North Carolina painter Richard Oversmith studied in Michigan at the Kendall College of Art and Design, and in the UK, at the Royal College of Art in London.

He brought his experience back to his home state, and finds there, as well as in his travels abroad and elsewhere in the US, a range of plein air subjects.

You will find on his website galleries of plein air paintings as well as studio landscapes and still life. Oversmith brings to all of them a plein air painter’s eye for capturing the essence of his subject in crisp, clear, painterly compositions.

You can see in his work an admiration for the French and American Impressionists, as well as Sargent and other 19th century painters who practiced a direct approach.

In addition to his website, Oversmith maintains a blog on which he discusses his process. In addition, there is an article about his process on OutdoorPainter.com.

Oversmith’s work will be on display a the Warm Springs Gallery in Charlottesville in a show titled “meanderings” that runs until June 25, 2013.

You can find additional showings on his events page.

My stepdaughter recently wrote me while vacationing in Mexico and mentioned that she had encountered the work of an artist I might like, if I was not already familiar with her, named Remedios Varo.

As it happens, I was not familiar with Varo, and on investigating (bless the internet’s glowing electronic heart) I’m genuinely surprised to say that.

Varo is the kind of artist I would have sought out years ago in my teenage fascination with Surrealism and Magic Realism, and I immediately saw in her work a source of inspiration for a number of contemporary magic realists, not to mention other areas in which pop culture may bear her influence.

Remedios Varo (María de los Remedios Alicia Rodriga Varo y Uranga) was originally from Madrid. In her frequent visits to the Prado, she recounts an early fascination with Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights.

Through a series of associations, friendships and marriage, she fell in with likeminded artists and eventually became part of the original Surrealist circle in Paris. However, like other female Surrealist artists (see my posts on Dorothea Tanning), Varo was dismissed as inconsequential by her male counterparts in the movement (who were not known for being open minded and egalitarian, particularly in their relegation of women to the role of “muses”).

Though there is indication that she felt the influence of another Spanish Surrealist, Dalí, to some degree, Varo’s work is more closely related to Greek proto-Surrealist Giorgio de Chirico, and Surrealist artists like Paul Delveaux and Max Ernst. However, her style is uniquely her own and retains much of her early fascination with Medieval and early Renaissance art.

As the Germans invaded Paris and the Surrealist circle scattered, Varo fled to Mexico, intending to find temporary refuge but eventually settling permanently. There she encountered Mexican artists like Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, as well as expatriates from Europe and England.

Varo’s style is unusual in that her oil paintings, usually on prepared masonite panels, were done in a technique of short, layered strokes, more in keeping with tempera than the normal approach to oil. The result is a fascinating textural quality, giving her work a very different feeling than it might have otherwise.

Her enigmatic images feel ripe with suggestion and emotional nuance — part allegory, part dream — with many repeated themes, as though portraying stories from a private mythology.

Her titles add to the richness of her images, for example “Embroidering the Earth’s Mantle” (above, top, with detail) and “Star Catcher” (third down, which I am now convinced was at least partial inspiration for Jean (“Moebius”) Giraud’s iconic “Starwatcher“).

There are a couple of books about or related to Varo currently in print: Remedios Varo: The Mexican Years and Surreal Friends. There are others like Remedios Varo: Unexpected Journeys, that you may be able to find used.

The best source for her images that I have been able to find online is the gallery on WikiPaintings.

[Thanks, Virginia!]

In contrast to the elaborate still life arrangements common to his late seventeenth century contemporaries, Dutch painter Adriaen Coort is noted for his simple still life subjects.

His simply staged but striking Still life with Asparagus, depicting a bunch of plump white asparagus on the corner of a table (images above, top, with detail) is perhaps his best known work.

You can see other examples of Coorte painting asparagus in only slightly more elaborate compositions here and here.

Two centuries later, Edouard Manet gives a thoroughly modern but respectful nod to the traditions of he Dutch still life masters, if not Coorte’s painting in particular, in his painting Bunch of Asparagus, showing a similar sized bunch of white asparagus, their bright stalks luminescent against a dark background and painted larger than life size.

The story is that Manet’s parton, Charles Ephrussi, was so pleased with the commissioned painting that he paid the artist 1000 Francs instead of the agreed on 800.

Manet, in response, painted another small canvas, this one quite different in tone and composition — showing a single spear on a marble tabletop, rich with color in its painterly brushstrokes — and sent it to his patron with the message “This one was missing from your bunch.”