Pairings
Paintings that share a theme,
setting, pose, or composition, usually coincidentally
Combining masterly technical skill with marvelous creativity, Cesar Santos rightly merits Living Master status from the Art Renewal Center. A Cuban immigrant to the United States, Santos graduated in 2006 from the Angel Academy of Art in Florence, Italy. His art explores contrasts, mixing classical and modern, realism and conceptualism, such as in his Syncretism series.
Santos’ paintings have been exhibited worldwide, including at the Beijing World Art Museum in China, the National Gallery in Costa Rica, and the Villa Bardini Museum in Florence, Italy. His art is part of the permanent collections of the Museum of Art and Design in Miami, the New Salem Museum in Massachusetts, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sicily.
Santos is represented by Maxwell Alexander Gallery in Los Angeles, Latin Art Core in Miami, and Galerie Olivier Waltman in Paris. He offers a series of instructional videos on his website.
"Back [a.k.a., Jonathan] "
By Cesar Santos (oil on linen, 32” x 49”, 2015)
This striking painting, “No Greater Sacrifice,” by Brooke Olivares differs from the peaceful domestic scenes the artist often paints but it demonstrates, as they do, her skill at emotionally compelling figurative work and composition.
Olivares’ artwork has been shown in numerous exhibitions along the East Coast, as well as at The Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio, and the Cahoon Museum of American Art in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. In 2016, she won First Place for Painting in the Portrait Society of America’s International Portrait Competition.
Olivares and her artist husband, Matteo Caloiaro, are instructors at the Ringling College of Art & Design in Sarasota, Florida. She is represented by Kiley Court Gallery in Provincetown, Massachusetts; Brandt-Roberts Galleries in Columbus, Ohio; and Palm Avenue Fine Art in Sarasota, Florida.
"No Greater Sacrifice"
By Brooke Olivares (oil on Masonite, 36” x 24”, 2009)
David Palumbo is a freelance illustrator, much of whose work is for the science fiction and horror genres. Major clients include Lucasfilm, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone Italia, Scholastic, Scientific American, Simon and Schuster, and The Wall Street Journal. He has received many awards, include three Spectrum medals for fantasy illustration and a Chesley award from the Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists (ASFA).
Palumbo is a contributor to the Muddy Colors art blog, and has a podcast interview with Pencil Kings. He is represented by Richard Solomon.
The featured painting was created for a science fiction novella, Binti, by Nnedi Okorafor.
A native of suburban Chicago, artist Rob Rey received his BFA in Illustration from the Rhode Island School of Design, and now reside in Denver. His keen interest in the natural and social sciences informs his art, as do various artists from the classical era and the golden age of illustration (c. 1880-1930), as well as other representational artists today.
Rey’s goal is to create paintings that are both beautiful and provocative, believing “that a successful painting must convey emotion…” His recent awards include “Most Innovative” from the National Oil & Acrylic Painters’ Society (2022), “Most Original” and “Award of Excellence” at the Oil Painters of America Western Regional Exhibition (2020), and the Rehs Contemporary Galleries Inc. Award at the 14th Annual Art Renewal Center Salon (2019).
Rey is represented by Abend Gallery in Denver and Rehs Contemporary Gallery in New York City.
"Stardust VI"
By Rob Rey (oil, 20” x 16”, 2017)
"Binti"
By David Palumbo (oil on panel, 18” x 12”, 2015)
"Shine"
By Shana Levenson (oil, 5” x 7”, 2022)
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Passionate about art from her youth, Shana Levenson earned a degree in Fashion Merchandising from the University of Texas (2005) and later an MFA in Painting from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco (2016). She rapidly emerged as a leading figurative artist, winning numerous awards, including the 2019 Outstanding Figurative Award from the American Women Artists Online Exhibition, the 2018 and 2017 Chairman’s Choice Award of the Art Renewal Center’s (ARC) annual salon, and 2017 Best Oil Painting from the National Oil and Acrylic Painters Society (NOAPS). Her fashion background inspired a series of paintings focusing on intricate patterns of lace. A recent still life series creatively features inflated plastic letters and objects.
Levenson’s artwork is available at McLarry Fine Art Gallery in Santa Fe, Stone Sparrow Gallery in New York City, and Abend Gallery in Denver.
Shana Levenson and Pegah Samaie’s paintings feature ceremonial coin headdresses worn by brides in the Near East, Central Asia, and Eastern Europe dating to ancient times. They are decorative and indicators of wealth, passed through generations with coins and emblems added over time.
"Veiled Compliment"
By Pegah Samaie (oil on aluminum, 20” x 13”, 2021)
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Having grown up in Teheran, Iran, artist Pegah Samaie uses her art to depict the experiences and feelings of women in a male-dominated society. She honed her drawing and painting skills under the tutelage of leading Iranian artists, then moved to California, earning BFA and MFA degrees at Laguna College of Art and Design.
Samaie’s paintings were part of the 15th International Art Renewal Center Exhibition in Spain and New York and have been shown in various galleries. Two of her paintings were finalists in the 14th Annual International Salon Competition, and another work won the Fashion Week San Diego Award of the 15th Annual International Art Renewal Center Salon Competition. Her art has also been featured in several publications, including four times in American Art Collector.
Although different in art medium and surface, the featured paintings by Ali Cavanaugh and Terry Moore Strickland depict the reception and expression, respectively, of interpersonal communication for deaf persons. Cavanaugh, who has substantial hearing loss, explains that her painting series with “sock arms” was a way to add a fun visual component. “Listening without Hearing,” though, does convey how the deaf use their eyes, not ears, to listen. Strickland has several paintings that feature American Sign Language, including the featured “Signal Love” in which the woman signs “I love you.”
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In the distant past, deaf persons were often treated as unintelligent or signs of divine disfavor. Attitudes began to change gradually in the Early Modern Era. In the 16th century, Pedro Ponce de Leon, a Catholic monk from Spain, taught deaf people to speak, and Geronimo Cardano, an Italian physician developed a symbolic system of communication for his deaf son. In 1760, Charles Michel de L’Eppe, a French Catholic priest, opened the first school for the deaf, tuition-free, and in 1788 published a dictionary of sign-language.
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The pioneer of deaf education in the United States was Dr. Thomas Gallaudet, a Congregationalist minister. After struggling to teach a neighbor’s deaf daughter to read, he traveled to France to learn the teaching methods of L’Eppe and his colleagues. In 1817, Gallaudet established the American School for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut. By the 1830s, the dominant language for the deaf was American Sign Language (ASL). In 1864 in Washington, D.C., Gallaudet’s son Thomas founded the first college for the deaf, eventually known as Gallaudet University.
"Listening without Hearing"
By Ali Cavanaugh (modern fresco (watercolor on clay board), 16” x 20”, 2011)
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Ali Cavanaugh says her hearing loss at age two was “a blessing in disguise” because it forced her to read lips and body language to communicate. After earning her BFA degree from Kendall College of Art and Design (1995), she co-founded an art atelier in Grand Rapids, Michigan, beginning her career as a figurative oil painter.
Moving to Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 2001, Cavanaugh began painting watercolor on wet kaolin clay board, calling the method “modern fresco,” a process she explains on her website. She eventually settled in St. Louis, Missouri, where her style evolved in an expressionist or impressionist direction of figurative art.
Cavanaugh’s art in part of nearly 500 collections internationally and has been featured in American Art Collector, Fine Art Connoisseur, The New York Times Magazine, and other publications, as well as commissioned portraits for Time magazine and The New York Times. She paintings are available through various galleries via Artsy or her website.
"Signal Love"
By Terry Moore Strickland, (oil on canvas, 12” x 12”)
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Artist Terry Strickland creates her paintings with exemplary skill and emotive imagination. Her body of figurative work evinces a rich array of influences, such as literature and fairytales, myths, and legends. Her Incognito Project is a series of paintings in which the models pose as their alter egos, with a signed limited-edition book of full-color images and commentary available via the artist’s website. From the Incognito collection, her “Voice of the Tiger” painting was one of the first featured on The Easy Chair. Her Life series delves into the relationships, emotions, and aspects of life’s journey.
Strickland is also a talented teacher, with both in-person classes in Birmingham, Alabama, and online-classes via her Patreon website. The winner of numerous awards, her work has been shown in galleries and museums across the United States and featured in leading art publications.
"Louise and Lazar Farkas, Survivors"
By David Kassan (oil, 48” x 40”, 2017)
David Kassan is a leading realist portraitist with an international reputation for excellence. After graduating from Syracuse University (1999) with a degree in Fine Arts, he continued his artistic training at the National Academy School of Fine Art and the Art Students League of New York (2001-2007). He is represented by Gallery Henoch in New York City and Maxwell Alexander Gallery in Los Angeles.
The featured portrait, Louis and Lazar Farkas, Survivors, is from Kassan’s “Facing Survival” series depicting Holocaust survivors. He worked with filmmaker Chloe Lee and journalist Dan Maccarone on The Edut Project (edut is Hebrew for “living witnesses”) to preserve the images and experiences of Holocaust survivors in painting, print, and film. More information is available on the USC Fischer Museum of Art website and in an artist interview with the Jewish Book Council.
"Liberty (Bendheim Remembrance)"
By Juliette Aristides (oil on canvas, 49” x 72”, 2011)
Juliette Aristides is renowned for her beautiful, skillful, and creative portraits, figures, florals, still life, interiors, and drawings, and is honored as a Living Master by the Art Renewal Center.
Aristides learned classical methods under Myron Barnstone in Design System, then studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, The Atelier in Minneapolis under Richard Lack, and two years with Jacob Collins and Carlos Madrid at the National Academy in New York. She was a founding member of the Water Street Studio in Brooklyn.
Aristides is also a much sought-after art instructor. She founded and teaches at Gage Academy of Fine Art in Seattle, as well as in workshops in the US and abroad. She is the author of six illustrated books on artistic methods, and co-founder of the Da Vinci Initiative, which provides art training in public schools across the nation.
In Liberty (Bendheim Remembrance), Aristides pays tribute to the several members of her mother’s family who were killed by the Nazi regime.
"iConnected"
McGarren Flack (28" x 40")
A native of Salt Lake City, McGarren Flack switched his college major from pre-med to art, studying illustration at Brigham Young University and privately from painters Ryan Brown and Kamille Corry. Flack is now an Assistant Professor of Art at Dixie State University in Utah. He was interviewed by Realism Today after winning a scholarship to attend the 2nd Annual Figurative Art Convention & Expo
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"Disconnect"
Hsin-Yao Tseng (oil, 26" x 40", 2015)
Born in Taipei, Taiwan, Hsin-Yao Tseng earned his BFA (2009) and MFA (2012) degrees at the Academy of Art University, San Francisco. While still an undergraduate he was selected as a top finalist in the 2008-09 Salon of the Art Renewal Center (ARC), and in 2014 named an ARC Living Master. His numerous other awards include First Place from Southwest Art Magazine’s Artist Excellence competition (2016), Exceptional Merit (2012) and Certificate of Excellence (2010) awards from the International Portrait Society of America, and six awards in ARC’s 2012-13 Salon in four categories: landscape, drawing, animal, and figurative.
These two paintings depict the divergent tendencies of contemporary communication technology. It can sustain or initiate connections that might otherwise be lost or not made, but it can also isolate and alienate individuals from each other and their environment.
In these two paintings, McGarren Flack’s young men and Hsin-Yao Tseng’s young women, though physically close and listening together on digital technology, disconnect visually. The negative aspect is particularly evident in Tseng’s piece in which the figures are placed in front of a stark, deteriorating wall with their backs turned as they walk away from each other.
Tseng’s oil painting technique is described as “brilliant and sure; he paints in a Romantic, expressive manner that honors the Western tradition while signaling an edgy, contemporary complexity.” His series of Liu Bai paintings combine Chinese and Western ideas and techniques. The artist explains that Liu Bai means “not to fill in all spaces on a canvas. The blank spaces allow the general surface of a painting to 'breathe'. I create fully realized cityscapes, brimming with activity and depth, but whose uneven borders are produced by energetic black brushstrokes that flare off into white. The effect borrows from the aesthetic of Chinese brush and ink paintings while also reflecting such modernist issues as experimentation, radical shifts in perspective and a focus on the surface qualities of the canvas."
"A Quiet Booth"
Steven J. Levin (oil on linen, 20 x 24)
A self-described “modern classicist,” Steven J. Levin trained under Richard Lack at Atelier Le Sueur (MN), which follows the methods of the Boston School with roots in 19th-century French painting. Levin often depicts figures in interiors, such as museums, restaurants, bars, and homes. He is also a talented portraitist and still life painter.
"Conversation"
Zack Zdrale (oil on canvas, 30 x 40) Source
Zack Zdrale's work often captures figures suspended in motion.
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This pair of paintings were shown (separately) at John Pence Gallery in San Francisco, which played a leading role in the realist renaissance of the 1990s and early 21st century. Both paintings center on a young man poised in contemplation of an absent figure. The deep red of the walls and far booth (Levin) and chairs (Zdrale) brings a passionate color to the muted settings.