Teachers of Mine: Lea Colie Wight

Lea Wight is not only one of Studio Incamminati's very finest instructors, she's a genuinely nice person. I do not know what is better, her drawing sense or her color. Both are impeccable. Her compositions are infused with luminous optimism and her figures are warm with humanity.


Lea is great at pulling the viewer into the picture plane. The placement of the foot in the foreground here is a perfect entry point, like a great opening line to a song.


A fish on a dish has never been more exciting.




The open door is a very intriguing exit point. I love the warm light peeking through.


Powerful "duo-tone". This is Incamminati's technique in which there is a single shadow color and a single color for the light. The figure is fully modeled creating tonal differences by varying the pressure of the brush against the gray ground. This one's called "serpentine".


I find her drawings both gestural and deep.


This is one of the best graphite drawings I've ever seen. Look at how free and rapid the strokes are, but they come together to make this beautifully formed figure. The strokes toward the bottom right seem to drip off of the paper.

Hugo Urlacher

I've gone to a scarce few art openings in Little Rock, because honestly I'd normally rather hang out with my kids on a Friday night, but when I saw Hugo Urlacher's work in an email I knew I'd see something special, and wanted to meet him.

Hugo is a gentle soul and a visionary painter. A citizen of Argentina, Hugo works in a distinctly South American manner. There seems to be a tendency in Spanish and South American painting away from direct life painting and toward photographic realism. A departure from the photo source is then found in metaphysical or fantastical imagery, and even elements of total expressionistic abstraction. This could easily become formulaic, but I find Urlacher's paintings full of spirit and interesting emotion.


I find this painting deeply touching. The figures are life-sized.







Hugo's paintings range stylistically from near abstraction to photorealism.

I thought Dan P. would appreciate the horns in this one.


I love triptychs. Should tackle one some time. Figuratively speaking.

Gail Potocki

I can't get enough of Gail Potocki's work. To me she is one of the most powerful and under recognized painters working today. Gail lives in the 21st century American midwest, but paints in another time and place or maybe even outside of time-space, in other words a transdimensional (thanks D.O.J.P!) painter, and a symbolist in her own right, proving that art movements have more to do with temperament than trends.


As a believer myself that Adam and Eve are my grandparents, I love depictions of them, but find the above two paintings Particularly powerful. They are not in any way conventional which makes them more believable to me psychologically. They borrow more from the turn of the century than the renaissance. The ghosty death faces in the background are very similar to those in Gustav Klimt's "Hope".


She made Barrel of Monkeys poetic. How great.

Richard Luschek

I became friends with Richard Luschek while attending a figure drawing group that met at Carl Samson's Cincinnati studio. Those days are some of my best memories, and I miss those fellas. Richard is an incredible painter, and studied in New Hampshire with Paul Ingbretson, a student of Gammel. Richard is one of the funniest people I know, but with the kind of seriousness that makes a great painter.

Here's a link to Richard's blog.

I enjoy the effect of unfinished edges.

This gives me warm fuzzies. Actually all of his coffee paintings give me warm fuzzies.

A touching pieta.

I think this portrait is fantastic.




Gotta love ol' John Whitehurst.

I had a dream the other night that I was invited to a new figure drawing group that was held at Richard Luschek's studio, but there were so many rats in front of the door that I was scared to go in. It was probably because of this drawing. Actually he has a very nice studio. You'll see it in the picture below.


There are often reported sitings of Richard Luschek, and I had thought most of them to be bogus until he showed up on google street view. See more of these strange sitings here.



Luschek or Sasquatch? You be the judge.