A New Kevin Kresse Painting

Kevin Kresse is a painter and sculptor from Little Rock, among the most respected regionally. For the past few years he and his family have lived in Italy, where I think he is studying great art and brushing up on his skills. I saw this while dropping off paintings for my show at Gallery 26 and I was most impressed.

Leo Klein Diepold

I recently did a talk on contemporary realism at Arkansas Tech University, and was very impressed by their facilities, especially their art gallery.  I liked this drawing and thought I'd share it with you.

Little Rock's Nerdrum

I recently took a tour of the Drawing Center's collection and was delighted to find this. If I remember correctly the figure is about life sized. I photographed it with my iPhone and some if it was cropped out.

"Contemporary Classicists: Graduates of the Florence Academy" in Fayetteville, AR

I heard about this show just in the nick of time, catching it two days before it closed.  I had never been to Fayetteville, but it was worth every minute of the three-hour drive.  Finally, it seems, contemporary classicism may be making it to the deep south.  The show at "The Revolver" (the coolest name I've heard for a gallery) in the Fayetteville Underground was put on by Maggie Ivy, a native of Little Rock and Fayetteville and a student at the Florence Academy.  I was glad to meet Maggie and Ellen Barker Soderholm, one of the other painters, who had flown in from Sweden.  I plan to join forces with Maggie somehow locally and hope to see more work of this caliber in Arkansas's future.  Below is some of the work from the show.

Ellen Barkin Söderholm

Kendric Tonn

Amelia Meredith

Zacheriah Kramer

Per Elof Nilsson Ricklund

Maggie Ivy