Gary Bukovnik

Spring Composition

2023

Very well painted original watercolor on archival paper of potted geraniums with metal watering can and garden gloves. Signed in pencil by the artist Peggy Dressel lower right. The S...

Bright watercolor of several flowers by Marge Shugart a California watercolor artist (American, 20th Century). Several flowers are depicted against a multicolor background, with a slightly abstracted quality. Signed in the lower right corner. Dated "12/93" on verso, with notes from the artist about color. Presented in a warm grey mat. Paper size: 15"H x 22"W Mat size: 20"H x 28"W Marge Shugart was a San Louis...

Cherry Blossom No. 13, Original Minimalist Impressionist Nature Still Life Study, 2019 20" x 16" (HxW) Watercolor on Cold Pressed Watercolor Paper A lovely minimalist composition in green and white, this nature study features two white flowers which have been highlighted with a gray contour to depict the boundaries of their delicate petals. Blue and yellow undertones give variation to the green foliage that surrounds the flowers, entering from the top of the composition as if hanging down from a tree above the viewer's head. The soft colors and simple subject matter give off a delicate, ethereal, and calming feeling that feels like a breath of fresh air. This modern impressionist flower study by artist Elizabeth Becker...

Branch Study No. 21, Original Minimalist Botanical Watercolor Painting, 2020 16" x 20" (HxW) Watercolor on Cold Pressed Watercolor Paper A minimalist watercolor painting by artist Elizabeth Becker...

Cherry Blossom No. 12, Original Minimalist Floral Still Life Study, 2020 20" x 16" (HxW) Watercolor on Cold Pressed Paper A simple and minimalist nature study, this botanical watercolor painting features a large, pink cherry blossom caressed by a delicate sprig of leaves in a deep olive green. A gray and blue shadow indicates depth, allowing the flower to appear as if it is popping out of the composition. The soft color palette and brush strokes, along with the bleeding nature of the watercolors, gives this work an expressive and impressionist feel. Images with frames are examples only; this work comes unframed. Artist Commentary: Original watercolor painting on 140 lb Arches cold pressed paper (2019). About the Artist: Elizabeth Becker...

Plum Branches and Flowers watercolor on wove paper, 1985 Signed and dated in pencil lower right corner From the artist's 1985 sketchbook Inspired by O'Sickey's love of Japanese and Chinese art and calligraphy. Provenance: Estate of the artist Condition: Excellent Image/Sheet size: 13 5/8 x 17 inches Joseph B. O’Sickey, Painter 1974 CLEVELAND ARTS PRIZE FOR VISUAL ARTS The title conferred on him by Plain Dealer art critic Steve Litt in a 1994 article, “the dean of painting in northeast Ohio,” must have pleased Joseph O'Sickey. It was more than 30 years since he had burst onto the local (and national) art scene. O’Sickey was already in his 40s in that spring of 1962 when he had his first one-man show at the Akron Art Museum and was signed by New York’s prestigious Seligmann Galleries, founded in 1888. In the decade and a half that followed, he would have seven one-man shows at Seligmann, which had showed the work of such trailblazing figures as Seurat, Vuilliard, Bonnard, Leger and Picasso, and appear in all of the group shows. O’Sickey took the Best Painting award in the 1962 May Show at the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA). He and would capture the same honor in back-to-back May Shows in 1964 and ’65, and again in 1967. The remarkable thing, noted the Plain Dealer’s Helen Borsick, was that he accomplished this sweep in a variety of painterly styles, even using that most hackneyed of subjects, flowers. “The subject doesn’t matter,” he told her, “what the artist brings to it is the important thing.” O’Sickey’s garden and landscape paintings were big and bold, eschewing delicate detail in favor of vitality and impact. The great art collector and CMA benefactor Katherine C. White, standing before one of O’Sickey’s vivid garden paintings, compared the sensation to “being pelted with flowers.” Though he might represent an entire blossom with one or two smudged brush strokes or a stem with a simple sweep of green, O’Sickey rejected the moniker of Impressionist—or Pointillist or Abstract painter or Expressionist. “My work,” he said, “is a direct response to the subject. I believe in fervor and poetic metaphor. I try to make each color and shape visible and identifiable within the context of surrounding colors and shapes. A yellow must hold its unique quality from any another yellow or surrounding color, and yet read as a lemon or an object, by inference. It does not require shading or modeling—the poetic evocation is part of the whole.” “The subject,” O’Sickey used to tell his students at Kent State University, where he taught painting from 1964 to 1989, “has to be seen as a whole and the painting has to be structured to be seen as a whole.” He liked to think of it as “a process of controlled rapture.” When, in the 1960s, fond childhood memories drew him to the zoo, he found himself responding to the caged animals in their lonely dignity (or indignity) with sharp-edged, almost silhouette-like forms that evoked Matisse’s paintings and cut-paper assemblages. One observer was left with the impression that the artist had “looked at these animals, past daylight and into dusk when they lose their details in shadow and become pure shapes, with eyes that are seeing the viewer rather than the other way around. This is a world of shape and essence,” wrote Helen Borsick. “All is simplification.” O’Sickey attributed his ability to capture his subjects with just a few strokes—in an almost iconographic way—to a rigorous exercise he had imposed upon himself over a period of several months. Limiting his tools to a large No. 6 bristle brush and black ink, he set himself the task of drawing his pet parakeet and the other small objects in its cage (cuttlebone, feeding dish, tinkling bell) hundreds of times. The exercise gave him “invaluable insights into painting. . . . Because of the crudity of the medium, every part of these drawings had to be an invention and every mark had to have its room and clarity.” Then he began adding one color at a time—“still with the same brush and striving for the same clarity”—and headed off to the zoo where “the world opened up to me. I learned how little it took to express the subject.” Born in Detroit at the close of the First World War, O’Sickey grew up in St. Stanislaus parish near East 65th and Fleet on Cleveland’s southeast side. (The apostrophe was inserted into the family’s proud Polish name by a clerk at Ellis Island.) An early interest in drawing and painting may have been kindled by the presence on the walls of Charles Dickens Elementary School, one of only three grade schools in the district with a special focus on the arts, of masterful watercolors by such Cleveland masters as Paul Travis, Frank N. Wilcox and Bill Coombes. As a youngster O’Sickey took drawing classes at the Cleveland Museum of Art, and he and his brother spent hours copying famous paintings; while a student at East Tech High School in the mid-’30s, he attended free evening classes in life drawing with Travis and Ralph Stoll at the John Huntington Art and Polytechnic Institute, and Saturday classes at the Cleveland School (later the Cleveland Institute) of Art, where he earned his degree in 1940 under the tutelage of Travis, Stoll and such other legendary figures as Henry Keller, Carl Gaertner, William Eastman, Kenneth Bates...

In this abstract still-life floral artwork "Summer bouquets and summer fruits" I experience the world of nature through the bright colors of a summer period. While painting, I sough...

Mary Finlayson "Spring Equinox 1" Flashe, Gouache, Spray Paint, Oil Stick on Canvas 25.25 x 21.25 inches, framed Mary Finlayson’s interest in painting ...

Demon Mask with Skull Helmet in Neo-Japanese Style Boldly colored depiction of a demon mask by an unknown artist. A bright yellow mask stares out at the viewer, with a broad grin. A...

This artwork commands attention with its vibrant and dynamic use of color and form, creating a visually striking composition. At the center of the piece, a bold, reddish vase...