Contemporary Paintings
LeQuire Gallery integrates emerging and mid-career contemporary painters representing a wide array of artistic styles from contemporary realist to contemporary plein-air, with the common thread of dedication to mastery and an achievement of distinct style and unique expression. Each artist offers collectors works that are innovative and reflect the highest standards of quality within their chosen field.
The Contemporary Painting scene in the U.S. is bustling as artists continue to make their mark on two-dimensional surfaces. Owner Alan LeQuire sees a major movement among contemporary artists toward a more narrative, figurative art. These artists reject the current notions of ‘avant-garde’ in favor of the traditional arts of painting and sculpture. Most are atelier inspired, familiar with the theories and techniques of the past and are extending that tradition to create new contemporary work.
Juliette Aristides is one of the country’s foremost new figurative artists with a deep and well-rounded education having graduated from the Jacob Collins Studio and the National Academy of Design in New York City. She has also studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.
As senior instructor in Seattle’s Gage Academy of Art, Aristides has emerged as one of the most popular instructors in the U.S. today. She is well known as a leading authority on the tried and true techniques of drawing and painting with four signal books. She is a multiple award-winning contemporary painter and draughtsman, whose works are shown and collected internationally.
The best artists have special techniques that separate them from other artists. Aristides is an extraordinary draftsman. Her remarkable skill with charcoal, pencil and sepia on paper is one reason why she is also such an incredible painter. She is extremely talented, with a confident, light touch. The expressions in her subjects are uncannily sensitive. Collectors would be well advised to include her drawings in their collections.
Aristides paintings are masterful with a unique point of view, full of color and beauty. Flowers and still-lifes are exquisite. Figures are timeless.
Maggie Rose received her Masters in Fine Art from the New York Academy. In addition to maintaining a full-time studio practice, Maggie is passionate about teaching. Her Master Workshops, which she gives several times a year at the New York Academy, are always in high demand.
Rose’s paintings are primarily figurative. She prefers to work from life and often sculpts small figurines when working on subjects that require a photo reference. Her recent work focuses on weaving her love of sculpture, her sense of form and her passion for color into a painterly vision that speaks to each media, to the past and to the present.
Painter Joe Montgomery studied with Elaine de Kooning, Jim Herbert and Mike Nicholson at the University of Georgia in 1978. Surrounded by such great teachers, Joe flourished as a figurative expressionist painter. Since then he has been “following his bliss” as he puts it, quoting Joseph Campbell. His work has become almost purely abstract. Pattern and color are his primary concerns. He chooses watercolor as his medium with an amazing dexterity and an intuitive ease in handling the paint.
Lori Putnam is an internationally recognized painter in the tradition of plein-air. She keeps that tradition alive teaching all over the world. With great dedication to color harmony, rhythm, and pattern, and well-known for her contemporary compositions, Putnam pushes the boundaries of impressionist painting.
Museums including The Tucson Museum of Art, The Brinton Museum in Big Horn, Wyoming, and The Hockaday Museum of Art in Kalispell, Montana have sought out Putnam’s works for exhibition. The High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia and the Irvine Museum in California have honored her paintings with significant prizes. Her work has been included in the Out West Art Show and Sale in Great Falls, Montana and the Heart of the West Auction in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. She has work in the permanent collection at The Academy Art Museum in Easton, Maryland, the Jack Warner Collection, The Strotkamp Collection, the collection of Plein Air Magazine, and in private and corporate collections, and galleries worldwide.
Ben Caldwell is a painter, copper and silver smith, musical instrument builder, and inventor who literally “paints with fire” creating glass on copper “canvases” and some of the most innovative paintings around.
Caldwell studied painting at the Studio School of New York under Charles Cajori, an abstract expressionist who exhibited with William de Kooning in the 1960’s. He received his BFA from Tufts University and The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and a diploma from Roberto Venn School of Lutherie. A seasoned artist, he brings his multi-faceted background to bear in a unified way as he pushes his boundaries once again.
Caldwell thinks of the copper as a living canvas. “If you could have your canvas physically react to paint as you apply color, you might understand what I feel as I fire glass onto my ‘canvas’ of copper. ”
From his instrument making experience, Caldwell learned to invent his own tools and achieve his own results, rather than letting the tools dictate the outcome. Caldwell has now blown the doors off the traditions of cloisonné and Canton enameling, each precise, intricate and controlled arts. With the same training and employing the same materials, Caldwell instead works with door-sized copper sheets, pounds of colored, powdered glass and copper oxides, open flame torches, all of which he uses to paint as he sculpts and reshapes his canvas of copper.
Marti Jones Dixon is an American singer-songwriter and visual artist. She sings, records, and performs as “Marti Jones” and exhibits visual art as “Marti Jones Dixon”. Dixon has studied various disciplines of visual art, but it is her interest in the human figure as a subject that is consistently the central focus.
As a contemporary realist painter, Dixon has been praised for her ability to interestingly and accurately capture the spare, mundane moments of urban, everyday life often using strong, defined lighting in unassuming scenes. This artist’s knack for revealing human nature is shown deceptively simple, yet it is her decided and complex use of color, contrast, and geometry, that subtly bring casual life moments to attention with an overwhelming familiarity.
The academy is making a comeback as people realize the permanent value of rigorous training and finely tuned development of skills. The long years spent developing physical ability – the craft – is what leads to insight and discovery. Good art offers not only personal expression, but references to our cultural history, our present and future. The contributions of the artists mentioned here, as well as others who join us in the LeQuire Gallery stable, reflect a dedication to this mastery, while representing the fresh ideas of contemporary painting