Anyone who has really studied biology and the natural world can tell you that even the simplest of organic objects can be a marvel of biological complexity. If we take the time to stop and examine them, we find that simple organic objects can be visual wonders as well.

Dennis Wojtkiewicz makes that brilliantly clear for us. He paints large, luminous oil paintings of simple-but-complex objects like single flower blossoms or slices of fruit or melons. The fruit slices are often lit from behind, giving their intricate interiors the appearance of being illuminated from within, and the flowers are bathed in warm light that gives their finely textured surfaces an almost angelic quality.

I would really enjoy the opportunity to see his canvases in person because they are large in scale, many are 4ft x 4ft (121 x 121 cm), and the visual impact must be wonderful. The fruit images are more recent than the flowers. According his artist’s statement he has been working on the series for the past two years.

Wojtkiewicz is a professor at the School of Art, Bowling Greeen State University in Ohio, and his work has been in an impressive list of exhibits, collections and publications.

The links for Wojtkiewicz’s galleries below are to the J. Cacciola Gallery in New York, the Glass Garage Gallery in West Hollywood, and the Robert Kidd Gallery in Burmingmham, MI, all of which represent some other very interesting artists.

One of the things that art does best is to remind us how astonishing the “ordinary world” around us really is. I would love to gaze at Wojtkiewicz’s 4 foot high painting of a grapefruit for a while and then sit down to breakfast.

Link via Changing Places.

How about some church on a Sunday? Frederic Edwin Church, that is.

Church was the only student of Thomas Cole, who essentially started the Hudson River School of landscape painting, although whatever teaching transpired was probably more about what to paint than how to paint. Cole reportedly said that Church already had “the finest eye for drawing in the world” at the time, and Church is widely regarded as one of the finest American artists, perhaps the finest prior to Thomas Eakins and Winslow Homer.

He set out to convey the drama and grandeur of the North American and South American wilderness. (This was back before business and industry had really started in earnest their campaigns to rid both continents of those annoying patches of undeveloped wilderness.) Every spring to fall he would travel and sketch, often traveling by foot, and return to the studio in the winter to create his monumental works.

He painted landscapes on a grand scale, both in terms of subject and in the monumental scale of some of his canvasses. His famous painting Heart of the Andes, is a five foot high by ten foot wide (168 x 302 cm) canvas that was originally unveiled in a special room with dramatic gas jet lighting, curtains and palm fronds, to great response. Thousands of people paid admission to see the painting. We’re jaded by exposure to movie screens and billboards so it’s hard to grasp the visual impact of a dramatic image of exotic wilderness on that scale in the mid-1800’s.

Church became very successful and in 1867 he bought a parcel of land with a magnificent view of the Hudson River and later constructed his personal Persian-style castle Olana, which is today a museum dedicated to Church and his work.

Church became the youngest artist elected to membership in the National Academy of Design in New York, which is now the National Academy Museum and School of Fine Arts. Fittingly, a show of Church’s work, Treasures from Olana, is now on display at the National Academy Museum, along with a companion exhibit For Spacious Skies: Hudson River School Paintings From the Henry and Sharon Martin Collection. The Treasures from Olana exhibit is in New York until April 30, 2006. It then travels to Portland, ME, San Marino, CA and Princeton, NJ.

Church is also deservedly famous for his sweepingly dramatic views of Niagra Falls (before development, honeymooners and the Three Stooges), of which he painted several. I had the pleasure of seeing one of his paintings of Horseshoe Falls (above) when it was on display at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts several years ago, and it just knocked me out. It’s stunning. I’ve also seen his work in several permanent collections here in the northeast.

The remarkable thing about Church’s work is that someone with an eye for composition can easily pick out numerous small paintings that could be cropped from areas of the larger works and stand on their own as wonderful paintings.

Exhibition link via Art Knowledge News.