Our final show of the season, “Contemporary Realism” opened last Thursday evening to rave reviews!!  Many thanks to Olga Antonova, Edward Minoff, Peter Plamondon and Aaron Westerberg for their beautiful and thought provoking work.

 

The following article was published online on ArtSWFL.com by Tom Hall.

Group realism show coming to Naples’ Gardner Colby March 15, 2012 (03-07-12)

“Realism is the current ‘it girl’ of the art world,” says Nancy Winch, and that’s why Gardner Colby Gallery‘s next show is Contemporary Realism, a group show featuring Olga Antonova, Edward Minoff, Peter Plamondon and Aaron Westerberg, “four amazing artists, all master crafts people of their genre”.

Antonova paints exquisite still life works. Her favorite motifs include reflective silver cups, saucers and kitchen implements. “For me, it’s not about the subject matter at all,” the artist told American Art Collector magazine in November of 2006 (vol.13).  ”Subject matter is just a pretext for my execution and sensitivity to technical issues.” That explains her attraction to compositions like Single Metal Cup and Two Cups on Red Polka Dots.

“Creating volume is just so tricky with reflections,” Antonova explains. “And when dealing with reflective surfaces the main challenge is getting right the overall harmony of the painting. Your eye just eventually learns when something is harmonious. It gets trained, much like the ear of a musician.” Even a cursory glance into the reflection mirrored in the two metal cups on Antonova’s polka dot table cloth or the horizontal, vertical and bent parallel lines in Single Metal Cup demonstrate that Antonova is blessed with perfect pitch.

Most art critics and historians recognize Jacob Collins as the dean of the realist movement, which has gone through a rebirth in the last decade becoming, once more, a vital and important component in today’s art market. After graduating with honors from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Edward Minoff went to Collins’ Water Street Atelier to perfect his realist skills. Then he induced Collins to co-found the Hudson River Fellowship with him, Nicholas Hiltner and Travis Schlaht. Minoff has gone on from there to dissect the anatomy of waves in his ambitious attempt to render mesmerizing seascapes in the tradition of Hudson River School icon William Trost Richards. But while that explains why Minoff produces such powerful seascapes, what attracts collectors to his paintings is the way in which they capture the sea’s power, expansiveness and alluring beauty- whether viewed under the sun’s first rays, afternoon radiance or the pale glow of the full moon.

Massachusetts artist Peter Plamondon is a product of the San Francisco Art Institute and Boston University’s School of Fine Arts. His genre is exclusively still lifes. He typically enlarges his motifs to two or three times their actual size. The list of his corporate and private collectors is impressive. It includes the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the DeCordova Museum; the Worcester Art Museum; the University of California; Chase Manhattan Bank; A T & T: the Boston Public Library; Citibank; Fidelity Mgt. & Research; and Beverly Sills & Peter Greenough.

Although landscapes, seascapes and the occasional still life are all within his diverse repertoire, Aaron Westerberg unquestionably excels at figurative work – breathtaking studies of the richly gowned and occasionally nude female figure that bear the unmistakable influence of John Singer Sargent and Edmond Tarbell. If they all seem to bear a striking resemblance to each other, it may be because the artist’s wife frequently serves as his muse. “I’m so comfortable with painting her that I’m able to experiment with color and composition more than I would with a regular model,” says Westerberg, whose paintings marry old world technique with contemporary subject matter. “I don’t like to date paintings through fashion or color schemes. Keeping them timeless is important for me,” Westerberg told American Art Collector in May of 2007 (vol.19). “There is an elegance where you can’t automatically figure out what period they take place in.”