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Curator's Corner

National Cheese Day: Clara Peeters

Wednesday, June 4, 2025 | Karl Cole

Although little is known about her upbringing or training, Peeters was one of a growing number of women artists who were widely acclaimed as professional artists. She was also a pioneer in the relativ ...

Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday: Audrey Flack

Friday, May 30, 2025 | Karl Cole

Having matured as an artist shortly after the “revolution” of the Abstract Expressionism movement, Audrey Flack became one of the earliest and archetypal Photorealist painters, working fro ...

Curator's Corner

National Love a Tree Day: Sylvia P. Mangold

Friday, May 16, 2025 | Karl Cole

Mangold is very fond of the trees that were on her country property and they became frequent subjects of her paintings. She would definitely approve of National Love a Tree Day, which encourages every ...

Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday: Ralph Goings

Friday, May 9, 2025 | Karl Cole

The Photorealism movement, which evolved during the late 1960s as a counterpoint to the pervasive Minimalism, Conceptualism, and abstraction in American art, blossomed fully during the 1970s. Into the ...

Curator's Corner

Gem of the Month: Pasquale Santo

Monday, May 5, 2025 | Karl Cole

I had a sudden “beauty attack” last week when I looked closely at this artist’s work for the first time. Being a painter myself, I am always flabbergasted by how many artists come an ...

Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday: Jules Breton

Thursday, May 1, 2025 | Karl Cole

Jules Breton was a unique artist of the Realism movement in France in the mid-1800s. Having grown up with poor rural farmers in northern France, he understood their lives and labors. His paintings pre ...

Curator's Corner

Women's History Month: Rosa Bonheur

Monday, March 10, 2025 | Karl Cole

Having previously featured French artist Rosa Bonheur in my Importance of Portraits series, I felt it was high time to bring up the importance of her art in the history of women artists. She was a reb ...

Curator's Corner

October Is National Apple Month: Levi Wells Prentice

Monday, October 23, 2023 | Karl Cole

I can’t think of a better way to celebrate National Apple Month than with one of THE most incredible paintings I’ve ever seen on the subject. The first time I saw this painting by Levi Wel ...

Curator's Corner

Thanksgiving Week 2022: John F. Francis Still Life

Monday, November 21, 2022 | Karl Cole

I don’t usually attend a large buffet-style Thanksgiving dinner, but I always observe the underlying reason for Thanksgiving: being grateful. Among the many things I am grateful for—a ...

Curator's Corner

Romance Awareness Month 2022

Monday, August 22, 2022 | Karl Cole

I happen to be a romantic slob at heart, and when the subject of “romance” comes up, works of art that I think characterize the concept naturally spring to mind. The following works may no ...

Curator's Corner

Pride Month 2022: Fairfield Porter

Monday, June 6, 2022 | Karl Cole

Let’s start June with a focus on the work of Fairfield Porter, an artist who matured during the period dominated by Abstract Expressionism in American art. It was also a period in which being ga ...

Curator's Corner

National Arts in Education Week: Winslow Homer

Monday, September 13, 2021 | Karl Cole

How quickly we forget that, up until the late 1800s, going to the local museum to copy “masterpieces” of past art and training under a male relative who was a professional artist were ...

Curator's Corner

Women's (Art) History Month: Isabel Bishop

Monday, March 15, 2021 | Karl Cole

If anyone documented the human (women’s) condition extensively, it was artist Isabel Bishop. Her sensitive paintings and prints of working women during the Great Depression (1929–1940) and ...

Curator's Corner

Ancient Egypt Find

Monday, May 13, 2019 | Karl Cole

Because of the recent news about an exciting archeological find in Giza, I decided to show some stunning portraits from ancient Egypt. ...

Curator's Corner

An April Birthday Boy: Antoine Vollon

Tuesday, April 23, 2019 | Karl Cole

Antoine Vollon, known primarily for his excellent still-life paintings, had a birthday on April 23rd. In the glory days of the annual academic Salon in Paris (1760s–1890s)—when the self-ap ...

Curator's Corner

Deceiving the Eye: American Trompe-l'Oeil Realism

Wednesday, June 21, 2017 | Karl Cole

I’ve written before about the long-standing interest in extreme realism in American painting. Colonial American self-taught artists (“limners”) may not have been schooled in anatomy, ...

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National Cheese Day: Clara Peeters

Artist Birthday: Audrey Flack

National Love a Tree Day: Sylvia P. Mangold

Artist Birthday: Ralph Goings

Gem of the Month: Pasquale Santo

Artist Birthday: Jules Breton

Women's History Month: Rosa Bonheur

October Is National Apple Month: Levi Wells Prentice

Thanksgiving Week 2022: John F. Francis Still Life

Romance Awareness Month 2022

Pride Month 2022: Fairfield Porter

National Arts in Education Week: Winslow Homer

Women's (Art) History Month: Isabel Bishop

Ancient Egypt Find

An April Birthday Boy: Antoine Vollon

Deceiving the Eye: American Trompe-l'Oeil Realism

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