Laurie Kersey 1961 | Canadian Still Life painter

Born in Canada, Kersey spent most of her youth on the move. Her father raised horses, and the family relocated frequently, often going south for the winter. “I grew up in Ohio and went to school in Pittsburgh, New York, and Florida”, she explains. “Everywhere I moved I took my can of crayons”. In the schoolyard, she heard a frequent request from the other children: “Draw me a horse!” At home, she observed her mother’s artistic pursuits. “Every Friday night, she had three friends come over and they set up easels in the kitchen to paint,” she remembers. Her own identity as an artist was taking shape.
Currently, Kersey’s work includes the dramatic coastline and quiet countryside of California; elegant, traditional still lifes and florals; figures in quiet moments; and horses at work and play.

Cecil Kennedy 1905-1997 | British flowers painter

Cecil Kennedy was a painter in oils who specialised in flowers becoming one of the popular British flower painters of his time. After training at art school, Kennedy studied under a number of artists, the most influential being Nieco Jungmann. He also studied in Antwerp and Paris and was awarded a silver medal at the Paris Salon in 1956 and a gold medal in 1970. His carefully delineated flower paintings have been likened to those of the Dutch 17th Century Masters in approach and devotion to detail.
Kennedy has held exhibitions in London, Paris, New York and Johannesburg and exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy, The Royal Hibernian and the Royal Scottish Academy.

Cheri Blum 1969-2003 | Faux painting

A young woman who cherished things with a feeling of age and history. An artist who celebrated beauty in imperfection. These kinds of simple contradictions were Cheri Blum’s trademarks and perhaps the key to her remarkable success. Cheri Blum began her career as an illustrator and muralist, creating trompe l’oeil, faux painting and decorative furniture finishes. This background not only provided her with the techniques she used to create her beautiful, unique backgrounds, but also a strong desire to bring art into everyday life. “We should be able to surround ourselves with beautiful art in our homes and offices, not just when we visit museums and galleries”. Cheri’s approach was inspired by the past, but reflected today’s modern styles. She strove to create art that was peaceful, tranquil and edited of unnecessary detail. The simple, graceful shapes she painted have a timeless quality and restful feeling that make them easy to live with and enjoy. When asked about her sources of inspiration, Cheri said: “I believe we find inspiration everywhere, in objects that intrigue us, deep within ourselves, and in unexpected places. Some of the great painters of the past, like John LaFarge and William Morris, were able to create timeless art for the walls, and yet also enjoyed great success in the field of industrial and home design. These artists inspire me, and have helped pave the way to achieving my goals”. Until her untimely death in November 2003, Cheri worked in her studio along the banks of the Sassafras River in the Chesapeake Bay area of Maryland. “I am truly grateful to be able to make a living doing something that gives me so much satisfaction”, said Cheri.

Ottorino De Lucchi 1951 | Italian Hyperrealist painter

Ottorino De Lucchi è nato a Ferrara, l’8 novembre 1951. Si è laureato in Chimica 1975 e Farmacia 1977 presso l’Università di Padova. E’ membro della Società Chimica Italiana dal 1977, dove ha ricoperto la carica di Presidente della Divisione di Chimica Organica e dal 1979 è membro dell’American Chemical Society. Nel 1984 ha ricevuto la medaglia Ciamician dalla Società Chimica Italiana, nel 1993 il premio Federchimica e nel 1997 il prestigioso Zeneca lecture prize, presso Wilmington, USA. Durante la vita ha sempre svolto attività artistica, intercalandola con la sua professione di chimico universitario, soprattutto durante i lunghi soggiorni all’estero o lontano dalla famiglia. Ha avuto modo così di approfondire la conoscenza dei materiali e delle tecniche pittoriche su cui tiene attualmente un corso all’Università Ca’ Foscari di Venezia nel Corso di Laurea in Conservazione e Restauro.

Durante la permanenza negli Stati Uniti ha potuto conoscere e osservare da vicino l’opera di Andrew Wyeth, appassionandosi alla tecnica e al virtuosismo dei suoi dipinti, definiti come drybrush.

Scultura vegetale | L'arte Topiaria

L'Arte Topiaria, ars Topiaria in latino, o Hedge sculptur, nata all'epoca dell'Antica Roma, è una forma della Scultura Vegetale. Consiste nel potare alberi e arbusti al fine di dare loro una forma geometrica, diversa da quella naturalmente assunta dalla pianta, per scopi ornamentali. Si formano così siepi formali, oppure partendo da esemplari singoli o piccoli gruppi, soggetti con varie forme, astratte oppure di animali, oggetti, persone. Le piante vengono fatte crescere a volte con appositi supporti metallici per guidarle verso la forma definitiva. Piante potate secondo questi criteri richiedono un'elevata manutenzione dovuta ai numerosi interventi sui nuovi rami, per mantenere la forma scelta.

L'arte topiaria è impiegata nella formazione dei parterre tipici dei giardini costruiti fra il XVI e il XVIII secolo, dove basse siepi di bosso disegnano in modo più o meno complesso settori riempiti da piante fiorite, a formare una sorta di arazzo vegetale apprezzabile soprattutto se visibile da un luogo sopraelevato. Negli antichi giardini, dove gli unici colori erano le sfumature di verde delle diverse piante e il colore della ghiaia dei giardini, era necessario dare alle piante delle forme artistiche, per concentrare la bellezza del giardino in quegli elementi dominanti. Al giorno d'oggi, l'arte topiaria è utilizzata solitamente su singole piante, come elemento caratterizzante del giardino, oppure simmetrica su molte piante se si vuole creare un effetto maestoso: in questo caso è consigliato se le piante sono in vaso, per evitare che il giardino diventi troppo "pesante".

Guy Cambier 1923-2008 | French genre painter

Guy Cambier was born in Uccle-lez-Bruxelles in 1923. He was a painter of Genre painting, scenes, figures, portraits and still life paintings. At the age of nine years old, he lost the use of his legs caused by a tragic accident. He was self taught and studied the techniques and works of those artists he emulated, Corot and Watteau. Cambier started to exhibit in 1942, first in Belgium and afterwards in France at the Cote d’Azur as well as in the United States and in Paris at the Salon des Peintres Temoins de leur Temps. In 1957, he received the Parisian award, “Le Prix de la Jeune Peintre”. He moved to the South of France in 1950 and resided in Grasse, where he spent most of the rest of his life. Cambier became a favorite portrait artist of several celebrities and painted such dignitaries as Princess Grace of Monaco, Winston Churchill, Ingrid Bergman and Edward G Robinson. His paintings were acquired by the French government. The exact date of his death is unknown.

Gary Jenkins | American floral painter

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Gary Jenkins attended the Ringling School of Art for four years, and began working as a keyline artist for a greeting card company right after graduation. Subsequently, he worked for an art-store chain, and in the early 1970s became an art teacher and gallery painter.
Jenkins then specialized in floral paintings, and in 1980 he was invited to host his own PBS television painting program, called "Jenkins Art Studio".

Joe Anna Arnett 1950 | American Still life painter

Joe Anna Arnett earned a BFA degree from the University of Texas. She then worked for Young & Rubicam Advertising in New York as a senior art director working on such accounts as Merrill Lynch and the US Postal Service. She continued her studies in fine art at the Art Students League of New York for several years. Joe Anna Arnett is a master artist on “Passport and Palette” the art instruction and travel series airing on PBS stations across the country. She not only appears on the show, but also produces and writes for the program. In 1997, she became a Master Artist of the Artists in America Show at the Denver Historical Society Museum. She has also exhibited at museums around the country and in 2006 she was honored by the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, OK as one of their featured artists in the Rendezvous exhibition. Arnett exhibited in the Prix de West show at the national Cowboy Hall of Fame for 14 years. Arnett has written articles for The Artist’s Magazine, American Arts Quarterly, ART Ideas and Austrailian Artists Magazine and has been featured in The International Herald Tribune, Southwest Art, Western Art Digest, and the North Light books Painting with Passion, The Best of Flower Painting, I and II and North Light’s Sketchbook Confidential II. She authored the North Light Book “Painting Sumptuous Vegetables, Fruits and Flowers in Oil”.

David Riedel 1956 | Still life painter

 David Riedel was born in 1956 in Indiana and lived there until moving to Tempe, Arizona to study art. He fell in love with the Southwest, graduating from Northern Arizona University in 1982 with a BFA in printmaking. David still lives in the Southwest near Taos, New Mexico with his wife and daughter.
In 1986 David began attending courses at the Art Students League in New York City and continues to retreat there every year for an intense month of drawing and painting. It was at the Art Students League that David first met and studied under internationally-acclaimed artist David Leffel. It is easy to see the influence that Leffel has had on David. Similar to the Old Masters’ style of chiaroscuro painting, most of Riedel’s works are characterized by their deep background color, lending a certain vibrancy and energy to his subjects. His use of dramatic lighting and rhythmic color, combined with a sense of solid composition, produces work that is timeless in its appeal. During 1993-1994 David lived for six months in Nepal, India and Tibet, traveling and studying the culture and language. Walking and sketching along the way, Riedel found the spontaneous portraits done in tea shops, amid roadside landscapes and in the bustling monasteries to be the most exciting and rewarding usage of his skill and talent as an artist. "I hope someday to return to Tibet and wander, doing portraits. This would be a great counterpoint to the very quiet, contemplative time in my studio".
Riedel has collected beautiful objects from his many travels; those from India and Tibet are among his favorite for still life arrangements. "Many of the objects I choose to paint have a powerful meaning for me personally. The chain of antique Tibetan bells, the conch, the Shiva statue, or even the bone-like quality of a living white onion are very beautiful, yet they also have great symbolic value for me. This awareness subtly works with me while I paint - this is a very personal search for meaning and there is no intent to ‘say’ anything to the viewer - but this meaning changes me as a painter and so becomes a part of the painting". David Riedel’s work is shown nationally and collected internationally. He has been exhibited in several national competitions and won awards in the 1995, 1996, 1999, and 2000 Oil Painters of America exhibitions.

Chi non ha pane, ma compera fiori, è un poeta...

I fiori della primavera sono i sogni dell'inverno raccontati, la mattina, al tavolo degli angeli.

Khalil Gibran

Vladimir Kush

Georgia O'Keeffe 1887-1986 | The Precisionist Movement, 1920*

For several decades Georgia O'Keeffe was a major figure in American art who, remarkably, maintained her independence from shifting artistic trends.
She painted prolifically, and almost exclusively, the flowers, animal bones, and landscapes around her studios in Lake George, New York and New Mexico, and these subjects became her signature images.
She remained true to her own unique artistic vision and created a highly individual style of painting, which synthesized the formal language of modern European abstraction and the subjects of traditional American pictorialism.

Alexander Sergeev 1968 | Flowers russian painter

I was born in 1968 and has ended architectural institute. Being the student, has taken a great interest in painting and a sculpture. After study seriously was engaged in the fine arts. I paint in oils, a brush, мpalette knife.
My painting bright, pastose, full of light, movement and a musical rhythm. It harmoniously merges with soul of the nature which lessons infinitely valuable and various, I try to comprehend and realise in the creativity. I have music education on a piano class. Member of the Creative Union of professional artists of Moscow.

Henri Fantin-Latour 1836-1904 | French painter and lithographer

Ignace Henri Jean Fantin-Latour born in Rhone-Alpes, France, studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He is best known for his flower paintings and group portraits of his friends Parisian artists and writers. His work strongly influenced the symbolist movement of the late 19th Century. Whistler brought attention to Fantin in England. In addition to his paintings, Fantin-Latour created ingenious lithographs demonstrating the music of some of the great classical composers. In 1876 he married a fellow painter, Victoria Dubourg, after which he spent his summers on the country estate of his wife's family at Bure, Orne in Basse-Normandie, where he died of lyme disease. He was interred in the Cimetiere du Montparnasse, Paris, France. Today, his paintings can sell for as much as $ 2.5 million each.

Johan-Laurents Jensen 1800-1856 | Still life danish painter

Jensen's work has been largely influenced by the great 18th century Dutch Master, Jan Van Huysum. Jensen was born on March 8, 1800, in Gjentofte, near Copenhagen. He began his formal art training at the age of 14, studying under Fritzsch at the Copenhagen Academy, where he won medals in 1817 and 1818. In 1822 Jensen moved to France to study porcelain manufacturing in Sevres, where Crown Prince Christian Frederick of Denmark had recommended him. He remained there for a few months until he was appointed Principal Painter at the Royal Copenhagen Porcelain Manufactory in 1825. Jensen's paintings show a high degree of finish; his colors are pure and brilliant. He combines firmness with sensitivity and subtlety in a most appealing and competent way. From 1833-1835 Jensen lived in a Scandinavian artist colony in Rome, where he met the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldson 1768-1844, Thorvaldsen's vases are rendered in these paintings, and are on display in the Thorvaldsen Museum in Copenhagen today. Upon his return to Denmark in 1835, Jensen was appointed a professor at the Royal Danish Academy o Works by Jensen can be seen at the Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Altona Museum, The Oldenburg Museum, The Copenhagen Museum, Thoravldsen Museum and The Montpellier Museum.

Ladies with flowers on the art | Painting

Cogli questo piccolo fiore,
prendilo! Non indugiare!
Temo che appassisca
e cada nella polvere.
Se non può trovare posto
tra i fiori della tua ghirlanda
onoralo almeno
con il tocco della tua mano
anche se doloroso.
Temo che il giorno finisca
senza che me ne accorga
e che passi il tempo delle offerte.
Non è intenso il colore
e il suo profumo è tenue
ma può servire prendilo,
coglilo finchè c'è tempo!

Rabindranath Tagore

Pierre Auguste Cot 1837-1883

Pierre Auguste Renoir 1841-1919 | The impressionist flowers

The Impressionism, a movement, first in painting and later in music, that developed chiefly in France during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Impressionist painting comprises the work produced between about 1867 and 1886 by a group of artists who shared a set of related approaches and techniques. The most conspicuous characteristic of Impressionism in painting was an attempt to accurately and objectively record visual reality in terms of transient effects of light and colour. In music, it was to convey an idea or affect through a wash of sound rather than a strict formal structure.
The impressionist art movement originated in France in the last quarter of the 19th century as a reaction against traditional art and its strict rules. A group of painters who became known as the Impressionists decided to gain independence from the standards prescribed by the French Academy of Fine Arts and France's annual official art exhibition called The Salon. Impressionism covers approximately two decades, from the late 1860s through the 1880s. The term impressionist was first used by French art critic Louis Leroy in 1874 based on Monet's painting Impression, Sunrise. Leroy found the term fitting to describe the loose, undefined and "unfinished" style that Monet and several other artists applied to their paintings.

Martin Johnson Heade 1819-1904 | Prolific american painter

Martin Johnson Heade was a prolific american painter, known for his salt marsh landscapes, seascapes, portraits of tropical birds such as humming birds, as well as lotus blossoms and other still lifes. 

His painting style and subject matter, while derived from the romanticism of the time, is regarded by art historians as a significant departure from that of his peers. Heade was born in Lumberville, Pennsylvania, the son of a storekeeper. 

He studied with Edward Hicks, and possibly with Thomas Hicks. He travelled to Europe several times as a young man, became an intinerant artist on American shores, and exhibited in Philadelphia in 1841 and New York in 1843.

Shirley Novak | Colorado | Flower art

Born and raised in California, Shirley feels her inner voice has called to her to paint for as long as she can remember.

Her childhood passions were growing, drawing and painting flowers.

She majored in art and took many workshops and classes over the years, eventually turning her attention to painting full-time under the tutelage of her mentor, Len Chmiel.

Shirley paints in oils using a wet-on-wet technique.

Flower paintings | 17th - 20th Century | Still life

Pierre-Auguste Renoir 1841-1919

Vincent Van Gogh 1853-1890

Albert Henrich 1899-1971

Charles White 1918-1979

Claude Oscar Monet 1840-1926

Ferdinand Georg Waldmuller 1793-1865

Ferdinand Georg Waldmuller 1793-1865

Hermina Bruck 1865-1944

Helen Cordelia 1847-1884

Hans Temple 1857-1931

Gustav Feith 1875-1951

Gottfried Wilhelm Voelker 1772-1849

Georg-Eduard Otto Saal 1818-1870

Frans Snyders 1579-1657

Ignace Henri Jean Théodore Fantin-Latour 1836-1904

Ignace Henri Jean Théodore Fantin-Latour 1836-1904

J. Chavoit

Jacob Van Walscapelle 1644-1727

Jan Brueghel the Elder 1568-1625

Jan Brueghel the Elder 1568-1625

Jan Brueghel the Elder 1568-1625

Jan Davidsz De Heem 1606-1683

Jan Davidsz De Heem 1606-1683

Jan Davidsz De Heem 1606-1683

Jan Van Huysum 1682-1749

Jan Van Huysum 1682-1749

Jan Van Huysum 1682-1749

Josef Lauer 1818-1881

Josef Lauer 1818-1881

Jean Baptiste Robie 1821-1910

Jean Baptiste Robie 1821-1910

Jan Van Huysum 1682-1749

Josef Lauer 1818-1881

Josef Lauer 1818-1881

Josef Lauer 1818-1881

Josef Lauer 1818-1881

Josef Nigg 1782-1863

Josef Nigg 1782-1863

Kreyder Alexis Joseph 1839-1912

Joseph Nigg 1782-1863

Joseph Nigg 1782-1863

Joseph Nigg 1782-1863

Joseph Nigg 1782-1863

Joseph Nigg 1782-1863

Martin Johnson Heade 1819-1904

Martin Johnson Heade 1819-1904

Martin Johnson Heade 1819-1904

Martin Johnson Heade 1819-1904

Martin Johnson Heade 1819-1904

Paul Cezanne 1839-1906

Martin Johnson Heade 1819-1904

Martin Johnson Heade 1819-1904

Martin Johnson Heade 1819-1904

Martin Johnson Heade 1819-1904

Simon Saint-Jean 1808-1860

Pierre Bonnard 1867-1947

Pierre-Auguste Renoir 1841-1919

Pierre-Auguste Renoir 1841-1919

Robert Thegerström 1857-1919

Simon Saint-Jean 1808-1860

Simon Saint-Jean 1808-1860

Vincent Van Gogh 1853-1890