Johnnie Swearingen

Doc Spellmon, one of San Antonio’s most prolific and renowned artists. Spellmon’s career spanned decades, including 20 years as an Air Force writer and illustrator between 1956–76. His subsequent retirement was one of the artist’s most productive periods creating an untold number of works, whose hallmarks are generous applications of layered paint and masterful texturing of color. The themes of his paintings speak to an array of themes, including Biblical depictions, Slavery scenes, memories of his upbringing in East Texas, scenes of African village life and portraits of historical notables. For decades, Texas-based folk artist; Spellmon painted scenes of life in the South. Inspired by his rural upbringing, religious surroundings and African American heritage, Spellmon found national success through his hundreds of paintings and mixed media pieces. Spellmon’s art focuses on the vitality in everyday life, the joys of family and community, the universal themes found in religious images and the importance of cultural heritage in today's world. Spellmon and Ruth Mae McCrane exhibited at the Museum of African-American Life and Culture, Dallas, Texas. 1996. Two contemporary Texas artists born in the 1920s whose subjects are rural and urban black community life. The two artists in this show, Spellmon and Mae McCrane, were both born in late 1920. He is in rural East Texas and she is in Corpus Christi upon the Gulf Coast. Although the one and the other received formal art training and have worked in art professions. Spellmon as a combat illustrator for the Air Force and McCrane as a teacher. Over the years they have adopted a consciously native turn of expressions that pay homage to, while also transforming, the phraseologies of self-taught painters such as Clementine huntsman and the Rev. Johnnie Swearingen. Both artists are the children of Baptist ministers, and exhibitions of African-American religious life fill their work. Spellmon's paintings are almost equally divided between depictions of baptisms and church-going and images of farm work. McCrane's more varied religious background, which includes her conversion to Catholicism and adolescent experience as the secretary for a Pentecostal house of worship in Houston, has prompted her to depict urban images of weddings, funerals, covered-dish socials and meetings of The Ladies' Missionary Society. All of these, like Spellmon's images of honky-tonks, waterside cafes and the offices of politicians and doctors, are crowded scenes of community celebration. Spellmon's paintings involve a conscious combination of folk traditions with the like-kind modernist influences as American social realism. The work of Mexican muralists and artists as varied as Maurice Prendergast and Georges Rouault. As his phraseology has matured, Spellmon has gone for thicker layers of freely applied paint overlaid by a heavy glaze. Beneath the glazing, however, there continues to be an active vision of religious life and rural occupations.

Painting is an art form that has spanned innumerable cultures, with artists using the medium to tell stories, explore and communicate ideas and express themselves. To bring abstract, landscape and still-life paintings into your home is to celebrate and share in the long tradition of this discipline.

When we look at paintings, particularly those that originated in the past, we learn about history, other cultures and countries of the world. Like every other work of art, paintings — whether they are contemporary creations or works that were made during the 19th century — can often help us clearly see and understand the world around us in a meaningful and interesting way.

Cave walls were the canvases for what were arguably the world’s first landscape paintings, which depict natural scenery through art. Portrait paintings and drawings, which, along with sculpture, were how someone’s appearance was recorded prior to the advent of photography, are at least as old as Ancient Egypt. In the Netherlands, landscapes were a major theme for painters as early as the 1500s. Later, artists in Greece, Rome and elsewhere created vast wall paintings to decorate stately homes, churches and tombs. Today, creating a wall of art is a wonderful way to enhance your space, showcase beautiful pieces and tie an interior design together.

No matter your preference, whether you favor Post-Impressionist paintings, animal paintings, Surrealism, Pop art or another movement or specific period, arranging art on a blank wall allows you to evoke emotions in a room while also showing off your tastes and interests. A symmetrical wall arrangement may comprise a grid of four to six pieces or, for an odd number of works, a horizontal row. Asymmetrical arrangements, which may be small clusters of art or large, salon-style gallery walls, have a more collected and eclectic feel. Download the 1stDibs app, which includes a handy “View on Wall” feature that allows you to see how a particular artwork will look on a particular wall, and read about how to arrange wall art. And if you’re searching for the perfect palette for your interior design project, what better place to turn than to the art world’s masters of color?

On 1stDibs, you’ll find an expansive collection of paintings and other fine art for your home or office. Browse abstract paintings, portrait paintings, paintings by popular artists and more today.