Big Baby is F. Scott Hess' enormous new depiction of himself as a grinning man-child, diapered and spreadeagled on a blue blanket decorated with nursery animals. It marks a milestone in his remarkable career. Twice life-size in scale, it is Hess' first painting after his completion of a four-year-long mural project at the B'nai Jehudah synagogue, located in a suburb of Kansas City, Kansas. Hess was commissioned to paint two "pods" of images to wrap around the walls beneath gentle arches of windows above two large meeting rooms. The first pod was a narrative series showing the history of the synagogue's construction and the community that supported it, and the second was a series of images from the Tanakh-the Jewish Old Testament.
Hess was an unusual choice for the project. "Not being a religious person, it is a little odd," he laughs. "I had always wanted to do the Sistine Chapel, but I realized that as a non-believer I wasn't going to get a commission for anything like that..." He began the project delighted to follow in the footsteps of the great masters of the RenaissanceMichelangelo, Vasari and Raphael, and spent three months creating a spectacular series of sketches of the first pod of murals for approval, cleverly connecting the events of each panel to the next in a loop of narrative.
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Denne historien er fra July 2023-utgaven av American Art Collector.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Guardians of the Temple – Simon Dinnerstein reflects on The Fulbright Triptych 50 years later.
The Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State University exhibits Simon Dinnerstein's The Fulbright Triptych haunts the visual lexicon of 20th century American representational art. Fifty years have passed since Dinnerstein completed the painting in 1974.
A City Perspective
Leslie Gaduzo has always been interIested in art. Since childhood, he has been drawing constantly, from single point perspective drawings at age 10 to complex architectural drawings.
Living Legacy
The Butler Institue hosts Allied Artists of America's 110th Annual Juried Exhibition.
Elegant yet Approachable
The second edition of the RTIA Show presents even more art to explore and expanded special programming.
Figuratively Speaking
New York has always been an epicenter of artists on the edge of excellence, pushing the envelope and finding their voices.
JAMES AYERS: The Importance of Play
Like many artists, James Ayers' work took a turn during the Covid-19 pandemic. Seeing the enjoyment his kids took from playing with paint in his studio and exploring their creativity inspired him.
GINA MINICHINO: Playing with Food
Gina Minichino started her journey in visual arts because of Charles Schulz. \"He was my earliest influence for drawing and the reason I wanted to be a cartoonist,\" she says.
Island Light
The Cuttyhunk Island Artists' Residency is held in a sprawling, 100-year-old house on an island off the southern coast of Massachusetts.
Solitary Forms
Hogan Brown has been working with Arcadia Contemporary for two and half years and is excited to be featured in his first solo show at the gallery. He doesn't take for granted the many talented figurative painters Arcadia represents and is thrilled to be among them.
Living the Dream
Counterintuitively, David Gluck was a painter before taking up tattooing little more than a decade ago. While skin is a completely different substrate and ink a far cry from oil paint, the skills must be transferrable to some degree because there is a wait-time of nine months to get an appointment with him.
