Stefan Szczesny

Blue Still Life

2023

Born in New York City, the son of a Czech architect and Viennese writer, Gary Komarin is a risk taker in contemporary painterly abstraction. Komarin’s stalwart images have an epic qu...

This is a framed painting on paper. Biography Creating paintings inspired by western movies and by Remington and Russell, he is a native of the West, having been born and raised in rural Colorado. He studied art at Baylor University in Waco, Texas; at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, and at the University of Colorado, Boulder where he earned a Master's Degree in 1979. For two decades he worked as curator at the Yellowstone Art Museum in Billings, Montana, before leaving in 1999 to begin work as a full-time painter and independent curator. His work is in the collections of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming; the Art Museum of Missoula; and the Yellowstone Art Museum; the Federal Reserve Bank in Helena, Montana; and the Deaconness Medical Center in Billings, Montana. Artist Statement For a long time, the images in my paintings have been identifiably, even iconically, western-stagecoaches and false-front main streets, poker games and gun battles, cowboys, Indians, cavalry troopers and horses, all suspended in a choreographed matrix of dancing paint. Distinct from the traditional western genre-which inventories the minutia of cowboy gear or tells sentimental stories of rangeland romance-my paintings embody something more elemental and timeless, animated and abstract. The images tend to be stark, graphic, and charged with painterly energy. Though they are derived from fugitive television images, the paintings, as paintings, are still, silent and non-ephemeral. They register the technological transfer of primal shadows onto the electroluminescent screens of our collective consciousness, a shimmering blur of perception and memory transposed in an interchange of gesture and description, painted marks simultaneously arresting and embodying movement. I've always liked what a painter friend, Marc Vischer, wrote in 1988 about an early group of my western paintings. Now, I'm fourteen years closer to actualizing my vision for this work, and his astute remarks seem more pertinent today than they did then. He wrote in part, "For McConnell, a searing light emanates from a new desert: that of television. And from that most desolate backdrop, he salvages fragments from a movie world that spoke of honor in a land that was lawless. In a romantic sense, McConnell's works are a visual seance. Figures, like specters distorted through intense heat waves, are captured from their eternity of 24 frames a second. Their shapes and shadows are brought back into a radically different world and given substance and texture. It is an impossible attempt to freeze them, to arrest the present's ceaseless molestation of the past, to close off the continuum. Sometimes this is done darkly and thickly as an emphatic gesture of permanence. In other works a few light strokes quickly applied suggest the ephemeral nature of film and perhaps the fleeting nature of our own lives." I have been examining new imagery in my paintings, drawing subjects from Mexican graphic novelas, modern women and men of romance and mystery from the mid-20th century, motorcycles and airplanes. The end titles of movies, stated in several languages, have inspired me to begin a new series of cross-media translations in both acrylic and watercolor. My paintings have long begun where the movies have left off. The elements of water and light co-mingle in some pieces from this series and in others which take the viewpoint of a swimmer, watching other swimmers from the wet side of this aqueous membrane, looking up toward the light. My arrival in Montana in 1982 brought me into intimate contact with some of the most storied places of the historic West and also gave me the opportunity to study the paintings of two of the most influential codifiers of western imagery, Frederic Remington and Charlie Russell...

This is a watercolor painting of a female figure inside the belly of a reindeer. Dana Sherwood is a New York based artist whose work explores contact between human and non-human ani...

"Nature Bear Wreath" By Johanna Mueller is a unique and detailed piece which depicts a bear, surrounded by different iconography of the forest, structured in a Native American style ...

The Butterfly series for Ash began as a sentiment to her late Father. Butterflies began to appear in unexplainable ways after his passing, the artist later discovered that Butterflies represent spiritual rebirth, transformation, change, hope, and life - she goes on to say: "The butterfly series draws inspiration from Rivera's quote 'Butterflies can't see their wings. They can't see how truly beautiful they are, but everyone else can.'" After coming to the fruition that Butterflies pose as not only a symbol for beauty and rebirth, Almonte felt a feeling of deep comfort. Her passion for sharing this message of hope and renewal through her colorfully diverse canvases is achieved with resilience leaving her audience glimmering much like the inner voice and the spark of Joie de vivre that fuels her purpose in life to create. This piece is painted with acrylic and mixed media on heavyweight stonehenge paper, and is signed by the artist lower right. Art measures 30 x 22 inches Inspired by vibrance and an optimistic outlook on life, Ash Almonte is recognized for her distinct abstract expressionistic style. She is best known for her series of Chandeliers, Butterflies, and Fashion from the Seventh Avenue Design District. Almonte's award-winning works can be found in private and permanent collections around the world. She is motivated by change, compassion for others, and miraculous phenomena that can impact others for good. Her flair and admiration for fashion and art have been a staple of her life since childhood. As a young girl, she would experiment using anything she could find to make art; from tearing apart bushel baskets at her father’s fruit stand, to tearing out old magazine clippings from her mother's magazine collection; anything and everything around her could potentially be used to create. She would continue to seek out opportunities throughout her young adult years, as her love for fashion grew, allowing her to collaborate with celebrity stylists creating looks for top billboard artists, as well as apparel worn at New York Fashion Week for designers Sherri Hill...

The Butterfly series for Ash began as a sentiment to her late Father. Butterflies began to appear in unexplainable ways after his passing, the artist later discovered that Butterflies represent spiritual rebirth, transformation, change, hope, and life - she goes on to say: "The butterfly series draws inspiration from Rivera's quote 'Butterflies can't see their wings. They can't see how truly beautiful they are, but everyone else can.'" After coming to the fruition that Butterflies pose as not only a symbol for beauty and rebirth, Almonte felt a feeling of deep comfort. Her passion for sharing this message of hope and renewal through her colorfully diverse canvases is achieved with resilience leaving her audience glimmering much like the inner voice and the spark of Joie de vivre that fuels her purpose in life to create. This piece is painted with acrylic and mixed media on heavyweight stonehenge paper, and is signed by the artist lower right. Art measures 30 x 22 inches Inspired by vibrance and an optimistic outlook on life, Ash Almonte is recognized for her distinct abstract expressionistic style. She is best known for her series of Chandeliers, Butterflies, and Fashion from the Seventh Avenue Design District. Almonte's award-winning works can be found in private and permanent collections around the world. She is motivated by change, compassion for others, and miraculous phenomena that can impact others for good. Her flair and admiration for fashion and art have been a staple of her life since childhood. As a young girl, she would experiment using anything she could find to make art; from tearing apart bushel baskets at her father’s fruit stand, to tearing out old magazine clippings from her mother's magazine collection; anything and everything around her could potentially be used to create. She would continue to seek out opportunities throughout her young adult years, as her love for fashion grew, allowing her to collaborate with celebrity stylists creating looks for top billboard artists, as well as apparel worn at New York Fashion Week for designers Sherri Hill...

Un Milagrito Volador A Flying Miracle Artist signed and titled. Acrylic, Indian Ink on Archival Paper. Gabriela Fournier emerging young Mexican artist, born in Guanajuato 2001. She ...

Rajib Bhattacharjee - Melody of Spaces Acrylic & Charcoal on Archival Paper. 8 x 10 inches (unframed) Rajib Bhattacharjee passed preparatory painting in 1991 from Govt. College of A...

Rajib Bhattacharjee - Melody of Spaces Acrylic & Charcoal on Archival Paper. 8 x 10 inches (unframed) Rajib Bhattacharjee passed preparatory painting in 1991 from Govt. College of A...

Rajib Bhattacharjee - Landscape Acrylic on Archival Paper, 19.5 x 7.5 inches Rajib Bhattacharjee passed preparatory painting in 1991 from Govt. College of Art and Craft Kolkata and ...