More encouragement to dabble outside of just the “listed” artists– enjoy!

John St. John was born in Oak Park, Illinois in 1911. He graduated from the University of Kentucky in 1935 and the Maxwell School of Public Administration at Syracuse University in 1938. Although he worked in public administration until he went to serve in the military during World War II, it was not until after the war was over that he began painting. He called this endeavor into the world of artists his “second career,” and he did it with the same focus and success as his early professional life. He quickly mastered the techniques of watercolor and oil painting while training under a number of art teachers and mentors. He studied at the famous Ringling School of Art in Sarasota, Florida and then traveled to Mexico, where he worked with Jose Gutierrez in vinyl and fresco mural painting at Mexico City College.

After returning to the United States, St. John became a pioneer in exterior mural painting. In 1955, he was commissioned by the City of Coral Gables, Florida to paint the first large scale mural on the exterior of a public building in the United States. It took five months of work to produce Epochs of Florida History. After a few years of mural painting, St. John moved to Puerto Rico, where he spent 12 years painting the countryside and the sea. He returned to the mainland again and began painting in North Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky and California. By this time he had developed his own distinctive style using, among other colors, dark reds and pale greens to depict scenes and impressions of nature and people, often from a perspective above the earth. After a few more years of painting in Hawaii, he settled in Solvang, California and founded his own gallery.

St. John paintings are included in numerous private and permanent collections, including, but not limited to:  the Musaeo De Arte, Ponce, Puerto Rico; Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, Israel; Syracuse University; Palacio Nacional, Cartegena, Colombia; Knox College, Illinois; Palacio De Bellas Artes, Lima, Peru; Catholic University of Puerto Rico, Ponce, Puerto Rico; St. Xavier University, New Orleans; Instituto De Cultura Dominico-Americano, Dominican Republic; and Scripps College, Claremont, California.

The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, headquartered in Santa Barbara, was the recipient of John St. John’s estate after he passed away in 1986. The Foundation has an extensive collection of his art, tapestries, prints and books.

I purchased the untitled St. John work pictured above (and one other) directly from the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.  If you’re interested in seeing more, I recommend checking out the 1981 book he authored entitled Visions of Reality in Oil Painting.  Let me know if you have any additional information or pictures to share with everyone!

I thought it’d be fun to do a post on a non-listed artist that I “discovered” at an upstate New York sale around two years ago.  The auction house focused exclusively on books and print materials, so I was surprised to come across some really attractive, modern paintings by an artist named Rosalind Goldstein Bell.  Here’s an excerpt from the biography they supplied:

R. G. Bell (1912-1990) was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Rosalind attended the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in English with a minor in Music. She was an accomplished pianist and mezzo soprano. She spent many years as a concert singer, and was a personal friend of the renowned, late tenor, Jan Peerce and his late wife Alice. During family summer vacations, Rosalind always had a penchant for sketching the beautiful landscapes around Wisconsin inland lakes. Rosalind and her husband, a violinist, moved to New York during the 1950s and were a part of the Long Island and Manhattan music world. Friends included the late well-known cellist Leonard Rose and his family. In her later years on Long Island, she concentrated on painting and sketching using oils, water colors, and acrylics. She studied with the American Modernist painter, Frank Kleinholz (1901-1987). In 1983, Rosalind and her husband moved to Ithaca to be near their daughter. Despite failing health, Rosalind continued to paint and had an exhibit at the White Apple Gallery on State Street. She wanted to share her art with the world, and would be thrilled to know that people are finding pleasure in her legacy.

I guessed from the personal last line of this biography that the dozen or so paintings in the auction were probably being consigned by her family and not from some middle man.  The mention of Frank Kleinholz intrigued me even though I wasn’t familiar with his work, but it seemed to imply that he was a noted artist.  Most importantly, I was drawn to the bold colors and brush strokes in all of her pieces being sold, so I went ahead and bought a few– especially since they were going for very little money (presumably because the crowd was there to buy books, not art).

A little internet research found that, in fact, R. G. Bell doesn’t have a presence on the major art sites online.  I did see a visual similarity between Frank Kleinholz’s and some of Bell’s work, which seemed to confirm the biography’s assertion that she studied with him.  Pictured above, for example, is Bell’s Web circa 1960.  I still like her work and have two of her pieces adorning my apartment.  The other four or five paintings I recently photographed and referred to an appraiser in California who is an expert in Kleinholz to see what she thinks in terms of their appeal in terms of collectibility to fans of that artist.

I guess the lesson here- if there is one- is that while, yes, we amateur collectors enjoy the comfort of knowing that our financial investment in art is ‘safe’ when the artist is ‘listed’ and has a history of sale results, I’d encourage you to not let that knowledge hinder your decision to go after the work of ‘undiscovered’ artists to which you’re attracted!