Edward Hagedorn was a true American Modernist who created a rich trove of powerful works on paper–drawings, watercolors, oils, and prints that reveal the hand of a master draftsman and the mind of an astute political observer. He rejected the general trend in early 20th century California of local landscapes and coastal views, becoming virtually the single voice of Expressionism, looking more to the German artists of the early 20th century than the French.

Hagedorn was critically acclaimed during his lifetime. Galka Scheyer, the collector and founder of the institution that became the Norton Simon Museum, who represented and introduced the “Blue Four” to the United States (Kandinsky, Feininger, Klee and Jawlensky) offered to exhibit his work and asked him to join the “Blue Four.”  He rejected her overtures. Nevertheless, Scheyer purchased a number of his drawings that are in the Blue Four Collection at the museum.

Hagedorn’s images insist on eidetic registration: skeletons, ferocious yet somehow endearing, printed in deep black ink on off-white paper, march across Lilliputian landscapes of grim disorder and destruction; comets and volcanoes explode in fauvist colors, their other-worldly fluorescent temperas framed in black; nude female figures, exquisitely refined pen and ink, or graphite line drawings, are as economical in their means as Matisse or the neo-classical drawings of Picasso. In some of these drawings of nudes Hagedorn occasionally places a lyrical splash of watercolor or pastel reminiscent of Schiele. Among his most lyrical works of the 1920s is a series of rhythmically abstracted watercolor and ink views of Golden Gate Park, drawn in a syncretic style evoking the sensual quasi-geometries of Balthus, Derain, and early Mondrian.

The first monograph on the art of Edward Hagedorn is now published, and reveals an artist powerfully in command of marks on paper, wryly observant of human folly—a gifted draftsman creating indelible images and unforgettable impressions of the most powerful forces of nature.

Born in Valencia in 1970, Miguel began his Fine Arts degree at the Facultad Politécnica de Valencia in the late 80s, giving up two years later, disappointed by the method of teaching and the faculty. Around the same time, he encountered the realistic painter Francisco Ugeda, in whose workshop he learned the technical fundamentals of painting. In parallel he studied the Violin, finishing an advanced degree in the discipline. He combined painting with his work as a musician with orchestras and chamber groups for years but left the violin in 2002 to fully focus on his career as a painter. His painting is characterized by a realistic language that does not bow to matter or gesture. After an initial period marked by musical themes, his interests in Jungian psychology and alchemy gave rise to a series of works with a symbolic charge, sometimes obvious and others more subtle, as in his series of indoor scenes. Moya has shown in various exhibitions in Spain and the United States.

“Gregory Mortenson (b. 1976) is one of the most accomplished in a new generation of painters who have embraced the rigors of training in the atelier tradition. After completing his undergraduate studies at Southern Virginia University, in Buena Vista, he spent two years studying classical painting with Patrick Devonas and William Whitaker. He then moved to New York City, where he completed the four-year curriculum at the Grand Central Academy of Art under Jacob Collins, following it up with two more years of training in Collins’ private studio. Mortenson emerged from this lengthy apprenticeship with an impeccable classical technique that allows him to present exquisitely turned form and tonal rendering of great subtlety. This prowess is most evident in his portraiture, where the precision of description and delicate paint handling give a quite breathtaking sense of presence to the subject.”
-American Artist Magazine

After the Haitian earthquake of 2010, a friend of mine quit his job as a middle school teacher and moved to Haiti to see what he could do to help.  He was funded by a philanthropist that basically said, “Take this money and see what good you can do.” My friend came across an orphanage that had been relocated into the countryside from Port Au Prince. Their building had crumbled in the city and they found themselves living in a cow pasture with 30 children in a tent. My friend found them and knew this was the group he could help the most. He bought them the field they were living on and began building housing and schools for them to use.

It was then that I went to Haiti with my wife and a group of friends that I grew up with, we helped with the building of the schools and some of my tech-savvy friends spearheaded an online fundraiser.

I remember arriving in Haiti and seeing the devastation of the earthquake everywhere. So many people had lost their homes and loved ones. There was mass depression everywhere. It was a two-hour drive from Port Au Prince to the orphanage. The whole way I was imagining how much worse the atmosphere of the orphanage must be to the images I saw as I drove there.  To my surprise, their orphanage was a haven of hope away from the devastation everywhere else.  The grounds were filled with laughter and even though these children had lost their birth families, they had made a much larger family. It was that very triumph of the human spirit that I wanted to capture in my paintings.

Shortly thereafter the funding for the program was pulled and my friend returned from Haiti after living there over a year. The orphanage was taken over by another organization and is doing very well. I’ve been in contact with them about returning and teaching some art classes. I like the idea of doing portraits of all the children that I painted before, but five years removed from the earthquake.

I returned to Haiti two summers ago to teach art classes for another school. It’s a school cofounded by another of my friends. He is a neurologist and returns every few years to do humanitarian work and train the Haitian doctors. He cofounded a school there with some educators. I taught art classes with a group that he had invited. I am also in talks with him about doing a mural with his students.

“No information = mystique. That’s definitely part of it, although it does sound a little contrived put like that.

You can have any facts you want, but you’re sworn to secrecy. Only kidding, I just hate those sites where they have a moody photo of the artist with some trenchant quote about their life and art underneath.

I’m 45, married, lots of children, cats, rabbit. I’m also self-taught, so if you’re going to give anything away, let it be that.  People love it, it’s democratic.”

Mackey currently resides in the U.K.

Stephen Fox was born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1957. By the fourth grade, he knew he would be an artist of some kind—his earliest serious work was drawing and inking his own comic books. His interest in art and oil painting blossomed in college (V.C.U., Richmond, VA), where he studied painting and printmaking, receiving his BFA in 1980. His very first night paintings, a subject that has remained the focus of his work to this day, were made in the final two semesters of college.

Almost immediately upon graduation, his paintings were featured in Virginia Museum of Fine Arts juried exhibitions, winning critical acclaim and interest from galleries. He received a Virginia Commission for the Arts Professional Artist Fellowship in 1982, the following year he had his first solo exhibition at Cudahy’s Gallery in Richmond, Virginia. The show was a sell-out in just two days.

The following year, Fox became a recipient of a Southeastern Center for Contemporary Arts Professional Artist’s Fellowship, and his paintings were featured in an exhibition to commemorate the award. Over a span of a decade, he also became a three-time recipient of the Virginia Museum Professional Artist’s Fellowship. His work quickly attracted national interest, and in 1986, he had his first one-person exhibition at O.K. Harris Works of Art in New York City. Ivan Karp, the owner/director of the gallery, described his work as “borderline Photorealism”, acknowledging that the artist’s nighttime landscapes, while partially photo-based, often had a quality of mystery or gentle symbolism at their core that separated them from paintings solely focused on the world of forms and photographic detail. The artist had many successful one-person exhibitions at O.K. Harris over the next two-and-a-half decades.

In 1995, after painting and showing consistently ever since graduating from college, Fox entered the graduate painting program at the Maryland Institute College of Art, in Baltimore, MD. There he further refined the subjects that recurred in his paintings—glowing phone booths, illuminated billboards, interstate highways and after-hours parks and playgrounds. He also developed the new element that had been entering his work—the human figure. While his landscapes were never devoid of the objects and concerns of humanity, they were mostly places of quiet and stillness, locations emptied out of the people who might have busied about the space during daylight hours. Paintings that focused on highways conveying people through the night landscape in cars and large trucks evolved into a study of the people navigating the nighttime world themselves, and how the quality of stillness that so defined his early landscapes might be found in figurative works sometimes bordering on portraiture.

In 1997, Fox moved to Brooklyn, NY, where he resides today. His work has evolved on both tracks of subject, the moody night landscapes and paintings of the people inhabiting them. Many of his landscapes in recent years are drawn from the mountains above New York City, the highlands area of the Hudson River and the Adirondacks. Often the two subjects merge together, figures quietly going about their lives in a world where the multi-colored lights of man supplant the bright white of day.

Stephen Fox continues an active exhibition schedule and his work is in numerous private and corporate collections all across the world.

John Brosio was born 1967 in Pasadena, California. He has been drawing for as long as he can remember and those earliest scribbles depict much of the same “off center” subject matter that concerns him today. Apart from various travels, his life has been based in either Southern California where he was raised or Northern California where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of California at Davis in 1991.

Learning under the guidance of artists such as Wayne Thiebaud and Richard Bunkall, Brosio was seduced away from his original aspirations toward a career in film and movie special effects, consequently, cinematic influences are apparent in his work. Known originally for his depictions of tornadoes, Brosio spent three seasons “storm chasing” out of Texas and will often go to such extreme measures in pursuit of familiarity with any of his chosen subject matter.

Various exhibitions and honors are highlighted by solo shows in both CA and NY, a survey of his work at the National Academy of Sciences Museum in Washington D.C. in 2008.

Baugh’s work can be described as narrative impressionistic realism. Specializing in oil paint and charcoal, he began painting at the age of 13 and began selling professionally at age 17. When he was only 21 years old, Baugh began showing in galleries and after four years of studying with artist Richard Schmid, he had his first solo show at age 25. He has made several television appearances and has been featured on the covers of many publications, including The Artist’s Magazine, American Artist’s Magazine, and American Art Collector.

Baugh’s art has evolved over time to become more narrative. Though still maintaining figures as his prime subject matter, he is telling more stories, and his series and exhibits are becoming more thematic. On a constant quest to push new boundaries, he is persistent in experimenting with his inspirations and artistic translations, pursuing more complicated compositions and achieving grander shows. Experience with electrical engineering as well as video and movie-making has attributed greatly to his use of props, set building, lighting, and translates to the overall harmony of his visual layouts.

….. the profound similarities between Baugh’s painted world and our own have the potential to unsettle and awaken us, as viewers, to a more vivid reality than we currently experience, and to freshly recognize the “static” that interferes with our ability to connect with one another and live meaningfully. (Jeffrey Carlson, Contributing Editor, Fine Art Today) Baugh currently works and resides in Brooklyn, NY.

The intent of my work is to allow the viewer to interpret meaning using their own experience. My feelings and thoughts behind it are directly related to my personal history with the subjects in the work, whether they are animate or inanimate. A certain sadness, hopelessness or resignation seems to always be present, for me it allows for deeper contemplation. I tend to title the work in a very straight-forward manner, that way the viewer again has access to the image and isn’t steered in a different direction.

My technique is relatively unknown, I use sandpaper as a medium to embed dry material into heavy paper. Using this technique, I am able to “see” in the dark; I use a myriad of photographic reference for the images of my daughters and I draw from life the images of my old toys and memorabilia. The use of this technique takes the work to a “hyper-real” level and lends itself well to the pervasive feeling of melancholy that exists. My intent is to confront the viewer and ask questions.

There is honesty to the work that I can only express if I have a true connection with it. I pick out everything from the outfits and rugs that the subjects sit on to the lighting in order to capture the feeling that I wish to convey with that body of work. I have started to incorporate props as well which leads to a narrative that is also open to interpretation. My art is a diary of sorts, quasi-self-portraits that reference my childhood experiences, good and bad.

Johannes Wessmark was born in Karlstad, Sweden in 1962. After working as a celebrated advertising illustrator for 15 years, Johannes realized a dream to be a full-time fine artist in 2006.

Johannes has since become one of the leading photorealist painters in Europe, having works exhibited in the European Museum of Modern Art in Barcelona and the Count Ibex Collection, participated and placed in countless international competitions, and been included in publications from MEAM Barcelona, and Arte y Libertad IV, Vii, and X.

Johannes’ in-demand knowledge of photorealist painting has made his workshops and lectures across Sweden and the United States a valued experience for collectors and peers and has self-published two books showcasing his specialized photorealist technique and style.

Johannes uses acrylic and oil paint on canvas to create his large-scale paintings of figures interacting with water. On the topic of his subjects, Johannes states, “In my paintings, and especially my figurative motifs, I want to convey a feeling of calm and relaxation. Water is a subject matter that has followed me for many years. As a child, we had a summer-house by the Swedish west coast where we spent many holidays. Positive experiences with water that came to influence me as an artist many years later.”

Johannes is a member of The International Guild of Realism and The Swedish Artists National Organization, and lives and works as a painter in the Swedish countryside.

Denis Sarazhin was born in Nikopol, Ukraine in 1982. He attended the Kharkov Art and Design Academy, graduating in 2008. He specialized in painting and was a pupil of Ganozkiy V. L., Chaus V. N., and Vintayev V. N. Sarazhin was awarded the 1st Degree Diploma Award for Excellence in Painting from the Ukrainian Art Academy. Since 2007 he has been a member of Kharkov’s section of the association of Ukraine’s Artists’ Alliance.