Tag: etchings

Trevor Southey

The Art of Trevor Southey

Born in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Africa in 1940 to parents of colonialist Dutch descent, Trevor Jack Thomas Southey was a celebrated Mormon painter, print maker, sculptor and educator. His heritage can be traced to European colonists who settled in Cape Town, South Africa in the seventeenth-century. Southey’s work celebrated the human form and sought to transform humanity by challenging viewers to rediscover their inner soul.

Trevor Southey’s early interest in art developed during periods of rheumatic fever that often confined him to bed with only pencils, paper, and art books from the school library. His formal art education began with studies at the Brighton College of Art in Sussex, England. A year later, Southey studied at the Natel Technical College in Durban, South Africa where he met and was baptized by Mormon missionaries. In the early 1960s, he served as a Latter Day Saints missionary with the organization’s South Africa Aid program. 

Retaining his African and European origins, Southey emigrated to the United States in 1965 and studied at the Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah where he earned both his Bachelor and Master Degrees. Southey taught art education at the university and became a founding member in 1966 of the highly significant Mormon Art and Belief Movement, an artist organization that was active until 1976. During his teaching career, Southey worked to establish a Mormon art form through his use of Latter Day Saint theology. 

Despite his homosexuality, Trevor Southey married psychotherapist Elaine Fish, the daughter of Jesse Fish and Lucile Cottam, in 1967 after a brief courtship of several months. In an attempt to conform to the teachings of the Church of the Latter Day Saints, the couple settled down in the foothills of Utah’s Wasatch Mountains, built a homestead in Alpine  and raised four children. Southey along with artists Neil Hadlock, Dennis Smith and Gary Ernest Smith founded a small artist community in Alpine during the 1970s.

Southey resigned from Brigham Young University’s faculty in 1977 and began to pursue a personal artistic career. Coming to terms with his homosexuality, Southey divorced Elaine Fish in 1982 after fifteen years of marriage and found himself excommunicated on the outskirts of Mormon society. Thirty years later, Southey’s reputation as an artist prompted an invitation to once again join the Church of the Latter Day Saints.

As a figurative Realist, Trevor Southey used the depiction of the physical body to portray the soul, a method employed frequently by painters and sculptors of the Renaissance period. He expressed human spirituality through commonplace figures of an ethereal nature in scenes that combined realism and personally related allegories. Southey’s work, focused on the Rocky Mountain area, examined environmental issues that effected the land particularly those concerns that dealt with urban planning. In 1985, he relocated his Salt Lake City studio to San Francisco where Southey’s artwork achieved both critical and popular success. His four children from his annulled marriage later joined him in San Francisco. 

During the 1990s, Southey became an accomplished stained glass designer, sculptor and print maker. His many intaglio etchings exhibited the same elegance and delicate draftsmanship of his paintings. Southey’s “Full Bloom” intaglio series began as a pencil drawing of a woman he knew from church. In its final form, this successful series of etchings became a universal symbol of resurrection and the cycle of life. Fully established now as an artist of note, Southey received commissions for both paintings and sculptures throughout the United States and the United Kingdom . 

Trevor Southey did a series of illustrations for several books of poetry by writer, playwright and lecturer Carol Lynn Pearson. These include the 1976 “The Growing Season” and the 1987 “A Widening View”, both published by Bookcraft in Salt Lake City, as well as the 1967 “Beginnings” published by Trilogy Arts in Provo, Utah. Southey, along with Brigham Young University Professors Clyde W. Robinson and Donald R. Marshall, participated in a 1979 panel discussion with authors Diane Leigh and Brett Parkinson on the nature of art in the Church of the Latter Day Saints. This dialogue was later published in the Fall 1979 edition of “Century II”, the Brigham Young University journal for its College of Humanities.

In 2013, after a decade-long battle with prostate cancer and a recent diagnosis with Parkinson’s disease, Southey returned to Salt Lake City, Utah to be cared for by friends and relatives. His four children also relocated to be by his side. Trevor Southey died, at the age of seventy-five after a year at the Salt Lake City hospice, on the twentieth of October in 2015. His funeral service was held at the Dumke Auditorium of the Utah Museum of Fine Arts. Southey’s work can be found in many private collections and both public and corporate institutions.

“ It made itself most known in my work. Even that work long preserved within the seeming sanctity of a subject like the traditional family would reflect that shunned part of my being. Works done innocently, once they were complete still held the whole truth within them. Perhaps no painting revealed that more clearly than Prodigal. Often while I refused to acknowledge this, others could read it quite clearly. Prodigal was conceived from Jesus’ parable of reconciliation and familial love. I feared the sensuality of this work, and indeed, it was gently declined by the clients. At its conception and execution, that sensuality was naive and even innocent, as was the deeper implications of content. Other works follow as a celebration of this new personal “home,’ this integration, the comfort of finally being one within oneself and one within a new society. Some of these images are almost embarrassingly overt, though that was by no means my intention.”

Trevor Southey, Gay, Excerpt from Warnock Fine Arts: Trevor Southey

Notes: Trevor Southey attracted controversy in 1981 with his “Flight Aspiration”, a painting of a flying nude man and woman that was part of a mural commissioned for the Salt Lake City International Airport. The mural was removed after protests by the American Family Association, a national anti-pornography group led locally by Romola Joy Beech, a well known Latter Day Saints conservative activist. After five years in storage at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, “Flight Aspiration” was placed into the museum’s permanent collection in 1986.

Duane Jennings, a long-time friend of Southey and author of the two-volume series “Stumbling Blocks and Stepping-Stones”, wrote a short article on the artist’s life for the online site “Affirmation: LBGTQ Mormons Families and Friends”: https://affirmation.org/trevor-southey-1940-2015/

The Affirmation site also has an article by Seba Martinez that discusses Southey’s personal experience in marriage, excommunication from the Church of the Latter Day Saints, and break-up of family bonds due to a loved one being homosexual: https://affirmation.org/pbs-documentary-mormons/

Selected for the LDS Film Festival, Nathan Florence’s 2022 film, “Bright Spark: The Reconciliation of Trevor Southey”, is a narrative documentary on Southey’s life and work. This film contains film clips of Southey with his work. “Bright Spark” can be found in its entirety on the PBS/MPT site: https://www.pbs.org/video/bright-spark-the-reconciliation-of-trevor-southey-ld2x8l/

The Trevor Southey website is located at: http://www.trevorsouthey.com

The Dabakis-Justesen Fine Art site has a presentation of Trevor Southey’s large-scale painting series “Warriors” for viewing and purchase: http://www.trevorsouthey.com/warriors/index.html

Second Insert Image; Trevor Southey, “Yuri”, 2000, “Warrior” Series, Oil on Canvas, 213.4 x 152.4 cm, Dabakis-Justesen Fine Art

Third Insert Image: Trevor Southey, “Transition”, 1980, Edition of 77, Etching, 20.3 x 15.2 cm, Private Collection

Fourth Insert Image: Trevor Southey, “Russ”, 1990, Prismacolor Pencil Drawing on Silkscreen, 76.2 x 55.9 cm, Private Collection

 

Harry Sternberg

The Artwork of Harry Sternberg

Born to Russian-Hungarian parents in New York City in July of 1904, Harry Sternberg was an American printmaker, painter and educator. The youngest of eight children, he spent his childhood in Brooklyn  where, at the age of nine, he began art classes at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Sternberg studied at the Art Students League of New York from 1922 to 1926. He rented a studio in the Greenwich Village area after graduation and began a career in etching, painting, and printmaking. 

Sternberg had his first exhibition of work in 1931 at the Whitney Museum of American Art, one of the first exhibitions held at the museum’s West 8th Street address in the West Village area. In 1933, Sternberg was added as an instructor to the staff of the Arts Student League of New York, a position he would hold for the next thirty-five years. Among the students he trained were Charles Wilbert White Jr, known for his chronicling of Afro-American related subjects; painter and graphic artist Isabel Bishop, known for her scenes of everyday life in Manhattan; and artist and teacher Knox Martin, who became one of the leading members of the New York School of artists and writers.

After meeting painter Frida Kahlo and her husband, the muralist Diego Rivera, in 1934, Harry Sternberg became more active in union and socialist causes. He became involved with the government’s Works Progress Administration, WPA, in 1935 as a technical advisor to the Graphic Art Division of the Federal Art Project, a New Deal program to fund the visual arts in the United States. After being awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1936, Sternberg spent a year studying the conditions of workers in steel mills and coal mines. The drawings, etchings and paintings from this period, depicting life in the industrial areas of the United States, later influenced the composition of his mural designs.  

Sternberg painted his first WPA mural. commissioned by the Department of the Treasury Section of Painting and Sculpture, for the lobby of the Sellersville Post Office in Pennsylvania. The twelve-foot long 1937 “Carrying the Mail”, depicting the placing of mail in a letterbox and its delivery, was executed in tempera on canvas. Upon its completion, Sternberg traveled to Chicago, where he studied the city’s history, architecture, and industry for his next commissioned mural. 

In 1938, Harry Sternberg created his twenty-four foot mural, “Chicago: Epoch of a Great City”, for the Lakeview Post Office in Chicago’s West Side. The painting shows the different stages of the city’s growth and its great industries in four areas: steel, electric power, the stockyards, and the manufacture of farm equipment. In the central portion of the mural is a scene depicting the great Chicago fire of 1871; located above that scene, is an image of the vibrant, modern-day Chicago. Due to years of exposure, a two-year restoration project for the mural was undertaken by Parma Conservation of Chicago from 2001 to 2003.

In addition to teaching at the Art Students League in New York, Sternberg also taught printmaking from 1942 to 1945 at the New School for Social Research. After retiring from the Student League and moving with his family to California, he established a studio in the city of Escondido where he continued to work as an artist. Sternberg also taught painting at the Idyllwild School of Music and the Arts until 1969. He participated from 1969 to 1978 in the Orme School Fine Arts Festival which exposed students to the instruction and work of professional artists. In 1990, Sternberg published “Sternberg: A Life in Woodcuts”, a collection of his prints produced over the years. 

A major retrospective exhibition of his life and oeuvre was presented in 2000, entitled “No Sun Without Shadow: The Art of Harry Sternberg”, at the Museum of the California Center for the Arts in Escondido. Harry Sternberg died in November of 2001. He is the author of two books: “Composition: The Anatomy of Picture Making” and”Woodcut”.

You Insert Image: Harry Sternberg, “Poodle and the Clown”, circa 1950s, Lithograph, 40.6 x 30.5 cm, Private Collection

Middle Insert Image: Photographer Unknown,”Harry Sternberg in Studio”, Date Unknown

Bottom Insert Image: Harry Sternberg, “Chicago, Epoch of a Great City”, 1937, Mural Detail (Welder), Lakeview Post Office, Chicago

Tony Fitzpatrick

 

Etchings and Collages by Tony Fitzpatrick

Born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1958, Tony Fitzpatrick Is an American actor and artist. In the early 1980s, he seriously began drawing with colored pencils on slate boards in the gallery “The Edge”, located in Villa Park, Illinois. Working there during the day, he tended bar at night just across the street. It was during this time that Fitzpatrick developed strong friendships with film director Jonathan Demme and Chicago radio personality and bluesman Buzz Kilman.

During the late 1980s, Fitzpatrick began exhibiting in gallery shows in New York City and Chicago, selling his work and establishing a career as an artist. An accomplished poet, he has authored and illustrated eight books, including “The Hard Angels: Drawings and Poems” in 1988 and the 2015 essay and art book “Dime Stories”. With assistance from friends and local artists Theresa James and Steve Campbell of Landfall Press, Fitzpatrick opened in 1992 his Chicago printmaking studio, Big Cat Press, which exists today as the artist exhibition space Firecat Projects.

Tony Fitzpatrick’s artistic career originally centered on multi-colored drawings on slate, later followed by works presented through printmaking. He has more recently focused on producing multi-media collage drawings, which blend cartoonish drawing, found images, text, and  ephemera, such as baseball cards and matchbooks. His subjects have included: memories of his father, the cities of Chicago and New Orleans, hobo symbols, super-heroes, and Japan.

Fitzpatrick’s works are in private collections and numerous public institutions, including New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Miami’s Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago.  He has done cover art for albums, such as the Neville Brothers “Yellow Moon”, nominated for the Diamond Award: Best Album Cover, and Lou Reed’s album “Big Cat”. Working as an actor, Fitzpatrick had roles in “Primal Fear”, “Philadelphia”, and “Married to the Mob”.  

Martin Lewis

Martin Lewis, “Bredford Street Gang”, 1935, Drypoint and Sandpaper Ground Printed in Black Ink on Wove Paper, Plate Size: 22.5 x 36.2 cm, Detroit Instute of Arts

Martin Lewis is considered one of the greatest American printmakers of the first half of the twentieth century.  He used his superb sense of composition and his technical skill as a master printmaker to create images of New York City and rural Connecticut that are as captivating today as they were in the late 1920’s when he was first recognized as an important artist.

Lewis, a maker of archetypal American art, was an immigrant, born and educated in Australia, who came to this country in 1900. He had become by 1915 a skilled printmaker who shared his knowledge of etching with his friend, Edward Hopper. Lewis was one of the first printmakers to sell out an edition of a print during an exhibition, and many of his etchings and drypoints sold out in a few months. After the artist’s death in 1962, print collectors continued to appreciate his sensuous works of art, which have remained relatively unknown to the general public.

Martin Lewis spent most of his life living in New York City after arriving from Australia.  However, he did travel to Europe and lived briefly in Japan and rural Connecticut. After the artist’s death in 1962, print collectors continued to appreciate his sensuous works of art, which have remained relatively unknown to the general public.

Joseph Gielniak

Etchings by Joseph Gielniak

Joseph Gielniak was born in a family of Polish immigrants in France, where he finished high school and studied for a year at the famous Ecole des Beaux Arts in Vallenciennes. He went to Poland in 1950 with the intention of studying at the Department of Consular and Diplomatic in Warsaw. This plan was canceled due to a severe case of lung disease. At the age of 21 Joseph Gielniak was sent to a sanatorium in Bukowiec near Kowary in Lower Silesia, where he spent almost his entire adult life. The architectural elements and the environment of the sanatorium were frequent motifs in his art.

Larry Vienneau Jr.

Larry Vienneau Jr., “Ravens Like Shiny Things”, 2010, Intaglio Etching, 5 x 7 Inches

Larry Vienneau Jr. is a  Professor of Art at Seminole State College of Florida. His beautiful prints of ravens are available for sale. Please visit his site to see more etchings and find information on his etching process. I have a space on my wall for some of these.     https://www.etsy.com/shop/RAVENSTAMPS?section_id=7757924&ref=shopsection_leftnav_2

Please credit the artist if you reblog these images. Thanks.

Max Klinger

Etchings by Max Klinger

Max Klinger was a German Symbolist painter, sculptor, printmaker, and writer. Klinger was born in Leipzig and studied in Karlsruhe. An admirer of the etchings of Menzel and Goya, he shortly became a skilled and imaginative engraver in his own right. Klinger began creating sculptures in the early 1880s. From 1883–1893 he lived in Rome, and became increasingly influenced by the Italian Renaissance and antiquity.

Klinger was cited by many artists (notably Giorgio de Chirico) as being a major link between the Symbolist movement of the 19th century and the start of the metaphysical and Surrealist movements of the 20th century. Asteroid 22369 Klinger is named in his honor.

Images from Top to Bottom: “Pursuit of the Centaur”, 1881, “The Titans”, 1892, Metropolitan Museum of Art; “Abduction of Prometheus”, 1894. “Prometheus Unbound”, 1894

Jim Dine

Tool Series: Etchings by Jim Dine

Jim Dine’s work has been the subject of major surveys and retrospectives in venues spanning the globe, and he is represented in museum collections worldwide. While others have often associated his work with the Pop Art movement of the mid-20th century, his fascination with popular imagery and everyday objects has always carried a more personal component.

Dine has extensively explored particular themes in a variety of media throughout his career, such as the universal symbol of the heart and images of tools. These themes have acquired the status of personal iconography and he claims them as part of his vocabulary or his “glossary of terms.”

Jim Dine believes that tools provide a ‘link with our past, the human past, the hand’. They feature in many of his works, and can be seen as a symbol of artistic creation. There is also an autobiographical resonance, as Dine’s family owned a hardware store in Cincinnati.

Kyoko Imazu and Damon Kowarski

Etchings from Copper Plates by Kyoko Imazu and Damon Kowarski

Kyoko Imazu and Damon Kowarsky have worked together since 2010. Their prints are made using a simple collaborative system. Damon gives Kyoko a drawing, to which Kyoko adds her own interpretations. The resulting image is then etched onto copper plates and printed by hand. Together, they have produced works of great subtlety, variety and humour exploring themes such as nature, science, art and technology.

The prints in this exhibition grew out of the zine “Talking of a Chameleon”, which was made in response to a zine commission by IMPRINT magazine in March 2011. Since then, the zine has been part of fairs in London, Perth and the Czech Republic.

Yoko Imazu holds a Bachelor of Fine Art in Printmaking, a Diploma of Visual Arts, and a Certificate in Foundation Studies Art in Design and Communication, all from RMIT in Melbourne.  Damon Kowarsky studied printmaking at the Victoria College of the Arts (VCA) and Glasgow School of Art, and Advanced Figure Drawing at RMIT. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Art, Honors, in Printmaking from VCA.

Kelly Fearing

Six Etchings by Kelly Fearing

Kelly Fearing was one of the first Texas painters to reject the bluebonnets, cowboys and secondhand Impressionism that had been the mainstays of the state’s artistic output since the end of the 19th century. Along with the other members of the Fort Worth Circle, Fearing introduced Texas to European Modernists like Picasso and Miró. He helped introduce the Texas population to abstraction, surrealism and cubism, all new forms of art not previously promoted in the area.

Even in the 1940s, Fearing lived as an openly gay man. Like the later work of gay artist David Hockney, Fearing’s subjects were often pretextual reasons to introduce the subject of homoeroticism into the contemporary art world. One example of this is his 1950 “Male Bather”, an emerging, transitional work influenced by the work of Paul Klee, which exemplifies tthe  theme used by many artists of the time.

In a 2000 interview, Fearing said in reply to a question about the Fort Worth Circle: “We were considered way out at the time. But we were just doing what we liked.” This individualism made Fearing into one of Texas’ most important Modernists.

Donald Pass

Etchings and Paintings by Donald Pass

Donald Pass was a British painter and visionary artist whose art has often been compared to that of William Blake by reviewers. He is known for work based on a vision he experienced, which has been interpreted as the Resurrection of the Dead. His work is found in museums and private collections in Europe, the United States, and Australia.

Born in Congleton, Cheshire, Donald attended the King’s school in Macclesfield. He then enrolled at Burslem College of Art in 1947, from where he won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Art in London. When he was called up for national service, a medical examination found that Donald’s eyesight was poor. He instead began teaching art at Walsall Art College, moving to Drake Hall Prison in Stafford, where he managed to establish art on the curriculum, and later to Liverpool College of Art where John Lennon was one of his students.