Image of the Day, July 24, 2012

“The Conversation” by Barbara Pence received the “People’s Choice” award and the jurors’ award of merit at the recent 2012 Spring Salon and the Springville Museum of Art in Utah.

In the painting “The Conversation” it is fascinating to observe how Barbara Pence combines still life painting, commonly depicting inanimate objects, with elements of portraiture—hands and arms.  Each place setting tells a story depicting a range of emotions from passivity to aggressive gestures as one dinner guest points a knife at another. One person is half way through desert while another barely touched the meal.  The birds-eye view heightens the inherent sense of voyeurism as the viewer is privileged  to take in the entire scene at once.

“The Conversation,” by Barbara Pence. Credit: Barbarapence.com

Painting of the Day, February 3, 2012

By Donna Poulton

Philip Henry Barkdull, Designed Landscape: Symphony in Color, 1930, oil on canvas, 20 x 24 in. Springville Museum of Art.  Credit: Springville Museum of Art Philip Henry Barkdull (1888-1968) was a Utah artist and teacher who studied for two summers under Birger Sandzen in 1927 and 1928 when he taught summer school in Utah. He adopted Sandzen’s bravura style, characterized by thick impasto, pure color and broad-brush strokes, the best example of which can be seen in Designed Landscape: Symphony in Color. This painting has been described by Dr. Vern Swanson as “…shining out like a beacon amidst the ‘foggy grey’ of many of his contemporaries.” After a railroad accident, Barkdull limited his career to teaching printmaking and drawing.

Related story: Birger Sandzén: Ecstasy of Color

Painting of the Day, January 20, 2012

By Donna Poulton

After his studies at the California School of Design and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Utah artist, James T. Harwood served as the chairman of the Department of Art at the University of Utah from 1923 -1931.

James T. Harwood (1860-1940), Richards Camp, Holiday Park, Weber Canyon, 1888, oil on canvas, 26 x 45 in. Credit: Springville Museum of Art“Richards' Camp, Holiday Park-Weber Canyon, is more autobiographical than any other Utah painting from [Harwood’s] pioneer period. The setting is the campground at Holiday Park that belonged to Harwood's soon-to-be in-laws. The camp activities were recorded on canvas by J. T. Harwood in July and signed on the 3rd of August 1888.”

Detail. Credit: Springville Museum of Art “The painting depicts a number of white tents nestled among tall pines in a forest clearing. Harriett's (Hattie's) father, Dr. Heber John Richards, is resting on a hammock, wearing a pith helmet and smoking a cigar. His wife and five daughters dot the scene. The mother and her two daughters are preparing food, while a son-in-law in fishing gear is on the left. Elsewhere, another daughter is reading a book, while the youngest daughter holds her doll. The most interesting aspect of the picture is the image of the artist holding an easel and paint kit, preparing to paint oil studies. He furtively peeks to his left at Hattie, who has filled a pail of water for the camp.” - Vern Swanson, Springville Museum of Art

Painter of the Day, January 10, 2012

Reuben Kirkham:  Pioneer Artist

Credit: Donna Poulton© Available at: Amazon.comReuben Kirkham was a pioneer artist—part of a first generation of Utah artists whose brush strokes provide an enduring documentation of life on the fringes of civilization. Arriving in Salt Lake by mule train in 1868, Kirkham took his place among a handful of archaic and self-taught artists. The young man would devote the last eighteen years of his life to learning his craft and producing volumes of sketches and scenes for numerous theatre and opera productions, panels for his panoramas and easel works. His works express the romantic idealization of nature common in landscape paintings of the mid-nineteenth century, but also bear the stamp of his unique style and the challenging environment and vistas of the west.

Credit: Donna Poulton© Available at: Amazon.comUntil now it was thought that only a few of his works had survived, but through diligent research and detective work, historian Donna L. Poulton has uncovered many sketches and oil paintings that further attest to Kirkham’s remarkable body of work. Many of those will be made public for the first time in this book. Several important paintings, found in lamentable condition, have now been restored and preserved by the Springville Museum of Art as a result of her important research. Furthermore, Poulton discovered another facet of Kirkham’s work: that of photographer, mastering a relatively new medium and using his natural sense of framing, composition, texture and contrast to document life in the untamed west.

Credit: Donna Poulton© Available at: Amazon.comIn all, this engrossing work provides a moving and often awe-inspiring portrait of a man who overcame considerable odds to develop and exploit his God-given talents. It sheds new light as well on the artist’s remarkable, multiple abilities, while describing in often heartbreaking detail the life and times of a man who truly did suffer for his art. A complete painting raisonné accompanies this book.

Credit: Donna Poulton© Available at: Amazon.comCredit: Donna Poulton© Available at: Amazon.com

Image of the Day, November 22, 2011

“When as a young man of 18, I came east to study art, there were on the same train with me a group of Crow Indians on the way to Washington, D.C. Their chief was a mammoth person over six feet tall and weighing 265 pounds.  All of them were big fellows and had the dignity of a Caesar.” -- Cyrus Dallin

Cyrus Dallin working on his sculpture of Massasoit. Credit: The Springville Museum of Art

Happy 150th Birthday, Cyrus Dallin! - A native of Springville, Utah, Cyrus Dallin was regarded as one of America’s foremost realist sculptors and was one of the founding artists of the Springville Museum of Art. Born in a little log cabin in 1861, Dallin left Springville as a young man to study art in Boston and in the celebrated academies in Paris. In 1890, Dallin made his home in Massachusetts, where he produced most of his works, but made numerous trips back to visit his native Utah. Though Dallin received many prestigious commissions and awards throughout his life, he said that “my greatest honor of all is that I came from Utah."(Text courtesy of the Springville Museum of Art.)