Art Exhibit Season

My oil painting Still Life with Skull was awarded “Best Painting” in the 2025 juried exhibit of the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts. The festival takes place every summer in the town that surrounds the campus of our Commonwealth’s university, casually known as Penn State. Just to have a painting chosen for this exhibit was nice. There were 346 submissions from artists across the state and only 47 pieces were chosen to be in the show. I will attempt to jury into this exhibit again in 2026 and defend my title!

Aside from the usual (and gratuitous) picture of myself with my work after the reception, my wife and I had a great time in the following days walking around State College and the beautiful Penn State campus taking pictures and enjoying the vibe of a university town, which was tangible even between semesters.

We also made sure to visit the fine drinking establishments situated just off campus, of which there are many.

At each stop we made sure to sample the beverages— purely for research purposes. The crowds were minimal so chopping it up with the bartenders was a big part of the fun.

More Exhibits:

Big Thanks to the thousands of, ... (OK five) people who visited my recent solo exhibit at the Elaine Biondi Gallery Space in Monroeville, PA.

Good thing I hauled enough pieces to hang there— the space was bigger than I expected. This overlapped with the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts juried exhibit, so I did something I don’t usually do, which is get a print on canvas made of my State College submission to include in my solo showing. Below is another cheesy gratuitous picture of myself and a couple installation views.

A few days ago I submitted 3 paintings to be shown in the Southwestern Pennsylvania Council for the Arts 30th annual exhibition. Hopefully they’re accepted. That takes place in the Galleries of The Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art at Ligonier Valley, which is about an hour and a half away from my home studio. The opening reception is November 15th.

Holbein Biography Book:

The book I am currently enjoying is the biography of Hans Holbein which came out a couple years ago called The King’s Painter by Franny Moyle.

Outside of The Ambassadors and his portrait drawings, I didn’t fully consider and appreciate Holbein’s art until recent years. Aside from learning about Holbein’s process and techniques, the book does the one supremely important thing a biography needs to do when looking at a life and art from so long ago, and that thing is putting the subject and his work into the context of the their own time.

Mrs. Moyle’s book also discusses visual clues in Holbein’s paintings that otherwise go unappreciated. Similar to Holbein’s life, his art had to mean different things and give different messages to different people in order to keep everyone happy. In those whacked out days of Luther’s reformation and Henry VIII’s megalomania if you couldn’t walk a fine line it could literally cost you your head. Holbein was able to flatter his sitters, yet give some of them the stick on the sly at the same time, if you know what I mean. Here’s your face. Take that you rotten so-and-so!

Lastly I have to take my hat off and hand it to authors like Mrs. Moyle who write books like this. When I stop and think about the amount of time, effort, and expense it must take to research so much of the obscure correspondence, documents, and images, that informs the writing— let alone weave an enjoyable narrative of a life from so long ago, where the known facts are thin to begin with— is quite an accomplishment. So big props to Franny!

Sargent Portraits in Charcoal

One art exhibit I was really looking forward to visiting this year was the exhibit of portraits in charcoal by John Singer Sargent at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. Covid 19 ruined that for me, but I recently purchased the exhibition catalogue. While it is no substitute for seeing the originals, the book is still great to have. Thankfully the beautiful catalogue totally does justice to Sargent's work.

Sargent's highly finished charcoal drawings and quick sketches are just as sumptuous as his oil paintings, which I have seen in person many times. I can only imagine what it must be like to be the owner of one of these original drawings, having it handed down to you from earlier family generations.

Like many exhibition catalogues the print quality is exceptional. Book reproductions of oil paintings can sometimes lose the impact of the originals, as far as brush work details and textures go. You do not really have that problem with reproductions of charcoal drawings, so that makes missing the actual exhibit a bit less painful. 

I own a Dover publication of John Singer Sargent drawings, and just purchased a book of his drawings from another publisher as well, and neither are reproduced in full color - which you would think would not matter since the originals are done with charcoal - but it does matter.

The exhibition catalogue is printed in full color and the detail is superior. Also you get to see the varied shades of paper Sargent used and how that effects the tones and the overall look of each piece. Plus the catalogue shows details of select images, probably enlarged to the same size as his originals (he did most within an 18x24 inch area) so those blown up details are always interesting.Image

Finally, aside from the fantastic images, it was fun to read about each of Sargent's sitters and their families reactions to the finished work. Hard to believe, but some of them were not pleased with the results! It was also interesting to read that Sargent used pieces of bread to lift out areas of tone to create highlights. I really have to try that one.

Charcoal Drawing and a Good Book

Here is my latest drawing:  A Highclere Wyvern

Medium: Charcoal on paper.
Size: 8x10 inches. Price: 375 dollars.

A Wyvern is a mythical heraldic beast that is part dragon and part bird. This particular one sits just outside the front door of Highclere Castle in England. That is the house used as the setting for that magnetic Crawley family in Downton Abbey. I visited the property recently and was intrigued by these winged creatures sitting either side of the front door, watching me enter. When I saw them, I thought "I could do these up in charcoal really right."

My reference shot. The thing is no taller than 2 feet, if that.

Of the many art instruction books I own, one of my favorites is "The Drawing Bible" by Craig Nelson. Mr. Nelson is a master artist in many mediums and in his book he shares a rich variety of techniques for various drawing mediums. There are so many fun techniques and methods to get your artistic vision across, that I sometimes find it hard to decide which one to employ.

Draw, draw, draw. Smudge, smudge, smudge, Refine, refine, refine. Repeat.

For my drawing of the Wyvern I decided to use a technique where, after drawing the loose outline and some shadows, you smear the whole thing with a kleenex to quickly build a middle tone. Then the fun begins when you lift out the highlights with a kneaded eraser. Lastly you go back in with charcoal and gracefully refine the darks where needed. Real nice.

Buy your copy of the book here, then contact me to buy my original charcoal drawing.

Great Caravaggio Read

We all know the basics about Caravaggio don't we? He never used preparatory drawings in developing his paintings. His paintings are dark and contrasty. He was violent. He killed a guy and died on the run.

But why did he paint like he did? What made his work so different from other artists of the day? What are the details of his death? Why is he so popular in culture today?

We don't have to search for those answers ourselves because Andrew-Graham Dixon has done all the hard work for us and wrapped it all up between the covers of his fantastic book, "Caravaggio, A Life Sacred and Profane".

Andrew-Graham Dixon is a talented and entertaining author, documentarian, and art historian who researched Caravaggio's life and paintings for over ten years in order to create this book. I can only imagine what meticulous effort and passion it takes to do that much digging, translating, reading and investigation of a subject. His work paid off beautifully, because in that span of time he was able to uncover facts about Caravaggio from various Italian archives that shed new light on the painters life which for me, makes his book the one to read if you love Caravaggio.

Read the book to learn what rival artist work

St. Paul's horse’s bottom is deliberately pointing to.

Among the sorted details revealed in the book are translations of various police reports from the altercations that Caravaggio was involved in, as well as the very probable and plausible events of his last days.

Of course Andrew-Graham Dixon explains all of Caravaggio's paintings and helps us see things we normally would not see, but his book also puts into context Caravaggio's life and work so well, we can all have that much more appreciation of them. How lucky we all are!

Buy the book here: http://amzn.to/1t4T0xW

Click Here for a great post from Retrograde Canvas on Caravaggio's influence on films.

Composition in Art - Suggested Read

There are loads of books out there on composition in painting (and photography too). All of them contain the same information, but present that information in different ways.

Of all the books I own that contain artistic composition chapters, the one called “Classical Painting Atelier” by Juliette Aristides, is one of my favorites.

Everyone knows what the “rule of thirds” is in pictorial composition, but in Ms. Aristides book, the idea is covered in much greater, and more interesting detail. She Explains and illustrates the “armature of the rectangle”, which is essentially a way to divide the picture plane and place subject matter in a way that will give you an effective, and pleasing composition.

Reading the book, you learn where this harmonic division of space originated, and you see various examples of how great artists have been using this armature for centuries to create their masterpieces (it goes all the way back to music and early Greek civilization folks). The Greeks rocked at artistic composition!

                     Division of a 10x14 picture plane with armature lines visible.
                     Circles indicate division of horizontal and vertical thirds.

The book also goes into detail on how that armature has been adapted to picture planes that are not typical rectangles  -  like altarpieces in a church, or decorative shields (works in tondo) for instance.

The cool thing is, you can take any of your favorite paintings from history, and apply the same divisional lines to them, and learn a bit of the compositional thought process and design decisions made by the artist. This is stuff that makes the viewing experience that much richer!

Ms. Aristides is a super oil painter, and her book is beautiful and informative!

When not working from life, I work from my own photographic source material. The composition chapter in “Classical Painting Atelier” struck me so hard that, shortly after reading it, I catalogued all of the various sizes of canvas and supports I own, then went into Photoshop and created the armature for each size, which I use during the planning stages of my painting process.

                      The armature of the rectangle applied to a 9x12 still life.

Now when I review reference photos I shoot, I can design and crop them properly, not only putting the center of interest where it should be, but manipulating the secondary parts as well, in a fun effort to come up with the best composition I can.

JoeWinklerArt.com

Rembrandt - Suggested Reading and Viewing

In the last few months I’ve been on a Rembrandt high. In order to become more educated about his life and art I began reading “Rembrandt’s Eyes” by noted author, professor, and historian Simon Schama.

The book is loaded with detail not only about Rembrandt van Rijn, but about his contemporary, Peter Paul Rubens. I never realized how big of an influence Rubens was on Rembrandt until reading this book. I also never realized that the painting “The Company of Frans Banning Cocq” (commonly known as “The Night Watch”) was cut down in size centuries ago changing its composition for the worse. Sad isn't it?

I’ll be finishing my first read of the book in the weeks ahead. Most of the book has been enjoyable and very informative, but there were sections that I found tough to get through, partly because of my not knowing how to pronounce many Dutch names and locations and partly because Professor Schama goes into so much academic speak-filled detail about various others lives I didn’t much care about.

The other place I’ve turned to for my Rembrandt fix is the DVD, “The Power of Art” from the same Professor Simon Schama. I’ll do a separate post on this box set of DVDs soon, but for now all I can say is, you need to buy this DVD and its accompanying book.

The DVD episodes are beautifully done and the book is fantastic!

JoeWinklerArt.com

Book Suggestion of the Week

Yesterday I finished reading “The Greater Journey, American’s in Paris” by Pittsburgh’s own David McCullough. It was a fun and somewhat entertaining read about how experiences in the seat of cultural Europe - the city of Paris - influenced and shaped some of the greatest American minds of the 1800s which in turn shaped the development of America. At the time of this writing it is number five on the New York Times best seller list.

I enjoyed the book mainly because I want badly to get to Paris someday, and I liked reading Mr. McCullough’s descriptions of some great American artists, some of which I knew very little about. It was not as great as his other books I’ve read however, and I didn’t quite understand why until I read the “Books of the Times” review by Janet Maslin. The premise of the book is a bit flimsy. The period covered is from late 1820s to 1900 and many Americans from various backgrounds went to Paris and different parts of Europe which became a life changing experience for them.

But I agree (sadly) with Ms. Maslin when she writes: “...Mr. McCullough is hard-pressed to sustain the idea of a unified “them” (meaning various Americans in Paris) at the heart of his book. So he is forced to make awkward juxtapositions and segues among people who did not cross the Atlantic at the same time..., did not live a shared narrative and did not share all that much common ground. He ends up delivering the kinds of space-filling observations that might not even pass muster in a high-school history paper. This is not the side of Mr. McCullough that has made him a national treasure.” Ouch!

The vignettes of the peoples lives (especially the artists) were very entertaining though, and the time period covered gives some very interesting glimpses of how European’s viewed historical American turning points of the 1800s such as the civil war.

Bottom line, I like David McCullough, so I say buy the book. When you’re done, if you don’t want it, take it to your local Half-Price Books and trade it in for “John Adams” or “1776” by the same author, or perhaps a biography of John Singer Sargent. Had I not received a signed copy I’d probably do the same with this one.

You read it and let me know what you think.

JoeWinklerArt.com

Light Manipulation and a Good Book

Here is another landscape where I used the technique discussed previously, which is the technique of placing the immediate foreground into shadow to pull the viewers eyes into a picture more effectively.

It’s done to a lesser degree here than in the painting from last post. If I were to do this one over again, I would really darken that foreground grass more and darken the water more too. It’s all about contrast, and the illusion that something from outside the picture plane is affecting the light within it. That’s what automatically gives a sense of depth to the viewer.

I was mistaken in my last post - I have used that little trick in still life subjects. Here's one now:

There really is no foreground or background here, but the idea is the same - something outside the picture plane is casting a shadow across the center of interest. In this case the object is on the left, outside the picture, and its shadow creeps up the left side and over the subject. I really darkened down all the other edges on this one as well, to really pump up the drama of the subject.


Bit of art news of note today - The huge oil painting “Gallery of the Louvre” painted by Samuel F. B. Morse (yes, the inventor of the Morse Code) is now being exhibited in the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. near the East Garden Court of the West Building. Here is the painting:

I love the timing of this at the National Gallery because in his new book called “The Greater Journey, Americans in Paris” author and Pittsburgh native David McCullough tells the entire story of how this painting was executed. Morse was a man who many folks didn’t realize was a painter prior to being an inventor and his story is very interesting. All goes well, I’ll be in D.C. this summer to see it.

I went to the book release for this book, heard Mr. McCullough speak, and got a signed copy which I’m in the middle of now. The book is currently number one on the New York Times best seller list. Get your own self a copy by clicking here and it’ll be delivered to you by Bastille Day!

joewinklerart.com

Book Suggestion of the Week

Usually I wait until I read a book all the way to the finish before blogging about it, but I'm in the middle of one now that I'm just loving. It's called "The Story of Art"

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Many books have that title, but this one is by Professor Sir Ernst Gombrich and it’s been flying off the bookshelves since it came out in 1950. it’s been called “a treasured standard” and “a classic narrative study of art history” both of which are true.

I actually got this book as a gift during Christmas 2009. This latest version of the book is the sixteenth edition and it’s a beautiful one published by Phaidon which is the publisher of many beautiful editions of art, photography, and design books.

The thing I like about this book is that even though Gombrich was an old-school European university professor, his tone is conversational and not “high browed” in any way. The book is in chronological order and easy and fun to read. It’s not so easy to hold on the subway however because it weighs a ton!

Before I’m finished, I’ll probably have many pages of the book dog-eared, highlighted, and tabbed for future reference - it’s that useful in my view. Too many books simplify the breaks and turning points between various movements in the history of art, but rarely is history that clean cut and tidy. This book lets you begin to have a better understanding of those various eras and movements, and how each one evolved in different locations and why.

The other cool thing about this book is that, unlike so many other art history books I look at, this one keeps the images together with the text that references them. I know that sounds like a simple thing, but you’d be surprised how many art books don’t do that. It isn’t real easy or fun to have to keep flipping back and forth from one part of a book to another, especially when it’s as thick as this one. Heck, some books don’t even include visuals of the art they talk about at all.

Guess there’s a reason why the sticker on the cover touts “Over 6,000,000 Sold”. There’s about as many reasons you should buy this book today!

joe@joewinklerart.com

JoeWinklerArt.com

P.S. My Sketchbook for the Sketchbook Project is still on display in the Big Apple. Click here for tour dates!

New Weekly Feature!

In past posts I’ve mentioned my zest for buying art, books and DVDs. Since I have collected so many of them now, I have decided to feature one every week here on the blog. A “suggested read of the week” if you will.

Mind you, these will not be new releases, but they will still be in print in most cases. And they are all books I’ve read or use in my own work. Which is to say, they will be fine art, graphic art, design, or photography related; however, I may throw in a history book for good measure.

To kick this new feature off, I’ll start by a suggesting a real entertaining little pocket book called The Accidental Masterpiece, On the Art of Life and Vice Versa by Michael Kimmelman.

Mr. Kimmelman is an art critic that covers the European arts beat for the New York Times. This book is basically a very enjoyable long essay that connects certain aspects of fine art and artists’ lives to the way we all live our own lives, and the “stuff” that we see everyday. One highlighted review on the back cover of the book comes from Vogue magazine: “... bits of memoir, travel writing, and biography, with wide-ranging and brilliant critical reflections on finding the art in everyday life.”  That’s basically what it is.

A refreshing and enjoyable read, this book helped me see things like modern art as well as art history in a different (and better) light. I actually went to my local Borders book shop and came real close to buying a how-to book on abstract painting shortly after reading Mr. Kimmelman’s book.

The Accidental Masterpiece touches on points such as, why people collect things (like lightbulbs), how and why museums changed forever the way we perceive works of art, and, in a chapter called “The Art of Maximizing Your Time” comments on how we can learn from people throughout history, who in really difficult circumstances, were able to create their best art.

So big thumbs up for this book! I’ll leave you with a quote from the author’s introduction:

 “...I have come to feel that everything, even the most ordinary affair, is enriched by the lessons that can be gleaned from art: that beauty is often where you don’t expect to find it; that it is something we may discover and also invent, then reinvent, for ourselves.”

Quite.