The Incantation of Frida Kahlo

 New one for 2023 - will be at the Affordable Art Fair in Chelsea next month!

Remember Frida
30x40 inches
2023 charcoal on paper by Florencio Lennox Campello

Wanna go to a museum opening tonight?

Winter exhibitions at American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center will open Feb. 4, 2023. Exhibits include Madayin, the first major exhibition of Aboriginal Australian bark painting to tour the U.S., photojournalism from World War II, and The Trawick Prize for Contemporary Art.

The opening reception, free and open to all, takes place from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. tonight, Feb. 4. Please refer to the museum’s website for the most up-to-date information on museum events and visiting the museum. 

The Trawick Prize: 20th Anniversary Emerald Award celebrates the impact of The Trawick Prize for Contemporary Arts, a visual arts prize that honors artists from Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Virginia in an annual juried competition. 

Now in its 20th year, the prize was established by Bethesda, Md.-based community activist and philanthropist Carol Trawick in 2002. To date, The Trawick Prize has awarded over $300,00 to local contemporary artists and has exhibited the work of more than 200 artists who reached the level of finalists in each year’s competition. 

This exhibition presents the work of artists who were awarded the “Best in Show” in the competition over the last 20 years, and features contemporary paintings, sculptures, film, mixed media, and many others. 

This year, the juried competition will result in selecting “the best of the best” over the past 20 years, awarding the artist with The Trawick Prize Emerald Award. On view through March 19. I'm also going to walk through the show and select my own "Best in Show."

The exhibition features artists working in a variety of media including sculpture, painting, mixed media, film, and more. Works from artists such as Neil Feather, Jiha Moon, Jo Smail, and many others will be displayed in the galleries. Themes span a range of concepts important to each artist from race, oppression, and genealogy to culture, humanity, and emotion to name a few.

In the words of Carol Trawick “there is no need to travel to see great art, there are numerous talented artists right in our backyard!” 

Featured artists:

Lauren Adams 

WonJung Choi 

Richard Cleaver 

Larry Cook 

Oletha Devane 

Neil Feather 

Mia Feuer 

Caroline Hatfield 

Lillian Hoover 

Gary Kachadourian 

Cecilia Kim 

Maggie Michael 

Jonathan Monaghan 

Jiha Moon 

David Page 

James Rieck 

Jo Smail 

Lomax & Wickerham

WESTPAC CT

This one for my WestPac CT peeps -- sometime around 1985 some PAC ships shifted to LANT and came up the Suez heading to Norfolk, and stopped in Rota for liberty --- And thus my cartoon! 

We're really raising some good bucks for Wounded Warriors Home, so this one will be donated to Fisher House! Most of you know the story: When I was in the Navy, I did loads of illustrations and cartoons for many newspapers (such as The Stars & Stripes and lots of base newspapers, etc.), and hundreds of sketches of my shipmates and other US Navy sailors in ports in the US and European ports. Most of these drawings, cartoons, and paintings were given away to my shipmates over the years, but I also kept many of them, and I see them often being sold at auctions online and by galleries... 

This one from 1985 is being offered by the gallery on Ebay with a super low starting price and 100% of all proceeds being donated to Fisher House... let's go cheapskates!

Click here to bid on it!

Rota CT

This one for my Rota CT peeps -- We're really raising some good bucks for Wounded Warriors Home, so this one will be donated to Fisher House! Most of you know the story: When I was in the Navy, I did loads of illustrations and cartoons for many newspapers (such as The Stars & Stripes and lots of base newspapers, etc.), and hundreds of sketches of my shipmates and other US Navy sailors in ports in the US and European ports. Most of these drawings, cartoons, and paintings were given away to my shipmates over the years, but I also kept many of them, and I see them often being sold at auctions online and by galleries... 

Bid for it here.

Wanna go to an opening this weekend?

Winter exhibitions at American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center will open Saturday, Feb. 4, 2023. Exhibits include Madayin, the first major exhibition of Aboriginal Australian bark painting to tour the U.S., photojournalism from World War II, and The Trawick Prize for Contemporary Art.

The opening reception, free and open to all, takes place from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Feb. 4. Please refer to the museum’s website for the most up-to-date information on museum events and visiting the museum. 

The Trawick Prize: 20th Anniversary Emerald Award celebrates the impact of The Trawick Prize for Contemporary Arts, a visual arts prize that honors artists from Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Virginia in an annual juried competition. 

Now in its 20th year, the prize was established by Bethesda, Md.-based community activist and philanthropist Carol Trawick in 2002. To date, The Trawick Prize has awarded over $300,00 to local contemporary artists and has exhibited the work of more than 200 artists who reached the level of finalists in each year’s competition. 

This exhibition presents the work of artists who were awarded the “Best in Show” in the competition over the last 20 years, and features contemporary paintings, sculptures, film, mixed media, and many others. 

This year, the juried competition will result in selecting “the best of the best” over the past 20 years, awarding the artist with The Trawick Prize Emerald Award. On view through March 19.

The exhibition features artists working in a variety of media including sculpture, painting, mixed media, film, and more. Works from artists such as Neil Feather, Jiha Moon, Jo Smail, and many others will be displayed in the galleries. Themes span a range of concepts important to each artist from race, oppression, and genealogy to culture, humanity, and emotion to name a few.

In the words of Carol Trawick “there is no need to travel to see great art, there are numerous talented artists right in our backyard!” 

Featured artists:

Lauren Adams 

WonJung Choi 

Richard Cleaver 

Larry Cook 

Oletha Devane 

Neil Feather 

Mia Feuer 

Caroline Hatfield 

Lillian Hoover 

Gary Kachadourian 

Cecilia Kim 

Maggie Michael 

Jonathan Monaghan 

Jiha Moon 

David Page 

James Rieck 

Jo Smail 

Lomax & Wickerham

Art Schooling At Its Best

The Compass Atelier has what I consider the best artist schooling in the DMV – better, in fact, than all of the major Universities in our area.  That’s a big statement to make, but it comes from me, and thus I am ready to back it up as needed. Notice that I wrote “art schooling.”

I choose my words carefully – what Glen Kessler and the other professionals who teach at the Compass Atelier do is to school people who want to develop and expand their artistic prowess, plus their artistic acumen, in leaps and bounds.

Read the entire article here.

Isla Desbaratada

 

Cuba: Isla Desbaratada
Mixed Media painting 1980 by Florencio Lennox Campello

The New Ensign

Another vintage 1983 US Navy cartoon that I did when I was in the Navy.  Being offered on Ebay with ALL proceeds going to charity. Bid for it here.

The New Ensign
Vintage 1983 Navy cartoon by Campello

Scared by books

The original owners of this original drawing bought from me at the Pike Place Market in Seattle back in 1981.  It was recently resold in the secondary market, and the new owner has just gifted it to the great Stephen King!

How super cool is that!

The drawing was done as as assignment at the University of Washington School of Art -  The assignment was to create a work in “response to a book or literary figure.” 

A woman scared by Stephen King's books
1981 charcoal and conte on paper by Florencio Lennox Campello

When CTs become architects

Another Navy vintage drawing - it's now on sale in Ebay with all proceeds being donated to charity!

When CTs become architects
1988 vintage Navy drawing by CAMPELLO

Frida from 1981

I was looking for an etching of Andy Warhol that I did in art school for portrait class... instead I found this 1981 piece on Frida Kahlo. I'll take it to NYC in March to sell it!

"Looking In, Looking Out" Jacqui Crocetta & Kyujin Lee at Adah Rose

Adah Rose Gallery in Kensington is one of the hardest working independent fine arts galleries in the DMV. 

This coming Saturday they have an opening for Jacqui Crocetta and Kyujin Lee (two Solo Shows running Jan 26-Feb 28).

Vernissage with the Artists, Saturday January 28 5-7 pm

Northern National Art Competition

 Northern National Art Competition

The 36th Northern National Art Competition is a juried art exhibition in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, co-sponsored by Nicolet College and the Northern Arts Council. The Northern National Art Competition (NNAC) began in 1987 with a mere 37 entries. Today, the show attracts the work of artists from all across the United States with hundreds of entries as diverse as the artists themselves, and showcases a wide array of contemporary art in a variety of two-dimensional mediums.

MORE THAN $8,500 AWARDED WITH THREE $1,000 AWARDS OF EXCELLENCE

CALENDAR 2023

• Monday, January : Registration opens via CaFÉ
• (Call for Entry) online registration system
• Friday, March 24: Registration deadline
• Friday, April 21: Acceptance notification
• Friday, May 12: Hand delivery by appointment
• Monday, May 15: All shipped work due
• Thursday, June 15: Opening Reception
• Thursday, July 28: Show Closes
• Friday, July 29: Pick up hand delivered work by appointment 

All the details here!

95 South from Baltimore

 

Artists sue AI art generators over copyright infringement

A group of artists — Sarah Andersen, Kelly McK­er­nan, and Karla Ortiz — have filed a class-action lawsuit against Midjourney and Stability AI, companies behind AI art tools Midjourney and Stable Diffusion, and DeviantArt, which recently launched its own artificial intelligence art generator, DreamUp.

The suit alleges that these companies “violated the rights of millions of artists” by using billions of internet images to use train its AI art tool without the “consent of artists and without compensating any of those artists.” These companies “benefit commercially and profit richly from the use of copyrighted images,” the suit alleges. “The harm to artists is not hypothetical,” the suit says, noting that works created by generative AI art are “already sold on the internet, siphoning commissions from the artists themselves.”

Read the full article here. 

Dora Patin

As I noted earlier this week, this March, we will return to our 17th year in a row (less the year of the attack of the Covidian monster) to the Affordable Art Fair in New York City, we're bringing in a whole new group of artists from the DMV, most of whom I first met via their artwork when I juried the 2022 Paint the Town event in the pretty area of downtown Kensington, Maryland.

Let me repeat myself: jurying any art show always exposes the juror to new talent, and when I juried this show, as 2022 Paint the Town I often do, I selected some of my fave artists to bring to NYC for an art fair.  In my mind we wanted to "curate" a booth for the fair that showcased realist work at its best. Booth curation is a somewhat subjective process (pun intended).

And one of my prizewinners (in fact the Best in Show winner!) Dora Patin is coming to NYC with us in booth D-10 at the fair!

I think that Patin is a painting prodigy.  She has only been painting for a handful of years, and yet her trompe l'oeil paintings are breathtaking in their ability to fool the eye. She's yet another great testimony to the teaching skills of Glen Kessler at The Compass Atelier.

Note the facility in delivering one of the hardest subjects to fool the eye: paper. 

In this new series focusing on cards, Patin flexes her painting skills to deliver superb work that not only fools the eye, but also subtly reminds us that it is a painting.  These are opposite goals on the horizon of an artist as he/she commences a new work, and yet, in these works she accomplishes both of them easily. This is sooooo hard to do, and yet she accomplishes it with deceptive ease.

The Optimist by Dora Patin
c. 2023, 5x7 inches, oil on panel

Monarch by Dora Patin
5x7 inches - Oil on Panel c. 2023 

Luck or Skill? by Dora Patin
c. 2023, 12x12 inches, oil on panel

Patin's works will be in booth D-10 at the Affordable Art Fair New York City, March 22-26 in Chelsea.

Jennifer Kahn Barlow

As I noted earlier, this March, we will return to our 17th year in a row (less the year of the attack of the Covidian monster) to the Affordable Art Fair in New York City, we're bringing in a whole new group of artists from the DMV, most of whom I first met via their artwork when I juried the 2022 Paint the Town event in the pretty area of downtown Kensington, Maryland.

Let me repeat myself: jurying any art show always exposes the juror to new talent, and when I juried this show, as I often do, I selected some of my fave artists to bring to NYC for an art fair.  In my mind I wanted to "curate" a booth for the fair that showcased realist work at its best. Booth curation is a somewhat subjective process (pun intended).

And one of my prizewinners is coming to NYC: Jennifer Kahn Barlow! She is "an oil painter inspired by food.  She is stirred by vibrant, texturally dynamic, and unique cuisine, which leads much of her subject matter to be of confectionary, the gooier and more colorful the better."

She is that... but what Kahn Barlow truly is goes beyond that - she's a master artist who elevates and transforms the visual aspect of food to the visual beauty of food as only a well-executed work of art can do. 

Blossom Stack by Jennifer Kahn Barlow

In Blossom Stack there are three stacks of color disguised as macaroons... the brushwork comes through first and foremost - it's a painting first and a painting about dessert second.  At the risk of repeating myself: Only a really good artist can elevate the mundane to the sublime through the gift of art!

Kahn Barlow's works will be in booth D-10 at the Affordable Art Fair New York City, March 22-26 in Chelsea.

Jennifer Lynn Beaudet

I was at Strathmore yesterday to review the Compass Atelier show on the second floor - amazing show. The review will be in the next issue (February) of the Crier Media Newspapers.

I first came across Jennifer Lynn Beaudet’s work at the Paint the Town event last year which was my honor to jury -- as I recall she was an honorable mention winner at that show.

Her work at Strathmore is amongst the best in a show where there is not a single bad painting.

This artist has that hard-to-describe ability to capture the human essence of her subjects in paint. 

Connections - 24x24 oil on canvas by Jennifer Lynn Beaudet

That sentence is so easy to write and so immensely difficult to deliver on canvas. Her human subjects in two dimensions of paint are able to transmit visual clues and nuances that help to decipher and understand something individual about them.  

This is an exceptional gift that few artists have in such abundance as this artist does, and she flexes this gift via her artistic muscles in nearly every work in this show!

Big Warrior Goddess at Strathmore

I was at Strathmore today to review the Compass Atelier show on the second floor.  On the main floor, the O Street Studios artists had their own show, and this terrific print by Kimberly King caught my eye.

Kimberly King - Big Warrior Goddess

Seen at Strathmore Mansion

I was at Strathmore today to review the Compass Atelier show on the second floor.  On the main floor, the O Street Studios artists had their own show, and this this wall of striking abstract work by Cianne Fragione caught my eye.

Cianne Fragione at Strathmore