Utah-based painter Elizabeth Robbins focuses primarily on floral still life, and also paints portraits and Western Art subjects.
In her still life paintings, she take a direct, painterly approach, often with dramatic chiaroscuro contrasts. I particularly enjoy her use of soft and hard edges and her handling of crokery and transparent vessels.
Robbins conducts workshops, as well as offering instructional DVDs and online courses through her website.
Matthew (Matt) Cook is a UK artist and illustrator who I have featured previously (and here), mostly in reference to his fascinating role as a reportage illustrator in the middle-east war zones.
In this post, I’d like to focus instead on his more recent travel sketches and paintings. Most of these are done in a watercolor style that is simultaneously free and strongly drawn, and would be of particular interest to those who enjoy “urban sketching”.
Cook’s wonderful handling of brick, stone and other textured architectural elements is a visual treat, as is his controlled used of high and low chroma colors.
Cook/s primary website is still largely focused on reportage. He has a secondary website that has more of his travel sketches, but they are reproduced at a frustratingly small size.
Much better for enjoyment of his recent work is is Twitter account, on which the images are linked to nicely large versions that allow you to see his deft, confident handling.
In the Crimean Mountains, Isaac Ilich Levitan
Oil on canvas, roughly 26 x 14 inches (68 x 36 cm); in the collection of the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
This stunning rocky landscape is part of the superb collection of works in the Tretyakov Gallery by 19th century Russian landscape master Isaac (Isaak) Ilich Levitan.
Here, Levitan give us a tour-de-force of texture, not only in the cascade of strewn boulders in the foreground, but in the trunks of the trees and in the representation of the foliage beyond.
The variation of color in the rocks is remarkable, both between the various rocks and within the painted surface of each individual plane of each rock.
Steve Caldwell is a UK painter whose focus is portraits, and by focus I mean rather intense focus. Caldwell’s faces are intensely observed, and rendered with a finessed attention to tone and texture. Many have a feeling of immediacy that at times can even feel a bit confrontational, a sense of “here I am, this is me, like it or not”.
Most interesting to me is that a large percentage of Caldwell’s paintings are monochrome, painted in acrylic in a full range of grays. A number of them are left in an apparently unfinished state with some areas brought to a finish and others little more than a sketched outline against a textured ground.
His work in color is no less intensely observed, with an equal degree of attention to nuanced value relationships.
Capriccio with a River and Bridge, Bernard Bellotto
Oil on canvas, roughly 19 x 29 inches (48 x 73 cm); in the collection of the Museo National Thyssen-Bornemisza. Click on the links to zoom or download the image on the museum’s site.
Bernardo Bellotto was Canaletto’s nephew, as well as his premiere student. This image is a capriccio — an idealized architectural landscape either created of scenes from different locations made into a whole, or just invented, or a combination of both.
In this work from early in his career, Bellotto’s approach is close to that of his mentor, right down to the signature style of representing water with little linear wave forms. The painting is forceful in its underlying geometric solidity, and rich with textural details and areas of deliberate imperfection in the stonework to indicate weathering and age.
I love the little wooden balcony to the right of the structure in front of the tower, with the potted plants on its ledge.
Denise Ramsay is a botanical artist originally from New Zealand, who now divides her time between Hong Kong and a cottage in the southwest region of France.
Ramsay paints keenly observed and intricately realized watercolors of flowers and other plants, sometimes at a fairly large scale, in watercolor.
Her paintings are bold and dynamic, apparently without compromising botanical accuracy. In one of her projects, she painted a poppy from bud (images above, third down) to full flower (top, with detail) to eventual faded bloom. There is an article on Bored Panda that follows the sequence.
In addition to the gallery of images on her website, you can find a selection of limited edition Giclee prints.
There is a video on YouTube of Ramsay being interviewed by Katherine Tyrrell.
