Anthony Roaland

Teens at the beach - Original Drawing by Anthony Roaland - 1982

1982

Teens at the beach is an original drawing on pencil realized by Anthony Roaland in 1981. Hand-signed and dated by the artist on the lower right margin. The artwork represents fre...

Two friends walking on the beach is an original drawing in pencil realized by Anthony Roaland in 1981. Hand-signed and dated by the artist on the ...

Three boys is an original drawing on pencil realized by Anthony Roaland. In the foreground the threefigures are depicted with a delicate and harmonious style. Good conditions.

Friends is an original drawing on pencil realized by Anthony Roaland in 1981. Hand-signed and dated by the artist on the lower right margin. The men...

Pearl Finkel - Children on Beach, Year: 1945, Medium: Watercolor on Paper, signed and dated lower right, Size: 12 x 16 in. (30.48 x 40.64 cm), Frame Size: 20 x 23.5 inches

Study of a female nude in the Baroque style, by acclaimed California artist Ben Messick (American, 1891-1981). Signed "Ben Messick 40" in plate and pencil lower left, by the estate. Unframed. Image size, 4.75"L x 10.5"H; overall mat size is, 16"L x 20"H. Some foxing to over-mat. The following is submitted by Jim Lafferty whose sources include the autobiography of the artist: William Washington Messick married Sarah A. Bristow January 2,1889 and from this marriage a son, Benjamin Newton Messick was born on January 9, 1891 on a farm near Strafford, Missouri. His art talent was apparent from the time he was a child and later recognized by his commanding officer in World War I. He completed his training in Los Angeles at Chouinard in the late-1920s and is well-known for his Regionalist scenes and Modernist paintings. He was an instructor at Chouinard through the 1950s & influenced a generation of LA Modernists. Little is recorded in his autobiography about Messick's life from his teen years and service during the War. He enrolled at Chouinard Institute in the Fall of 1925, and was given a three-year scholarship by Mrs. Chouinard. In 1925 he won a cash award at the Los Angeles County Fair for a group of pen and charcoal drawings done in the parks and streets of Los Angeles. These works give the appearance of being spontaneous and fluid. In 1930 Messick left Chouinard as a full-time student and rented an apartment on West Eighth Street to use as a studio and living quarters. He had his own ideas on what he was trying to accomplish in art. "If you should ask what is the message of my drawings, I should say that they may explain themselves or may be just a technical exercise." By the mid 1940s, Messick's position in the art world had been well established as a teacher, painter, printmaker, writer and critic. Over his life time he had over 400 shows and exhibitions. Starting in 1939 he produced a number of stone lithographs that appear to the untrained eye as original drawings. To Messick the image was the most important aspect of his lithographs, and his signature in the plate was sufficient. Hand signing each lithograph did not seem necessary to him. He exhibited prints widely including the Albany Print Club and the Metropolitian Museum. To further substantiate the authenticity of Messick's prints the Eclectic Gallery under the authority of the Messick family posthumously pencil signed each estate-acquired stone lithograph. Messick had a childhood fascination with the circus and started drawing and painting the circus in 1935. His circus work, especially his clown studies, and his lithographs became his trademark work for in the 1940s and 1950s. A critic for ART REVIEW described his Big Top work this way: "His circus canvases...

"My work principally consists of deeply abstracted figure compositions--intuitive constructions that begin with random marks establishing larger masses of torsos, heads, and limbs in an undefined setting. The emphasis is almost purely on intuition. The figures are born of their surrounding environment, emerging only partially and fugitively from the layers of pigment. A narrative is evident but never overt. A crown, a shield, a boat, a wheel. Though the subject has recently coalesced around my reading of Dante and Shakespeare, the settings remain extremely vague- a beach, an interior, a woodland. The paintings are, in the end, meditations on the relationship between the protagonists in a wordless drama. In my paintings, I use a cold wax medium combined with dry pigments, oil paint, and embedded fragments of burlap. The surfaces eventually build up into a dense, rugged terrain." --Thaddeus Radell

"Reticent" by Rick Sindt is a small graphite drawing of two figures. This deceptively simple drawing is very powerful in its beauty and intimacy. The graph ...