Fred Mitchell Paintings

It’s 1963. I’ve quit my teaching job ($4,000 a year) at Fresno High to try working full time as a commercial artist. Got a new home (Trend Homes by Spano, $12,000). Decide my birthday party needs a bottle of red wine (about a half gallon of Gallo Chianti, the kind in a husk basket because I think it will look good with my books on their plank and cinderblock book case. I drive a couple blocks to Jackson Jones Liquor on the corner of Shields and West, park an old gray Chevy sedan I’ve named Moby, walk in, head straight for the wine display...

Shortly before Walt Esslinger died a few years ago, we talked in his small yellow painted studio in Bakersfield. Sixteen years my senior, he’d been my close friend, mentor and running mate since 1960. “You still writing?” he asked. “Yes,” I answered, taking in the space’s renovations he’d recently sub-contracted. Ninety one years old, and he was thinking ahead. “Do me a favor,” he said. “Write the Andy Warhol story.” Walt was a Central Valley guy, an L.A. guy, a Las Vegas guy. A man who knew his way around. “I want you to put on record what happened back then when I bought the soup can painting.” Back then was the fall of 1962. The two of us had been exhibiting our paintings in the L.A. Art Institute’s gallery for locals only. Walt had given legendary Ad Rhinehardt a story about how he and I had been working in both Edward Kienholz’s and John Altoon’s studios (false—we’d only been visiting). One morning, the Institute’s Director, who hadn’t suspected us to be charlatans yet, introduced us to a reed thin, tow headed young man leaning against the main gallery’s wall. “Meet Andy Warhola,” he said. “Andy is from New York.” “Warhol,” the boy/man said. “Painter?” Walt asked him. “Shoe Illustrator.” The director made a snorting noise I took to mean that Warhola or Warhol’s modesty was posed. He mentioned something about Andy having a show on the La Cienega strip of galleries. We exchanged mumbles about how the art world was in flux, nothing more than that, and Walt and I moved on. If this strange cat had anything to look at, we’d see it. It was a Monday, and La Cienega’s twenty some galleries would be opening new shows and serving champagne that evening. North La Cienega Avenue, laid over a network of oil veins decades before, had become the street for the Cool School, a group of artists and gallery people trying to bring Los Angeles’s art scene to life. The galleries were small but proud. Sure, Jazz was born on the Delta and raised in New Orleans, St, Luis and Chicago, but L.A. had fifty-three jazz joints according to Chet Baker, who’d blown with the best. Why then should the West Coast be lagging behind New York in the other truly American expression, abstract art? At the Ferus Gallery that night we found Warhol’s exhibit. “Shit,” I said. Walt grinned. “You no like?” “Not exactly my can of soup,” I said, peeking into the small space, loaded now wall to wall with paintings of Campbell’s Tomato Soup. Walt stepped into the space. “How about the idea of it?” I made my way through spectators looking at once to be confused, amused, enthused and abused. When I came back to Walt he was still smiling. “Why didn’t he silk screen ‘em?” I asked. “That’s probably his next move,” Walt said. “You wanna stay?” Walt’s keen eyes cased the joint. “I see Irving Bloom over there,” he said. “Believe I’ll stick around and talk with him.” Bloom had been operating this popular gallery for some time now. “One hundred a month,” he’d told me. “It’s not like I’m getting rich.” I stood around for a bit, heard a fellow abstract expressionist I’d met tell a young lady who looked to be lost, “Okay that’s the soup. Come with me, baby, and I’ll show you the juice.” Two doors down I stopped at the Primus-Stuart Gallery. A group of people had gathered around a display of soup cans, stacked grocer’s pyramid style in the window. All Campbell’s. All Tomato. A sign leaning against the grouping stated: “Get the real thing. Thirty cents each.” That’s the way it was. Twenty-four galleries forming a gauntlet between La Cienega’s 300 block, all the way up to Barney’s Beanery at the corner of Santa Monica. Hollywood types dressed to the nines, Beats dressed for the times just gone. Champagne popping...

Parallel Construction, oil on canvas, 48 x 54 in. Oonju Chun’s large abstract expressionist paintings delightfully employ the basics of good, nonobjective ...

A very good large 20th century Abstract Expressionist oil circa 1975. Stanley Smith (b. 1923) British. oil on board 61cmx 122cm. Gallery frame 65cmx 126c...

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Women in Abstract Expressionism: Colorful Sunset Inspired Artwork by Texas artist Winter Rusiloski. Details: Winter Rusiloski Cathedral, 2016 Oil on canvas 48 x 45" View works. Wind...

Original painting by Paola Zarate & Mark Wilson Two best friends completed a wonder of artworks for a weekend in Silverdale, Washington. "Smile For Me" represe...

Shortly before Walt Esslinger died a few years ago, we talked in his small yellow painted studio in Bakersfield. Sixteen years my senior, he’d been my close friend, mentor and running mate since 1960. “You still writing?” he asked. “Yes,” I answered, taking in the space’s renovations he’d recently sub-contracted. Ninety one years old, and he was thinking ahead. “Do me a favor,” he said. “Write the Andy Warhol story.” Walt was a Central Valley guy, an L.A. guy, a Las Vegas guy. A man who knew his way around. “I want you to put on record what happened back then when I bought the soup can painting.” Back then was the fall of 1962. The two of us had been exhibiting our paintings in the L.A. Art Institute’s gallery for locals only. Walt had given legendary Ad Rhinehardt a story about how he and I had been working in both Edward Kienholz’s and John Altoon’s studios (false—we’d only been visiting). One morning, the Institute’s Director, who hadn’t suspected us to be charlatans yet, introduced us to a reed thin, tow headed young man leaning against the main gallery’s wall. “Meet Andy Warhola,” he said. “Andy is from New York.” “Warhol,” the boy/man said. “Painter?” Walt asked him. “Shoe Illustrator.” The director made a snorting noise I took to mean that Warhola or Warhol’s modesty was posed. He mentioned something about Andy having a show on the La Cienega strip of galleries. We exchanged mumbles about how the art world was in flux, nothing more than that, and Walt and I moved on. If this strange cat had anything to look at, we’d see it. It was a Monday, and La Cienega’s twenty some galleries would be opening new shows and serving champagne that evening. North La Cienega Avenue, laid over a network of oil veins decades before, had become the street for the Cool School, a group of artists and gallery people trying to bring Los Angeles’s art scene to life. The galleries were small but proud. Sure, Jazz was born on the Delta and raised in New Orleans, St, Luis and Chicago, but L.A. had fifty-three jazz joints according to Chet Baker, who’d blown with the best. Why then should the West Coast be lagging behind New York in the other truly American expression, abstract art? At the Ferus Gallery that night we found Warhol’s exhibit. “Shit,” I said. Walt grinned. “You no like?” “Not exactly my can of soup,” I said, peeking into the small space, loaded now wall to wall with paintings of Campbell’s Tomato Soup. Walt stepped into the space. “How about the idea of it?” I made my way through spectators looking at once to be confused, amused, enthused and abused. When I came back to Walt he was still smiling. “Why didn’t he silk screen ‘em?” I asked. “That’s probably his next move,” Walt said. “You wanna stay?” Walt’s keen eyes cased the joint. “I see Irving Bloom over there,” he said. “Believe I’ll stick around and talk with him.” Bloom had been operating this popular gallery for some time now. “One hundred a month,” he’d told me. “It’s not like I’m getting rich.” I stood around for a bit, heard a fellow abstract expressionist I’d met tell a young lady who looked to be lost, “Okay that’s the soup. Come with me, baby, and I’ll show you the juice.” Two doors down I stopped at the Primus-Stuart Gallery. A group of people had gathered around a display of soup cans, stacked grocer’s pyramid style in the window. All Campbell’s. All Tomato. A sign leaning against the grouping stated: “Get the real thing. Thirty cents each.” That’s the way it was. Twenty-four galleries forming a gauntlet between La Cienega’s 300 block, all the way up to Barney’s Beanery at the corner of Santa Monica. Hollywood types dressed to the nines, Beats dressed for the times just gone. Champagne popping...

The first time I heard the words “abstract expressionism” I was in New York, trying to grab another day of leave before the army shipped me overseas. At that time in 1952, while brow...

“I’ll find me a place by the river now and give up all my story lines.” – Van Morrison All of these paintings originated in the past year, but I suspect they truly began in 1955 after I returned from the army to complete my college education at Fresno State. Having discovered the heroic-scaled canvases of the abstract impressionists while away, I changed my major to art. Soon, after enrolling into a painting class taught by Darwin Musselman, I felt I’d be advancing from the old school to the new wave. Wrong. Musselman, an intense taskmaster, held me firm to the basics and taught me how to crawl first. The flying would come after I paid my dues. Musselman had studied at the Los Angeles Art Center and The School of Arts and Crafts in Oakland. Proficient in many styles of painting, he never shied away from demonstrating techniques he felt might spur a student’s progress. About the time I began to suspect he was controlling us all too tightly, he showed the class Hans Namath...