You can read a nice review of Rick Buttari’s work by Andrew Mangravite here. Broad Street Review: Rick Buttari at F.A.N. Gallery.
Tag Archives: oil painting
Interview with Rick Buttari
Rick Buttari, Water Ice Factory, 10 X 14 inches, Oil on Linen
Rick Buttari will be showing new paintings for the month of September and F.A.N. Gallery.
We got the chance to ask him a few questions about his work.
Rick Buttari, Beach Scene With Orange And Yellow, 6 X 20, Oil on Linen
KM: What is your first creative memory?
RB: I remember seeing photos of celebrities in magazines and wondering if I could draw them, or more specifically, what about that flat image on the page translated to a three-dimensional living thing when you transferred it to a sheet of paper. I remember taking tracing paper and tracing the outline of a picture from McCall’s magazine, something my mother subscribed to. It looked crude and mechanical but something made me want to try it again and figure out what kind of marks on the paper would make it seem like that person. Then I started to draw pictures from my own Sport magazine, baseball and football players. Somewhere on a sheet of paper inside a scrapbook I have a drawing of Sandy Koufax, probably the first freehand drawing I made. I guess I was about 10 or 11.
Rick Buttari, Gawkers, 10 1/2 X 10 inches, Graphite on Paper
KM: How do you choose your subject matter?
RB: I don’t know if I choose subject matter as much as choose a sense of situation that feels right. I’ve noticed, and been told, that a lot of my work has kind of an objective distance from the subject, like I’m sitting far away and observing, not part of the scene.
Rick Buttari, Shirt Corner, 13 X 20 inches, Oil on Canvas
KM: Your paintings are so realistic and detailed. How do you know when a painting is done?
RB: I was going to say that I listen for the singing of angels to let me know, but that hasn’t worked lately. I work at home upstairs in a very small studio. When the painting’s in progress I bring it downstairs to the living room and lean it against the television cabinet and look at it from further away than I can get in my studio. When I can look at it and take in the whole image in one gulp without my eye wandering restlessly, I assume it’s done.
Rick Buttari, Lighthouse, 13 X 20 inches, Oil on Linen
KM: What inspires your work?
RB: You know, you spend a lot of time looking and thinking. You look at, say, the light that’s hitting the side of a building and you ask yourself if there’s something there for me, something I can make of it that might be a little different than what somebody else would make of it. Or something that seems so important at the time that you can’t NOT paint it.That’s the whole ballgame isn’t it, trying to figure out what it is that you’re trying to figure out.
Filed under Artists
Allen Bentley joins F.A.N.’s Summer Show
F.A.N. Gallery is pleased that Allen Bentley will be showing with us this summer. Allen is a graduate of University of Pennsylvania and Western Carolina University.
Allen Bentley, Thresh, oil on canvas, 24 x 24 inches
Allen says of his work,”The pursuit of real interaction drives so much of our relationships. Whether under water or in dance, my work explores intimacy and connection through motion. Energy and passion, rhythm and play guide my figures through moments of reaching, spinning, holding. We chase one another in the hopes of finding a similar resonance, an affinity with another.”
Allen Bentley, Draping, oil on canvas, 24 x 24 inches
Allen Bentley, Driven, oil on canvas, 24 x 24 inches
Carlo Russo wins Purchase Prize at ARC
Carlo Russo, Dreams of Ophila, 29 x 22 inches, oil on linen
We just found out some good news from one of our artists, Carlo Russo. His painting, “Dreams of Ophelia” won a purchase prize awards at the 2013 Art Renewal Center Salon, as well as winning 3rd place in figurative category. Carlo’s painting “the blue dress” was a still life finalist too.
Carlo Russo, Blue Dress, oil on linen
Congratulations to Carlo Russo!
May 2, 2013 · 10:55 pm
David Bottini: New Paintings
David Bottini, May Meadow Breeze, 30 x 40 inches, acrylic on canvas
New Paintings by David Bottini opens Friday, March 1, 2013
March 1 – 30, 2013
First Friday Opening Reception March 1, 5-9 PM
David Bottini’s realist landscapes explore light and atmosphere. His approach begins in direct observation and is enhanced and developed in the studio using a traditional glazing approach. His work draws from training in classical realism as well as his passion for a post-modern abstract sensibility in composing a viewpoint.
January Group Show
January Group Exhibition
Works by Gregory Prestegord
We are excited to show the work of so many of our wonderful artists this month. The show includes works by Gregory Prestegord, Serge Zhukov, Jesse J. Gardner, Charles Newman and Joshua Koffman. Also new paintings by Claire Haik, Kate Kern Mundie, Neil Berger, and David Bottini.
January Group Exhibition
Painting by Gregory Prestegord
The show features figurative sculpture by Joshua Koffman. Urban landscapes by Neil Berger, Kate Kern Mundie, Jesse J. Gardner, and Gregory Prestegord. Winter landscape by Serge Zhukov. Still life and landscape paintings by Charles Newman. Rural landscapes by David Bottini and Claire Haik.
January Group Exhibition
Works by Serge Zhukov, Jesse J. Gardner, Charles Newman and Joshua Koffman.
Fred and Greg in front of one of Greg’s paintings.
Filed under Events
Interview with Kate Kern Mundie
Kate Kern Mundie, City Hall in Fog, 14 x 12 inches, oil on panel
Kate Kern Mundie is exhibiting 30 paintings at F.A.N. Gallery for the month of December. Her work in this exhibition is a mixture of landscape, still life, and interiors.
Q: How would you describe your work? What inspires you to put brush to surface?
A: I paint because I like to lose myself in the experience of painting. There is a rhythm to painting: you examine the subject – landscape, still life, what have you; you mix the colors and brush them onto the surface; you step back and look again; you ask yourself if this is an honest interpretation; and repeat over and over.
Kate Kern Mundie, Smiling Barn, 12 x 12 inches, oil on panel
Q: What is your first creative memory?
A: When I was four years old, my mother sent me to art classes at the St. Louis Art Museum. I have no memory of the classes except looking at a Picasso painting. I cannot remember what I thought of it at the time, but the painting became seared into my brain. We moved from St. Louis to Boston, so I had not seen that painting for years. I came across the painting in a book many years later when I was in college and was very excited to see it again.
- Image via St. Louis Art Museum: Pablo Picasso, Pitcher and Fruit Bowl, 51 1/4 x 76 3/4 inches, oil on
Q: What was it about that painting that appealed to you? Do you think it has an influence on your work today?
A: I would do “exquisite corpse” drawing with my dad and the line work in the painting looked like the drawings we did. I also really love the leaf shapes. I don’t know if it has any influence today but I wonder if I had not seen the painting and had such a connection to it would I have ended up a painter?
Q: Do you have a creative habit? How do you shape your art making practice to nurture your work?
A: I am trying to make a creative habit. As I get busier with kids, family, and work building in time to make artwork is a challenge. My husband is also an artist so I cannot be selfish and sneak away to the studio all the time. I end up working in bursts; I will paint for a few days and then nothing for a week or more. However, I am trying to be more mindful about scheduling dedicated art-making time.
Kate Kern Mundie, Hats, 20 x 40 inches, oil on panel
Q: What do you read, listen to, or look at to recharge you or fuel your work and find inspiration?
A: I read a great deal. I usually have two or three books going at the same time – a mixture of fiction and non-fiction. The best books I have read in 2012 are The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp and Wittgenstein’s Mistress by David Markson.
While I paint, I like to listen to music – such as Charles Mingus and Joe Strummer, or I listen to the news and interview programs on NPR.
Al Gury taught me the importance of keeping a journal. Journaling helps you learn to write better. Writing about your own work can make narrative themes stand out and can help you to better understand and develop your work. It’s also great when you are applying for a grant and can take great chunks out of your journal and clean up into an application essay.
I look at a lot of art. I really like the work of many of my contemporaries like Alex Kanevsky, Tim McFarlane, Jon Redmond, Stanley Bielen, Katy Schneider, Peri Schwartz, and Jenny Saville. I look to the Ashcan School painters like George Bellows, Edward Hopper, and John Sloan for inspiration.
Kate Kern Mundie, Delaware Canal, 24 x 16 inches, oil on panel
Q: What do you do for fun when you are not in the studio?
A: I spend time with my family, taking my kids on bike rides. I do yoga to unwind, and have begun to teach it as well. I like to watch movies. When it comes to movies, my tastes are all over the place. I like movies by directors like Hitchcock, Frank Capra, John Woo, Yimou Zhang, Quentin Tarantino, and Guy Ritchie.
Interview with Jesse J. Gardner
Jesse J. Gardner, Rural Urban, 12 X 18 inches, oil on panel
Well-known portraitist Jesse J. Gardner will present his most recent series of landscape paintings, On the Streets of Philadelphia, at FAN Gallery this October. This series explores several neighborhoods familiar to the artist; Kensington, Frankford, Northern Liberties and Manayunk. Sculptor and critic Leslie Kaufman has written of the artist’s work; “Gardner’s Philadelphia is not on any visitor’s map…he searches city neighborhoods and industrial locations to illuminate lost places whose histories were long abandoned and forgotten. As an urbanist dedicated to environmental issues, Gardner wields his paintbrush as a spotlight – to reveal both what we have lost, and to suggest what may still be reclaimed.”
Jesse J. Gardner grew up on farms in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom and Canada’s Cape Breton Island. Before he began focusing on art, he was a volunteer firefighter at the Pine Plains Hose Company #1 in New York and worked as a long distance trucker and construction worker.
Jesse J. Gardner, “Trees at Huntingdon Street II”, oil on panel
What is your first creative memory?
I was always drawing, and recall that the subjects that interested me as a young child were similar to my subject matter today: houses in the landscape. The first serious drawing was done around age 11, when I looked down the hill at the rooftops of my neighbor’s barn and outbuildings and produced a pencil drawing on a cheap tablet. My parents decided at this point that I was serious about being an artist, and gave me extra time off on our busy farm to draw and paint. I had an interest in preserving historic architecture as a teenager, and when we lived in Nova Scotia in the 1970’s, began making detailed pencil studies of Canadian National Railway stations that were being demolished.
How do you think about your body of work, the portraits and the landscapes? Does one inform the other or are they separate in your mind?
I see the subject matter as emanating from the same conscious desire to dig below the surface and reveal the inner light. It is part of the same narrative; restoring a measure of dignity to the invisible and overlooked. I have integrated the two occasionally. Look for these two separate themes to come together in my work in the near future. It is a natural evolution for the work.
You can find out more about Jesse’s portrait work and involvement with firefighters here.
How did you get involved doing the portrait work?
It grew out of an interest in the invisible service class–workers who keep the world moving but are taken for granted–rarely acknowledged or recognized for their efforts. My parents were very involved with the Labor Movement when I was growing up, so it felt right to be documenting in paint these hard working, ordinary people. I know that my concept of the heroic firefighter was shaped very early on, growing up as I did with farmers and mechanics as role models.
Jesse J. Gardner, “Rapid Electric Company,”oil on panel
How do you choose your landscape subject matter?
I paint obscure places for the most part, far removed from the tourist itinerary and the “center” of things. When I paint familiar landmarks, like the Ben Franklin Bridge, I look for vantage points that most would dismiss as non-picturesque, even ugly. In the series River Town, I ended up painting the bridge from underneath, with a focus on the floating March ice and abandoned piers. The bridge was the focus, but treated as a secondary element. It makes one rethink the familiar and question assumptions.
Jesse J. Gardner, “Poplar West,” oil on panel
Who are your influences art or otherwise?
I owe a great debt to my parents, who are writers and farmers and who shaped my approach to my work by emphasizing the importance of craft and honest labor and self-reliance. They exposed me and my siblings to a wide range of art and culture, which was unusual on a working Vermont farm. They taught us to do everything to the best of our ability. Most importantly, they nurtured an appreciation for lost and endangered places–we restored farm equipment, homes and barns, and cleared abandoned fields for grazing land.
My artistic influences are wide ranging. I love the expert drawing and chiaroscuro of Rembrandt and Velásquez, Whistler’s portraits and nocturnes. I appreciate Egon Scheile, Toulouse-Lautrec and Degas for their draftsmanship. I am profoundly moved by Käthe Kollwitz’s etchings The Weaver’s Cycle.
There are Russian realist painters from the pre-Stalinist era who have had a profound effect on me. I feel a kinship with Grant Wood, George Bellows, Rockwell Kent, and Edward Hopper. There is a contemporary painter named William Wray who I really admire. Brad Holland’s poster illustrations for the Public Theater provoke a visceral reaction in the viewer; he is a brilliant artist and this is a body of work that every artist who is interested in portraiture should study.
I have discovered Chinese modernists recently. Qi Zhilong’s series Chinese Girls has inspired me to consider a new series of large portraits. There is so much that I want to explore as an artist, and so little time.
Jesse J. Gardner, “My Little Town,” oil on panel
Filed under Artists
Jesse J. Gardner: On the Streets of Philadelphia
Jesse J. Gardner, Rural Urban, 12 X 18 inches, oil on panel
Jesse J. Gardner
On the Streets of Philadelphia
New Paintings
October 5-27, 2012
Opening Reception Friday October 5, 5 to 9 PM
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