This painting gives the Royal Family’s collection instant credibility and will help to establish Qatar as an important cultural city.  They have also been opening American university campus’s, museums and more over the last decade.  Get a sense of Qatar in this 60 Minutes segment from January.  One of the driving forces behind the country’s spending spree on western art is the Emir’s 28 year old daughter.  Over the  past six years Qatar has acquired loads of  museum quality work including Warhol’s, Hirst’s, and the ‘Rockafeller Rothko.’  The Art Newspaper recently reported that Qatar is the biggest buyer in the art market over the last six years.  In addition to building a world class permanent collection, the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar is opening a Takashi Murakami exhibition this week.  Qatar is rapidly making a name for itself in the art world, and as host of the 2022 Fifa World Cup, don’t expect it to slow down any time soon.

Descending Light - 18 x 30"

To any painters out there who follow the blog, here is an opportunity to learn from one of the finest landscape painters in New England.  Sergio Roffo will be holding a painting workshop at the Duxbury Art Association (Mass.) June 7 & 8, 2012.

Each day will begin with a painting demonstration where Roffo will explain and discuss many of the challenges, techniques and tips for plein air painting as he works.  After students observe Roffo’s painting, they will then have the day to create their own plein air paintings, while Roffo will give personalized critics and advice to the students as they paint.  The workshop will focus on the interplay of natural light and shadow, learning how to see, color mixing, and helping artists get comfortable working en plein air.

for more information visit the workshop website.  Or call the Duxbury Art Association at 781-934-2731

view more paintings by Sergio Roffo

Reblogged from an afternoon with…:

Duncan Hannah is an artist. His work can be found here and on Art Net. Portraits taken at his home in Manhattan.

First off, hats off to a very cool blog that is new to me, anafternoonwith.com Personally I’m in love with studio shots, and getting a glimpse into artists’ environments and working procedures. Great video at the bottom of this post. We are very excitted to have Duncan Hannah on board with Quidley & Company. His paintings show his great visual sensibilities. We will have some paintings in our Boston gallery in a couple weeks. Cant wait to see them in person.

http://quidleyandco.com/Artist/Duncan_Hannah.aspx

Whirlwind and Weetamoe - 30x48"

The painting depicts the scene as it may have looked from the transom of Yankee, on one of the races in Long Island Sound, in the first summer of the J Class.  With Weetamoe to the left and Whirlwind to the right.    On the far left is  J.P. Morgan’s motor yacht Corsair and on the far right Mr. Vanderbilt’s motor yacht Vara.

   WHIRLWIND AND WEETAMOE

America Cup defence contenders 1930 sailing in Long Island Sound

In 1930 four syndicates called on the cream of American designers to create contenders for the honour of defending the Cup.  Enterprise came from the drawing board of W. Starling Burgess and was built at the Herreshoff yard in Bristol.  Her sponsors were a group of seven including Winthrop W. Aldrich, Harold S. Vanderbilt, Vincent Astor, and George F. Baker, Jr. Junius S. Morgan and George Nichols formed a group to finance Weetamoe, designed by Clinton H. Crane and also built at the Herreshoff works.  Paul Hammond, Landon K. Thorne and George M Pynchon engaged L Francis Herreshoff, son of the famous “Nat”, to design Whirlwind for construction at the Lawley yard in South Boston.  And in Boston the fourth group, headed by John S. Lawrence and Charles Francis Adams, went to Francis C. Paine, whose forebears were responsible for Puritan, Mayflower and Volunteer, to design Yankee, also built by Lawley.  All four would be racing against each other along with Resolute and Vanities in the summer.

Enterprise, Yankee, Weetamoe and Whirlwind were launched in April and May 1930.  Variations in their measurements were slight –less than one per cent in sail area.  Designers’ individuality was evident to the practiced eye above the waterlines.  All the boats had steel frames with bronze plating, except Whirlwind, which had a double-planked wooden hull.  Below decks they were bare, all bulkheading omitted.  Instead of having the spacious furnished staterooms and quarters of earlier boats they were fitted with winches, racing gear, and lockers for the many sails they used.  Above decks they were not unalike.

On June 17^th the four “J” boats, along with Vanitie and Resolute, met for the first time midway between Mattinicock Point and Peningo Neck on Long Island Sound for a 23.1/2 mile triangular race.  It was the beginning of a long struggle that lasted through ten weeks.  Before the defender was chosen, five series and twenty-seven races tested the contenders in all kinds of weather.  Weetamoe, skippered by George Nichols, won the first race in which all four contenders participated.  For the rest of the season, it was a hard fought duel between Nichols in Weetamoe and Vanderbilt in Enterprise.

The final trials, sailed over the same Newport water where the Cup races were later held, started on August 20.  After two races in which the contenders were paired – Enterprise with Weetamoe, Yankee and Whirlwind – Enterprise was chosen to defend.  During the second race Vanderbilt set an all time record for the 30 mile course, averaging 10.64 knots.

……..Excerpt from “Pictorial history of the America Cup races”  – W.H. Allen

A special thanks to all who helped organize, participated in the event and helped get the word out.  Thank you to our sponsor, Cape Cod 5, and to Frame Center who donated frames for the cause.

And of course, a huge thank you to the artists who contributed original works to this great cause.

100% of the proceeds go to the Marla Ceely Lamb Fund, a Cancer Patient Transportation Fund for Nantucket, helps to defray the costs of transportation and lodging for patients who must travel off-island for the treatment of cancer.

Over 80 artists from and associated with Nantucket, including our roster of artists, have contributed an original 8 x 10″ work of art.  Everyone is welcome to join us and help support this great cause.  Starting at 6pm, guests will buy a numbered ticket (based on the order they arrive/ in line) and will get to select their work of art.  The artists’ names will be hidden until each piece has been selected.

RSVP on Facebook and invite your friends!

Full Event details here..

October 20-31, 2011  -  118 Newbury Street, Boston

Show and Bio info here

Even though the paintings I’ve produced for this show are of different sizes, depict different subject matter, and are each exploring different color worlds, there is an underlying theme to them all that I hope gives the show a certain unity. Over the seven months it took to paint these pictures, I found myself repeatedly exploring the idea of movement. Movement in the sense I’m using the term means how the eye travels through the picture. Whether it’s moving from a near dark form towards a more distant more highly resolved subject (an effect I tried to achieve in the painting; In the Studio), moving in  a circular motion around the canvas (Chess), moving from a dynamic foreground  cluster to a subdued far off haze (Last Light in Arles), or moving into the distance as through a tunnel (Misty Woods), I always kept my eye on how I wanted the picture to be sequentially experienced. Ideally when the movement idea is fully realized—when paint, value, color, and brushwork all participate in a concentrated movement flow, paintings can take on a deep visual energy. That energy was what I was trying to capture in each of these canvases.

Gregg Kreutz

Gregg Kreutz was born in New York in 1947 and raised in Wisconsin. Prior to beginning his career as an artist he studied English at New York University. After graduating, he took classes at the Art Student’s League in New York with David A. Leffel, who was particularly influential to him. He earned a merit scholarship to continue his studies at the Art Student’s League of New York, where he studied oil painting with Frank Mason and Robert Beverly Hale.

An extremely versatile artist whose broad body of work includes portraits, still lifes, landscapes as well as genre scenes, both urban and rural; Kreutz works with oil. He finds the physicality of this medium a tool for creating illusion and mystery in his work. His paintings place special emphasis on light, shadow and atmosphere, carried out through an energetic brushstroke. The artist explores a variety of themes including several images of the artist at work. His portraiture offers the viewer an emotive glimpse into someone else’s mind. Kreutz has participated in both solo and group exhibitions across the country and is the recipient of numerous awards and honors including the Merit Award from the National Portrait Society of America.

Kreutz is actively involved in teaching as well as painting. He is an instructor of painting and drawing at the Art Student’s League in New York City and has been an instructor at several other institutions nationwide. Kreutz is also the author of the highly regarded book, Problem Solving for Oil Painters, which has been in publication for over twenty years.  Kreutz has been a contributing author for several publications including American Artist and has produced a series of instructional videos widely used by artists. Outside of painting, the artist is also an accomplished playwright whose work has been performed worldwide.

On his art he states, “For me, painting is an opportunity to learn what is meaningful. Each picture is a visual separation of the highly significant from the less significant.  Painting is really a window to the essential.”

“A duo-chrome is a technique of using oil washes of varying opacity to draw an image out of an evenly speckle-toned paper. The term duo-chrome is derived from the fact that two separate colours, one for the lights and  one for the shadows, are used in the process. The dark is mixed to match the darkest tone on the paper while in turn, the light is mixed to match the lightest. The end result is the creation of a mild tension between paper and form. Round, but yet still belonging to the paper.

These figures are a continuation of the French tradition called ‘academies’ exemplified by Pierre Paul Prud’hon in the late 1700′s.  For me, their immediate purpose as studies for figure compositions has been bypassed for the sole purpose in expressing the beauty of form.”

- Gary Korlin

Gary Korlin works in a decidedly French nature and the naturalistic approach is embedded in his 19th Century French Academic training, coupled with a thorough understanding of classical aesthetics and technique. He seeks an impression of life from a delicately modeled rose to the energy of a wind-swept landscape, relying continuously on his ability to create the illusion of the third dimension. From figures in darkened spaces to patterns of blown weeds in sun-drenched fields, his naturalistic eye captures the mood of the subject and the emotion it evokes.

Beginning his career in illustration and architectural renderings, the artist became unsettled and began to travel. While living in Australia he became aware of 19th Century Australian landscape painters. Taken by their naturalistic view and sense of reality, he returned to St. Paul and enrolled in Atelier Lack, which offered the finest training in 19th Century French Academic drawing and painting.

After being placed in a figure drawing competition at the New York Academy of Art, he was invited to attend their 2 year program. Later he moved to Italy and lived in the mountains overlooking Florence, deep in the heart of Tuscany.

Returning to a larger studio in St. Paul, Gary continues with life-sized figure work, landscapes, still-lifes and an ever-growing demand for portraiture. Still frequenting the European scene, his paintings hang in collections in England, France, Italy and Austria. His work has been shown in San Francisco, New York, London, South Africa and France.