AUTHOR: ARTSY CHOW ROAMER

Gallery Strolls

SUMMER PLEASURES

For over twenty years now, Thomas Deans Fine Art has been presenting his annual Summer Pleasures exhibit; a rotating summer exhibition. The posh contemporary gallery on Miami Circle usually hangs a diversity of work ranging from the serious to the whimsical and changes them throughout the two-month period.

As always, artists long-established with the gallery are featured along with emerging talent and new artists to the gallery.  Genres range from realism to abstraction and conceptualism in the featured works and this year’s show is happening in conjunction with a limited series of gallery stroll events.

Sponsored in part by Livable Buckhead, all the galleries on the street (over a dozen) are open later than usual on Saturday evenings offering light refreshments and lots of wonderful things on view representing local, regional, national and international works. This post will center on some of the offerings from Thomas Deans Fine Art.

SIR CHRISTOPHER LE BRUN

As a member of Britain’s Royal Academy of Arts, Sir Christopher Le Brun has received many honors over the course of his artistic career including a recent commission for a 30’ high sculpture for the city of London and a design for a new 50-pence piece for the Royal Mint of Great Britain.

Le Brun emerged as one of the most important European painters in the early ‘80’s during a rich emotional painting period referred to as ‘neo-expressionism’. His vibrant color studies and soft fragmented imagery of horses, discs, wings, towers and arabesques are instantly recognizable and well-known throughout the world of art collectors in Europe, Australia and America.

His works have also been curated to some of the world’s finest museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York​; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Tate Gallery, London; The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge University; The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo, Norway; The British Museum, London; the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut; the British Council, London; the Courtauld Gallery, London; the Victoria and Albert Museum, ​London; Berardo Collection Museum, Lisbon, Portugal; Spencer Collection, New York Public Library, the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, Los Angeles, California; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia; among many others. The latest works from this artist are a series of twelve simple but breath-taking soft studies in watercolor and gouache on paper.

MARLISE NEWMAN

Born in North Carolina, artist Marlise Newman has five siblings who are all artists, designers and musicians.  She followed in their creative footsteps with a degree in advertising, art and design.  She practiced as a commercial artist and interior designer until she decided to paint full time.  That early work inspires and informs her creations as the paintings feel reminiscent of traditional fabric and wallcovering patterns.  Representational birds in flight and colorful fish fill the canvases with bright spots of flowers and plants that peep from the corners and hang from the branches of trees. Her paintings are rich vibrant colored oils on panel which have won her numerous awards and placed her in collections across the United States and abroad.

GWEN WONG

While originally from Augusta, Gwen Wong has lived in Atlanta for over thirty years now while developing her combination of indirect and wet-on-wet painting techniques.  This allows her to add bold colors with layering techniques that create depth through glazing.  The work is “painterly and allegorical”.  She is inspired by certain elements of childhood like fairytales, rhymes and bedtime stories and how these rituals might imprint and influence the adults we become.  She also works with animal imagery, exploring their place in history and portraying them with a “trace of humanity”.   Gwen creates her own stories while painting; leading the viewer into her world of contrasts and possibilities. She enjoys painting at home with her husband, the talented Scott French, who is also a featured artist in the gallery with his landscapes.

PAUL TAMANIAN

Paul Tamanian was born in New York but has lived in North Florida ever since he graduated from Florida State University with a degree in design.  A casual class in pottery at a community college kicked off an interest that turned into a passion.  Once he mastered that process, he moved into aluminum panels experimenting with his techniques for technical innovations that mixed different media with automotive paints.  He has a remarkable visual vocabulary for painting and three-dimensional metal which delivers the large colorful pieces he is now known for here and abroad.

Paul’s background in design gives him a lovely sense of color theory when creating his pieces. The slick shiny auto finish pops them out even more vividly. While his subject matters tend to be abstract in nature he also designs beautiful realistic pieces such as Ajax VII and Steed IX. Free standing sculptures as well as those that hang can be used both indoors and outdoors with the finish he provides. He is highly commissionable and has created designs for individual, corporate and hospitality clients.

JENI STALLINGS

A native of Jonesboro, Arkansas, Jeni Stallings graduated from the Memphis College of Art.  Her paintings are a feminine version of surrealism that recall her own dreams and personal experiences.  She works using an ancient version of encaustic; heating the beeswax to coat the paintings surface creating a muted dreamy effect on the finish.  She refers to herself as a storyteller.  Art critic, Felicia Feaster, wrote “her paintings draw from a lexicon melding dreamwork with a touch of Southern eccentricity” which describes them perfectly - better than any phrase I could have written about them.  While many see a lyrical aspect to the work, I find them both intriguing and always fun, enjoying the way the paintings tell Jeni’s story when hung together as a body.

ANA GUZMAN

Ana Guzman was born in Havana, Cuba and moved to the United States as a five-year-old who spoke little or no English.  She paints from her memories of the Cuba she left behind and the place she now calls home in Atlanta, Georgia.  Her paintings are quick architectural studies that abstract the subject with frenetic energy.  She utilizes vibrant rich colors that transport the viewer to another place that becomes instantly recognizable to them.  Her work has been compared to a “jazz musician’s brush strokes on the drum”.  An ever-present sketchbook is still her tool of choice to capture her vision quickly and move on to the painted surface later.

CONCLUSION

Thomas Deans Fine Art was established in 1983 and is located in the heart of Atlanta's art and design district. The gallery specializes in contemporary paintings, works on paper, and selected photography. He has a good eye for hanging a show preferring to mix artists; letting the colors and subject matters play a sort of song as you move through and around the gallery.  I always make sure I get to the Summer Pleasures exhibit every year. The successful joining of old and new artists and the mix of price points make it a must on any collectors list.

Alongside the artists listed above, works by other gallery artists will feature new paintings/sculptures from Cat Tesla, Steve Steinman, Mary Parkman, Tom Francis, Shannon Woodford, Benjamin Frederick, Eileen Braun and Donald Beal.  This annual exhibition will be up through August 20th and gallery hours are Monday-Saturday 11-5:00.  Get your summer on, take a stroll and see this wonderful show.

If you enjoyed what you read, you might also like other posts under Artful Ideal. You can find other artists that I really love and you might want to add to your own collection. Look for a coming post on a fun speakeasy where you can eat, drink, bowl and hear great music. Until next time…

Cheers,

ArtsyChowRoamer

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