Food & Dining
"Soul Food"
By John Holyfield (30” x 24”, oil, c. 2012)
Artist John Holyfield paints African Americans in a style reminiscent of Ernie Barnes' elongated figures and sense of movement and in Norman Rockwellesque narrative settings of family, church, and community. He is also inspired by 19th-century artist Frederic Leighton’s depiction of light and shadow in his paintings.
Holyfield was orphaned at a young age and raised by his grandmothers in West Virginia. He attended Howard University and the University of the District of Columbia, majoring in graphic design. His stated mission is “to exalt the beauty of the black experience through imagery that celebrates the African American spirit.”
"Jackie"
By Pavel Sokov (oil, 24” x 18”, 2018)
In 2000, at the age of 10, Pavel Sokov immigrated with his family from Russia to Montreal, Canada, and discovered passions for art and science. He began painting at age 7 and by age 17 was selling commissioned portraits. After graduating from business school, he attended the Watts Atelier of the Arts in California to hone his natural skills. At age 24, Time magazine commissioned him to paint a portrait of Russian President Vladimir Putin, a runner-up for its Person of the Year award in 2014.
Calling his work “impressionistic realism,” Sokov’s paintings have won numerous awards, including from the National Oil and Acrylic Painters’ Society (NOAPS), Boldbrush, the Portrait Society of America, and the Circle Foundation’s Artist of the Year (2020). His love of science is represented in his Gravitas collection.
The featured painting, “Jackie,” a Vietnamese man who fought with the US during the Vietnam War, is part of Sokov’s Stories of the World collection. Through the artist’s incredible mastery of the human figure viewers sense a man with a fascinating life.
Sokov is represented by Seidona.
"Soup at the Bar"
By Marc Duquette (oil on canvas, 20” x 30”, 2020)
Realist painter Marc A. Duquette graduated from SUNY Buffalo (2002) with a degree in Art and later studied part-time (2010-17) at the Academy of Realist Art in Toronto, Canada. His artwork has been included in several exhibitions in the U.S. and Canada.
Duquette’s recent work focuses on narrative figurative paintings and portraits, such as the featured “Soup at the Bar,” part of a series on “aloneness.” Leaving interpretation to the viewer, the artist has placed a solitary man sitting at a bar (in contemplation? despair? prayer? exhaustion?) by a bowl of alphabet soup and large glass of milk. Through the doorway in the back stand a group of spectral figures, arms folded, watching him.
"Control"
Alexander Klingspor (oil, 17” x 22”, 2011)
The piscine theme of this week’s labor paintings by Schulenberg and Harrell flows into these fish-featured dining paintings by Alexander Klingspor and Kate Lehman.
Klingspor, a native of Stockholm, Sweden, frequently paints large-scale, multi-figure works with prominent themes of dining and public entertainment. His art is realistic with a surrealist edge, incorporating psychological and often erotic subtexts.
Control casts a man in dramatic shadows as he prepares to cut a fish with surgical precision on a table set with a gluttonous porcine pitcher and other dining objects.
"Blue"
Kate Lehman (oil on canvas, 24 x 24 inches, 2006)
Born in London and raised in Paris, painter-sculptor Kate Lehman was immersed in art from her youth, beginning her art training at L’Academie de la grande chaumiere at age 15. In adulthood, after a short stint with the film industry in New York, Lehman studied traditional academic art techniques with Patrick Devonas at the Minnesota River School and then under Jacob Collins and Rick Piloco at the Water Street Atelier in New York.
In Blue, Lehman’s minimalist still life of a completed fish course is exquisitely composed with the prone fork tine pointing to the graceful supine sweep of the fish tail. The image is a restrained counter to Control’s excess.
"Setting the Table"
by Michael De Brito (oil on canvas, 6'x7.25', 2008)
A graduate of the Parsons School of Design and the New York Academy of Art, Michael de Brito’s genre paintings often portray his large Portuguese-American family and friends sharing meals.
This small work shows his grandmother making sure everything is just right before the family arrives.