Jesse Aldana Figurative Paintings

Artist: Raphael Soyer (1899-1987) Title: Girl with Braided Hair Year: Circa 1987 Medium: Oil on canvas Size: 12 x 9 inches; framed size, 19 x 16 inches Condition: Excellent Inscripti...

The classic hard luck, independent kid, maybe 8 or 10 years old here, selling the day’s papers out on the grubby streets of early 1900s New York City. He’s paused in a quiet spot, ap...

Mid Century Seascape and Figural Original oil painting on Linen 1956 Solitary figure on wharf by California artist Robert Watson, painted 1956 (1923 - 2004)The following, is from To...

A 20th-century American School oil painting on board featuring American banker and financier J.P. Morgan (1837-1913) seated at his desk. Light streams throug...

Judd Mercer's (US based) "Local Residents," is an original, handmade oil painting that depicts a green grassy pasture where a herd of black cows graze. About the Artist: Judd Mercer is a watercolor painter based in Denver, Colorado. After attending art school for industrial design, Judd pursued a career in digital design and user experience and is co-owner of Elevated Third, a Denver-based digital agency. After committing to writing and illustrating a full-length fantasy novel in his spare time, Judd began watercolor painting around 2014, studying with teachers such as Alvaro Castagnet, Joseph Zbukvic and Herman Pekel...

Rudolf Kosow’s Film Still #3 continues his haunting exploration of the Western genre through a contemporary surrealist lens. A close-up of a stoic, rugged cowboy figure—likely inspired by Clint Eastwood—dominates the square composition. The figure’s face is heavily shadowed by a broad-brimmed hat, his lips...

John Steuart Curry "Sketching Wisconsin," 1946 oil on canvas 31.13 x 28 inches, canvas 39.75 x 36.75 x 2.5 inches, frame Signed and dated lower right Overall excellent condition Presented in a 24-karat gold leaf hand-carved wood frame John Steuart Curry (1897-1946) was an American regionalist painter active during the Great Depression and into World War II. He was born in Kansas on his family’s farm but went on to study art in Chicago, Paris and New York as young man. In Paris, he was exposed to the work of masters such as Peter Paul Rubens, Eugène Delacroix and Jacques-Louis David. As he matured, his work showed the influence of these masters, especially in his compositional decisions. Like the two other Midwestern regionalist artists that are most often grouped with him, Grant Wood (American, 1891-1942) and Thomas Hart Benton (American, 1889-1975), Curry was interested in representational works containing distinctly American subject matter. This was contrary to the popular art at the time, which was moving closer and closer to abstraction and individual expression. Sketching Wisconsin is an oil painting completed in 1946, the last year of John Steuart Curry’s life, during which time he was the artist-in-residence at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. The painting is significant in Curry’s body of work both as a very revealing self-portrait, and as a landscape that clearly and sensitively depicts the scenery of southern Wisconsin near Madison. It is also a portrait of the artist’s second wife, Kathleen Gould Curry, and is unique in that it contains a ‘picture within a picture,’ a compositional element that many early painting masters used to draw the eye of the viewer. This particular artwork adds a new twist to this theme: Curry’s wife is creating essentially the same painting the viewer is looking at when viewing Sketching Wisconsin. The triangular composition of the figures in the foreground immediately brings focus to a younger Curry, whose head penetrates the horizon line and whose gaze looks out towards the viewer. The eye then moves down to Mrs. Curry, who, seated on a folding stool and with her hand raised to paint the canvas on the easel before her, anchors the triangular composition. The shape is repeated in the legs of the stool and the easel. Behind the two figures, stripes of furrowed fields fall away gently down the hillside to a farmstead and small lake below. Beyond the lake, patches of field and forest rise and fall into the distance, and eventually give way to blue hills. Here, Curry has subverted the traditional artist’s self-portrait by portraying himself as a farmer first and an artist second. He rejects what he sees as an elitist art world of the East Coast and Europe. In this self-portrait he depicts himself without any pretense or the instruments of his profession and with a red tractor standing in the field behind him as if he was taking a break from the field work. Here, Curry’s wife symbolizes John Steuart Curry’s identity as an artist. Compared with a self-portrait of the artist completed a decade earlier, this work shows a marked departure from how the artist previously presented and viewed himself. In the earlier portrait, Curry depicted himself in the studio with brushes in hand, and with some of his more recognizable and successful canvases behind him. But in Sketching Wisconsin, Curry has taken himself out of the studio and into the field, indicating a shift in the artist’s self-conception. Sketching Wisconsin’s rural subject also expresses Curry’s populist ideals, that art could be relevant to anyone. This followed the broad educational objectives of UW’s artist-in-residence program. Curry was appointed to his position at the University of Wisconsin in 1937 and was the first person to hold any such position in the country, the purpose of which was to serve as an educational resource to the people of the state. He embraced his role at the University with zeal and not only opened the doors of his campus studio in the School of Agriculture to the community, but also spent a great deal of time traveling around the state of Wisconsin to visit rural artists who could benefit from his expertise. It was during his ten years in the program that Curry was able to put into practice his belief that art should be meaningful to the rural populace. However, during this time he also struggled with public criticism, as the dominant forces of the art market were moving away from representation. Perhaps it was Curry’s desire for public acceptance during the latter part of his career that caused him to portray himself as an Everyman in Sketching Wisconsin. Beyond its importance as a portrait of the artist, Sketching Wisconsin is also a detailed and sensitive landscape that shows us Curry’s deep personal connection to his environment. The landscape here can be compared to Wisconsin Landscape of 1938-39 (the Metropolitan Museum of Art), which presents a similar tableau of rolling hills with a patchwork of fields. Like Wisconsin Landscape, this is an incredibly detailed and expressive depiction of a place close to the artist’s heart. This expressive landscape is certainly the result of many hours spent sketching people, animals, weather conditions and topography of Wisconsin as Curry traveled around the state. The backdrop of undulating hills and the sweeping horizon, and the emotions evoked by it, are emphatically recognizable as the ‘driftless’ area of south-central Wisconsin. But while the Metropolitan’s Wisconsin Landscape conveys a sense of uncertainty or foreboding with its dramatic spring cloudscape and alternating bands of light and dark, Sketching Wisconsin has a warm and reflective mood. The colors of the foliage indicate that it is late summer and Curry seems to look out at the viewer approvingly, as if satisfied with the fertile ground surrounding him. The landscape in Sketching Wisconsin is also revealing of what became one of Curry’s passions while artist-in-residence at UW’s School of Agriculture – soil conservation. When Curry was a child in Kansas, he saw his father almost lose his farm and its soil to the erosion of The Dust Bowl. Therefore, he was very enthusiastic about ideas from UW’s School of Agriculture on soil conservation methods being used on Wisconsin farms. In Sketching Wisconsin, we see evidence of crop rotation methods in the terraced stripes of fields leading down the hillside away from the Curry’s and in how they alternate between cultivated and fallow fields. Overall, Sketching Wisconsin has a warm, reflective, and comfortably pastoral atmosphere, and the perceived shift in Curry’s self-image that is evident in the portrait is a positive one. After his rise to favor in the art world in the 1930’s, and then rejection from it due to the strong beliefs presented in his art, Curry is satisfied and proud to be farmer in this self-portrait. Curry suffered from high blood...

Gray Umbrella is an example of the bright colors that Beckner uses in his paintings. The Gray Umbrella series was painted in Dana Point California Jim Beckner just finished a series of beach paintings. All of them can be seen below and available. Framing will be complete be December or cam be shipped without a frame. Denver-based artist Jim Beckner paints like a jazz musician. The blues bop, the oranges swing, and the yellows vibrate. Drawn to the beat of the city, the artist creates expressionistic urban landscapes that show his unabashed love of color. More than anything, his paintings dance with their own energy, and an urban rhythm emanates from his canvases. Beckner was born and raised in Lakewood, CO, a suburb of Denver. Art played an integral role in the family. “My dad was—and still is—a watercolor artist,” he explains. “He does a lot of Colorado landscapes, very detailed, specific, realistic artwork.” Beckner remembers drawing and coloring at every opportunity when he was a child. “Both of my parents recognized that it was something I enjoyed,” he recalls. “I often drew to entertain those around me.” Occasionally, the Beckner family would drive into downtown Denver to eat out at a restaurant. “I always thought the city was an exciting place,” notes the artist. “It had a certain edginess about it.” Those early excursions, and the urban sensibility they fostered in the impressionable youth, would have a profound effect on his burgeoning talent. Encouraged by his parents, Beckner took art classes in junior high school. “I began to realize that I had some skill at drawing,” he says, “that I could see something and then re-create it.” In high school his art teacher was artist Ray Knaub...

Florence W. Pomeroy Confidences (Seamstresses) Signed lower right Oil on canvas 30 x 24 inches Provenance R.H. Love Galleries Inc., Chicago Florence Walton Pomeroy was an artist b...

ChatGPT Plus Title: Park in a Catalan City Artist: Sebastià Congost Pla (1919–2009) Technique: Oil on canvas-mounted hardboard Dimensions: 24 x 33 cm Framed dimensions: 34 x 43 cm Si...

Cover of The Saturday Evening Post, November 26, 2955 Medium: Oil on board Dimensions: 33.50" x 26.25" Signed: Lower Left Stated on pg 3 of the Post magazine 'So it's off to Gran...

David Hostetler had his own jazz club attached to his art studio in Athens, OH. It was called Club Dave. His jazz club played almost every Friday in the winter season while he was in...