta, Houston, and San Francisco and was represented in art galleries in Alexandria, VA, St. Simon’s Island and Gainesville, GA, Sag Harbor, NY and Madison, CT. More recently, she has had sell-out, one-woman shows at the Spanierman Gallery in NY, the Meredith Long Gallery in Houston, TX and the John Pence Gallery in San Francisco. She has been featured in magazines such as American Artists, American Art Collector and Southwest Art as one of America’s most talented young painters. British-born art critic, John A. Parks, wrote that “Sarah Lamb brings to her work a robustly sensual grasp of the world. Her keenness of eye and joyful brush make the whole enterprise feel freshly alive as she reminds us what the really wonderful things in life are.” Sarah splits her time between Houston, Texas and in Pennsylvania's Brandywine Valley with her husband, artist, David Larned...

This vibrant still life oil painting is by Scottish artist Doris Zinkeisen. Painted circa 1950 the composition is a glass, lemon and two fondant fancies. They stand on a pink and whi...

Framed size: 13x17" Gina Minichino’s classical portraits of contemporary edible treats harken back to the 17th Century Dutch Masters. In this new series she takes it a step further...

James Tormey (American, 1938-2017) "Candyland (Mixed Bowl)" on table with white tablecloth cover. Oil Painting on Canvas. Hand signed lower right. Measures approx. - 32" high x 37" wide, total with frame - 37 1/2" high x 42 1/2" wide. James J Tormey, NYC artist, He was born in Brooklyn in 1938. As a young man he moved to Manhattan where he lived and worked for more than 60 years. James Tormey studied at the Pratt Institute, in Brooklyn, and at Columbia University and worked in advertising for several years while he painted part time. In the 1960s he supported himself as a photographer, covering openings and events for the Museum of Modern Art, in New York City. For many years he was represented by the Madison Avenue Gallery, in New York City, where he had numerous one-man shows. He has also exhibited in Japan and Germany. The artist makes his home in Manhattan and is represented by the Uptown Gallery, also in New York City. James Tormey paints still lifes of traditional subject matter: fruit, vegetables, or eggs appear in bowls or on surfaces illuminated by powerful directional light. Tormey builds stronger and more precise meaning into his work by exploring how the backgrounds and settings for his still lifes can convey particular ideas. In his recent work, for instance, he painted a series of images in which fruit—a traditional still-life subject—is placed in architectural settings or frames that we usually associate with religious imagery. In Icon, for instance, the artist painted a red cabbage and placed it inside a Renaissance-style frame that he built and decorated himself. Instead of being presented with a saint or a Madonna within such a context, we are given a fully realized, but quite ordinary, vegetable. Tormey’s painting technique involves great care from the beginning. He works in his apartment in Manhattan’s Upper West Side in a meticulously clean space equipped with a very solid easel and a large glass palette on a painting table. For reference he uses photographs he has taken of still-life setups in conjunction with pictures of architectural or other settings he has collected over the years. “I start with a careful graphite drawing right on the canvas,” he explains. These days he uses lightweight cotton duck, although much of his earlier work was done on smoother surfaces. Once the graphite line is established, the artist makes a thin monochrome version of the image with a dull green. “I don’t add anything to the paint other than turpentine,” he explains. “I don’t use oil or glazing mediums because I don’t like shine. The turpentine dulls the paint, which suits what I’m doing.” Once the green layer has dried, the artist applies a second thin layer in a warm brown using burnt sienna or burnt umber. “In all these stages I’m working from dark to light,” he says, “so that I’m always getting a rendered, three-dimensional image.” Tormey works on two or three paintings at a time to allow for sufficient drying time between layers. “I also like the way one painting seems to talk to another,” he says. “It makes for a richer process.” Once he starts working in full color on the image, he continues slowly, applying many thin layers and gradually achieving subtle tonal and color shifts until his forms burst with three-dimensional life. “I work with a very dry brush,” explains the artist. Many of Tormey’s paintings contain dark backgrounds, some of which are pure black—something that can present its own technical problems. “I don’t want those backgrounds to feel present,” he says. “I want them to simply drop out.” Because he doesn’t want any shine on his work he doesn’t use varnish. It’s not surprising that Tormey’s work, with its heavy contrasts and smooth tonal transitions, is strongly influenced by photography. Tormey worked as a photographer for some years, and when he began doing still lifes he often photographed them against black backgrounds. His work was also published as fine art cards, posters, and fine art Giclee prints. He pioneered the "larger-than-life" still-life with his work combining traditional subject matter with a contemporary interpretation that produces startling images of heroic proportions. Light reflected and transmitted lends the natural objects, which are the subjects, a quality which may evoke in the viewer clarity of vision and a delight in the forms of the natural world around them. His work conveys a powerful positive philosophy and he once said "I believe the only way we can come to terms with the world is if we look at it as it really is." He believed that artists should take responsibility for the meaning their works carry and stated that "there are definite ideas behind my paintings". He studied at Pratt Institute and Columbia University and worked in advertising and as a photographer before turning to full-time painting. His paintings were exhibited in dozens of galleries around the country, in Germany and Japan and are now seen in numerous public and private collections. While he was not officially part of the Photorealism art...