Nelson Shanks was a highly regarded painter or portraits, still life and landscape; noted in particular for his portraits of such figures as Luciano Pavarotti, Mstislav Rostropovich, Princess Diana, Pope John Paul II and U.S. Presidents Regan and Clinton.

Nelson Shanks died yesterday, August 28, 2015 at the age of 77.

I won’t go into detail here, as I already have in three previous posts, linked below. My post Nelson Shanks (update), from 2012, contains a fairly extensive list of links. The images on his Studio Incamminati Gallery and on the Art Renewal Center are often larger than those on his own website.

Shanks leaves a legacy not only in his own work, but as an influential teacher; and as the founder and Artistic Director of Studio Incamminati, an atelier-style school — and bastion of traditional realist painting — here in Philadelphia.

Shanks’ own style simultaneously kept and broke with tradition, exploring experimental aspects of contemporary portraiture. The image above, bottom is a self-portrait.

Phil Sandusky is a plein air painter, landscape, cityscape and figurative artist based in New Orleans. I’ve written about Sandusky previously, most recently in 2014. Since then, he has unveiled a new website that showcases his work to better advantage.

Sandusky paints the streets, parks and neighborhoods of New Orleans, and several other cities that he frequently visits, with verve, confidence and a keen sense of direct observation. To my eye, there is always a touch of wildness in his work, a sense that the painter has just barely contained the energy and light of the scene.

Ten years ago, Sandusky confronted another kind of wildness, when his response to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina was that of both a new Orleans resident and a painter, and he painted a series of remarkable views of the aftermath of the storm, that were eventually collected into a book, Painting Katrina. These were painted with simultaneous compassion and equanimity, partly with the eye of a painter and partly with the clear observation of a reporter.

Sandusky will be giving a slide presentation about his experiences painting those works on this Friday, August 28, 2015, one day before the 10 year anniversary of the storm, at the New Orleans Academy of Fine Art.