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From the artist’s website:
“BEING ERNEST.
Ernest Vincent Wood III began his journey as a painter when an instructor recognized his affinity for light and encouraged him to pursue oil painting. After earning his BFA from Wichita State University in 2006, he studied at The International School for Drawing, Painting, and Sculpture in Umbria, Italy, under the sponsorship of the Koch Cultural Trust.
He has exhibited three times in Killarney, Ireland and, most recently, at the Evansville Museum, where he staged the show, Gravity. Paintings in which he rendered Bacchus as a female, entitled The Bacchae, now belong to that museum’s permanent collection and will be displayed in a two-year show featuring women in art.
His recent painting, More Than Material, was awarded 2nd place by The Portrait Society of America in the 2020-2021 International Portrait Competition. It then went on to a successful auction at Sotheby’s of NY.
Wood’s sensitive use of light and realism in his paintings brings to 2023 the seventeenth-century technique of the Roman Caravaggisti and still-life artists of the Dutch Baroque, but with a contemporary twist of clever innuendos that make an Old World technique remarkably relevant.”
“Artistic Statement
For me, the ideal, the perfect, always is in the mind, but through experience, the human experience, the perfect falls short of the ideal. There is a lifelong tension that exists between what is true universally and the reality of our failing this truth: again, through human experience, though varied and personally lived.
I am interested in the task of the artist: the artist as conduit to these experiences in the tangible and transcendent, the artist who accepts the task to enter into the the tension and mystery of experience while removing the distractions. Art is not an escape, but an embrace of what is most fully lived and real. In this way, the human experience is elevated through the means of art and that tension is made meaningful as it offers a window, indeed a peering, in to what is possible and Infinite.
To achieve this, an artist must try, must press himself towards the creation of a "little world" with his art, giving it its own properties and rules of logic. These rules determine the drama of any work. How the author maintains the rules, how the rules may break or be stretched to cause a tension and how they resolve are meant to build and reflect the image of our experience: experience of life and our desire for the Divine.
The finished pieces in my work often have a direct subject, a person, but the relationships in the piece go beyond the immediate to tell a narrative or offer an intimacy about the internal subject. My work, therefore, is not literal in its expression of what is being conveyed, but rather is concerned with the poetic and the musical in the way that those relationships portrayed resonate. I am most obsessed in capturing, through the lens of the figure, a world that is hidden from us but that is no less real. Perhaps even more real as it exists at that level that can only be discovered or "found" through the tension of beauty and violation. In creating a "little world" of visual relationships, of encounters, I desire to take an ordinary situation and draw from it a more creative potential in the attempt to reveal this hidden world of our universal desire and longing of this human experience.
In essence, I see my task similar to a composers: to build and reveal those fundamental blocks of melody, meter, harmony and dynamic in the visual arts. How to reveal the lines, tone, volume in a piece that lives for itself and yet reveals for the personal: surprise? Where to exist in this rough and smooth, negative and positive space with angles, dark, light, loud, quiet? These are the questions that fascinate and animate me to be an artist. How these blocks are put together depends on whether or not the gut and intuition can direct and are willing to be educated, indeed by human experience, similar to moving over the keys on a piano until a melody that makes sense emerges. This is in essence how I approach the figure. My greatest desire is to make art that moves people like music and to become more essentially human myself through the experience.
Biography
Christopher Alles is a sculptor currently residing in New York. He began drawing at the age of two, but it was not until sixteen years later that he began to take art seriously. This ultimately led him to Florence, Italy, where he apprenticed for six months under sculptor Dony MacManus. There he discovered the beauty and power of the Italian Renaissance masters, and in the presence of the raw energy of their work, he encountered the need to become a sculptor.
After his time in Italy, Christopher returned home to Portland, Oregon, and continued his studies with Polish sculptor Tomasz Misztal. Under Misztal’s guidance, he discovered how to link the influence of the past with those of the present. Consequently, his work often references and quotes the artists ranging from the Renaissance to the early to mid -Twentieth Century. His primary process behind the creation of his art consists of a study from the past and its development to now, then responding to the contemporary world in light of this study.
Christopher has done work around the US, most notably a monumental sculpture of St. Charles Borromeo, as well as several other Church related commissions throughout the US. His goal is to create work that is rooted in the tradition of the great sculptors of the past—Michelangelo, Rodin, Brancusi—but yet speaks to a contemporary audience.”
Source: christopheralles.com
Diana Mendoza is a Peruvian artist whose work focuses on sacred themes, including portraits of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Christ Child, Christ on the Cross, and the Holy Family. She is especially known for her portraits of the Madonna. Mendoza combines European traditions of depicting the Madonna with elements of the Cusco school of her home country. The result is a unique, instantly recognizable style. As she explains in an interview, her theme is maternal love.
Mendoza’s work is currently sold by a number of galleries in the United States. She is being increasingly appreciated by collectors. Her work is a precious treasury of sacred art being produced at a time when Christian themes have fallen out of fashion in so much of the art world. Her art is most emphatically "art for the Christian home.”
Aubrey Dale Greer (1904-1998) was a Texas-based artist who painted landscapes and still lifes in an exquisitely realistic style reminiscent of the nineteenth-century Hudson River School. He was absolute master of his brush and did not change his approach with changing artistic fashions. The reward--his and ours--is a body of work that commands admiration.
Greer's paintings are offered at auction fairly often. Since 1989, some 287 of his oil paintings have sold for an average price of $2,686. The purchase of a Greer painting is a solid aesthetic and financial investment.
SOURCE
Askart.com (accessed 4/25/2016)
David Adickes (b. 1927) was born in Huntsville, Texas. He served in World War II, studied cubism in Paris on the GI Bill, and finally became an important figure in Texas modernism. His first show was in 1950 and he continues to paint to the present day. Adickes is known for his sculpture as much as for his painting; he sculpted the Sam Houston statue that stands today along IH-45 in Huntsville. His paintings include still lifes and portraits of elongated human figures---"Adickes men". His enchanting style is immediately recognizable after even a brief exposure to his work.
Adickes has been a prolific artist and his paintings sell briskly. Some 195 of his pieces have sold at auction since 1993. The average price for his oil paintings has been $2,149. Adickes will go down as one of the finest Houston artists of this era and the purchase of an Adickes piece is not likely to be regretted in any era.
SOURCES:
Katie Robinson Edwards, MIDCENTURY MODERN ART IN TEXAS (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014), 184-185.
Askart.com (accessed May 17, 2016).
Carl Thomas Hoppe (1897-1981) was a San Antonio artist who developed a distinctive impressionistic style in the painting of South Texas landscapes. A son of German immigrants, Hoppe began painting en plein air as a student of the great Jose Arpa in the 1920s. He was a member of the Coppini Academy in San Antonio and exhibited widely in the 1950s and 1960s.
Today Hoppe's paintings are sought and sold by leading Texas galleries such as David Dike Fine Art (Dallas) and William Reaves / Sarah Foltz Fine Art (Houston). Some 93 of his pieces have sold at auction, at an average price of $1,362.
SOURCES:
Askart.com (accessed June 7, 2016)
Heritage Auctions
Ancel Edward Nunn (1928-1999) was a distinguished Texas artist whose style has been justly compared to Andrew Wyeth. Nunn's artistic vision was quite his own, however. Nunn painted images of rural Texas in which the past, though worn and superseded, could still be seen to have a place, however tenuous, in the present. He also employed surreal elements (or at least unusually placed ones) to drive home his point (e.g., a chair hung on a wall or a bed in a field). Nunn grew up in West Texas. Considering school a kind of jail, he dropped out of high school and for a time studied anatomy on his own. He received instruction and inspiration in Dallas from Alexandre Hogue, among others. He joined the Army as a reservist in 1947, secured a high school diploma, and continued in the Army reserves for more than 20 years until his honorable discharge in 1969. By that time, he had begun painting in earnest. In that year he set up a studio in Palestine, Texas. A decade later he established, just outside Palestine, Morningtown Studio, where he began to produce superb lithographs. Nunn left a meticulous record of his art business which is now housed at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History in Austin.
Ancel Nunn’s works are highly valued. Since 2007 some 30 of his pieces have been offered at auction. His sold oil paintings have averaged $5,667 in price. His acrylics have sold at an average of $12,965. His lithographs have sold at auction for as high as $1,500. Nunn's works give every appearance of being an extremely sound aesthetic as well as financial investment.
SOURCES:
Ancel E. Nunn Papers, 1963-1984, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, Austin, TX.
Askart.com (accessed July 6, 2019).
Octavio Medellin (1907-1999) was born in Mexico. His family fled during the Mexican Revolution to San Antonio, where he studied under the famed painter Jose Arpa. Medellin later enrolled in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, spent time in Mexico, and developed his skill as a sculptor. He eventually moved to Denton, Texas and thence to Dallas, where he founded the Medellin School of Sculpture. Medellin's work helped open modernism in Texas to "primitive" art forms and at the same time integrated Mexican and U.S. artistic traditions. Southern Methodist University established the Octavio Medellin Collection in 1994.
Medellin's work rarely comes up for sale. Since 1999 only twelve of his pieces have been offered at auction--most of them sculptures, whose sale prices have ranged from roughly $1,000 to $20,000.
SOURCE:
Katie Robinson Edwards, MIDCENTURY MODERN ART IN TEXAS (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014), 219-220, 282.
Askart.com (accessed May 17, 2016).
Michael Frary (1918-2005) studied architecture and art in California until he took a position with the McNay Art Institute in San Antonio in 1949. Three years later he joined the art faculty of The University of Texas at Austin, where he remained until his retirement in 1986. He was a prolific artist who became a standard-bearer of mid-century modernism. Whether landscape, still-life, or architectural, his paintings often included a buildup of paint that made them intriguing for their texture alone. In addition, his watercolors of the Texas landscape were showcased in three published books. He was equally gifted in abstraction and representation, and his often imaginary scenes always gave the sense of being places one wished were real, and half felt actually were.
Michael Frary's art is very much in demand. Some of his pieces are available for sale at galleries such as Russell Tether in Dallas and Capital Fine Art in Austin. Since 1998, 109 of his works have sold at auction, with his acrylics commanding an average price of $3,429. His watercolors are popular but sell on average for rather less ($742). Frary's standing in the history of mid-century modern art seems secure. The purchase of his work gives every appearance of being a strong aesthetic and financial investment.
Edie Harper (1922-2010) was a artist who worked in many media, including photography, sculpture, painting, and lithography. Among her works are a number of whimsical depictions of Biblical stories and themes.
Dullah (1919-1996) was a leading Indonesian artist esteemed for his realistic portraiture and for his immense contributions to Indonesian art. He was curator of the art collection of Sukarno, the first President of the Republic of Indonesia (1945-1967), and produced a rare two-volume limited edition monograph of more than 200 paintings from that collection. He taught art in Indonesian for many years while he painted.
More than 200 Dullah pieces, among them many portraits, have sold at auction; the average price for his oil paintings is $8,779. Dullah was and will always remain one of the great Indonesian artists of the twentieth century.
