Gallery Tour - The Christina Gallery - Martha's Vineyard

David Bareford

Born and raised in New Jersey, David Bareford moved to New England after graduation from college.  Fascinated by the watercolor medium as a student, he achieved success early and had his work regularly shown in the exhibitions of the American Watercolor Society, Allied Artists of America and the National Academy of Design.

Cape Ann, just north of Boston, has been home to many nationally known artists and occupies a prominent place in the history of art in America.  Compelled by a desire to live near the ocean, Bareford moved to Rockport in 1971.  Soon a member of the Rockport Art Association,…

Jacques N. Bellin 1703-1772

Jaques Nicolas Bellin (1703-1772) is one of the most renowned French geographers and cartographers of the eighteenth century, as well as a member of the highly influential French Enlightenment organization, the Philosophes.  At the age of 18, Bellin was appointed chief cartographer of the French Royal Navy.  He then became the first Ingenieur de la Marine of the Depot des Cartes et Plans de la Marine (the French Hydrographical Office) and was named Official Hydrographer of the French King.  In these positions, Bellin was responsible for creating accurate coastal charts for the French navy.

During Bellin’s tenure, the Depot published a…

Mitch Billis

Mitch Billis sees himself as an explorer, constantly searching for meaning in his life and in art. Paraphrasing Robert Henri’s words in The Art Spirit, Billis says, “The purpose of doing a painting is not really to do that painting; it’s to attain a state of being, and that’s what I try to do daily in my life.”

As a young child, in Frankfort, New York, Mitch enjoyed drawing; however he was discouraged from choosing art as a career. “The idea of ever making a living painting was never even thought of as a possibility,” he says. He was encouraged to…

Sandi Blanda

Sandi Blanda, self-taught folk artist, was inspired in 1983 when she discovered a sailors’ valentine for the first time.  These sea shell mosaics in octagonal cherry or mahogany cases were originally intended as souvenirs from whalers during the Victorian Era.  Sandi’s intent is to express her romantic compositions in a lacy and sometimes “funky” statement.  A love of Americana, nature and especially flowers, coupled with the changing seasons, provide the inspiration continually reflected in her work.

In addition to designing Sailors’ Valentines, Sandi is a dedicated wife and mother of two daughters.  Sandi has won many awards for her work, including…

Henri Boutet (1851-1919)

Henri Boutet’s artwork epitomizes the genre “La Parisienne.”  From simple shop girls to elegant, sophisticated ladies, Boutet captured their common qualities of coquettishness and femininity, to the point where he was nicknamed “le Petit Maître au Corset” (the Master of the Corset)!

Boutet was amongst the most gifted of that group of French painters and printmakers which found its inspiration in the life of the cafes, the restaurants and the streets of Paris in the last years of the 19th century and has come to be known as the “artist-reporters.” 

Boutet’s initial success came from his portrayals of beautiful women using fine…

Coast & Geodetic Survey

The years between the end of the American Revolution and the beginning of the Civil War were pivotal ones in the development of American coastal charting.  The country was expanding, the population was resettling and the coast lines were lengthening.  Industrialization in the north east encouraged the export of manufactured goods and the import of raw materials and with the discovery of gold in California, the country had grown from one coast to the other and maritime traffic had increased significantly.

With this increased traffic came larger and faster sea vessels and an urgent need for better coastal charts to assist…

Ronalee Crocker

Ronalee Crocker grew up in Hingham, Massachusetts within an artistic family.  She was continuously encouraged to paint by her grandfather and her brother, both of whom enjoyed painting and drawing.  “My grandfather was a decorative painter and illustrator by trade, though he was a skilled painter in oil and watercolor.  My brother and I gained confidence in our artistic ability at an early age because of his constant encouragement,” states Ronalee.

As her interest in art developed, she decided to attend Emmanuel College and graduated with a Fine Arts degree.  Soon after, she furthered her education at The School of the…

William R. Davis

Once you have seen a painting by William R. Davis, you will understand why he has a national reputation as one of the best marine artists presently working in the United States.  Mr. Davis grew up in Somerville, Massachusetts.  He is a self-taught artist whose oil paintings typically capture the serene light of sunrise or sunset on the water.  He employs many of the techniques traditionally used by American Luminist painters to realize his personal vision, showing a marked preference for 19th century subjects. 

In 1987, Davis made history with the first one-artist show ever mounted at the prestigious Mystic Maritime…

William P. Duffy

William P. Duffy was born in Boston in 1948.  He received his art education at the School of the Worcester Art Museum of Clark University and the Boston Architectural Center.  Mr. Duffy has worked in illustration and fine art for over twenty years.  However, the recent increased recognition of his artwork has enabled him to paint full-time.

“I approach painting on three different levels.  All three are interrelated, but easier to discuss separately.  The first is the aesthetic.  Composition for me is a complex exercise of arranging squares and rectangles broken by subtle curves and angles hopefully fitting into a cohesive…

Carol Fortunato

After graduating from the School of Visual Arts in New York with a degree in illustration, Carol Fortunato continued her studies at the Art Students League with teachers David Leffel and Greg Kreutz, under whose tutelage she discovered an interest in chiaroscuro (use of light and shade) painting.

Today, inspired by the simple beauty of the smaller works of Chardin, she strives to create lush still lifes that capture the quiet beauty and rhythms that she sees in the shapes of nature with oils on boards of birch or canvas.

Her still lifes with a focus on the edible are appreciated in…

Lillia Frantin

Lillia Frantin’s paintings are uniquely her own and yet keep within a Modernist tradition that places emotional response at the center of art.  Art and life are the subject; painting is how we experience them.  After Modernism, while art can still be about beauty, it will be a beauty that is complex, honest, deeply personal and engaging. Art is now connected in a direct way to life, to the viewer, to us.

Reading her notes, from an early age Lillia was drawn to art, deciding to be an artist before she even knew such a thing existed. But it was only…

Russell Gordon

Russell Gordon was born in 1968 in Maryland.  He began drawing at an early age.  He says   “In those days in school you could read or draw as soon as you were finished with an assignment so I learned that the benefit of doing well in class was the privilege of being left alone to draw. I loved drawing and found art to be the best way to record what I saw in nature and to express ideas and emotions.”

Later on Russell received his undergraduate and graduate art education at the Schuler School of Fine Arts in Baltimore.  He now…

Curtis Hanson

Curtis Hanson resides in Cornwall Hollow, Connecticut. He is a painter known for regional landscape painting in Connecticut and also in Asia, especially Thailand. He says of these seemingly disparate subjects: “I paint lily ponds here, I paint lotus ponds there. It’s just my work.”

Hanson’s love of the sacred landscape leads him on painting sojourns.  Annually, he travels to Thailand where he revels in the magnificent beauty of Southeast Asia, and he is especially focused on the northeastern agricultural landscape in an area called Esan.

Curtis began his journey as an artist at Fort Wright College in Washington State. He studied…

Theodore Jeremenko

Theodore Jeremenko was born in Yugoslavia in 1938.  When he was twelve, Ted and his family moved to the United States and settled in Philadelphia.  In 1962, Ted moved to New York City, where he began a successful career in the banking and computer industries. While his job satisfied many of his interests, he felt the need to get involved in something creative. Combined with his interest in art and the visual beauty he discovered on his early visits to the eastern tip of Long Island, Ted began painting in the early 1970’s.

Ted Jeremenko is a completely self-taught artist.  “I…

Lloyd Kelly

Lloyd Kelly is an internationally acclaimed artist whose paintings are rendered in an honest, straight-forward style, characterized by acute observation and meticulous technique.  The results are paintings that bound forward with forcefulness and originality.

Kelly was born in 1946 in New Orleans and began his art studies at the University of Nebraska, where in 1973 he obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Drawing, and then a Master’s Degree in Fine Arts and Printmaking from the University of Guanajuato, Mexico in 1975.  Soon after, he attended the Arts Students League in New York City and finally traveled to Europe for museums studies at…

Ella Knox

A native of Connecticut, Ella currently lives in Litchfield with her husband and two daughters. She is a graduate of The Cooper Union for Advancement of Science and Art, in New York City, where she earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in 1980. She has been painting the last thirty years primarily in oil and casein. Casein paint is a fast-drying water-soluble medium that generally has a glue-like consistency that can be thinned with water for the desired effect. It usually dries to a matte finish. 

Ella’s landscapes evoke a feeling of familiarity among the viewers of her work. Her…

Alain Mallet 1630-1706

Alain Manesson Mallet (1630 – 1706) was a renowned French military engineer, cartographer and surveyor.  He began his career as a soldier in the army of King Louis XIV, and later became a Sergeant-Major and an Inspector of Fortifications.  In 1683 he published his magnum opus, Description de l’Univers (Description of the Universe), a five volume work containing maps, plans, and views of the entire known world.

Mallet was an instrumental force behind the foundations of geometry and geography in Europe.  Later in his life, he served as the mathematics and geography professor in the royal court of Louis XIV.  He…

Marjorie Mason

Marjorie Mason was born in New York City and grew up in Florida and Massachusetts; she now lives year round on the Island of Martha’s Vineyard.   She graduated from the Shipley School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania and obtained her BFA at The Rhode Island School of Design.  She has studied with Master Printmaker Kathy Carracio, as well as the artists John DiMestico and the late Lois Mailou Jones.  In 1996, Marjorie attended the Cape School of Art in Provincetown, which, at the time, was under the direction of Lois Griffel. In 1998, she took a class with Don Stone on…

Elizabeth Mumford

Elizabeth Mumford grew up on a farm in the Midwest, but spent every summer on Cape Cod and became an avid sailor. Today she is painting professionally full time and lives with her son in the Victorian family house of her childhood.

Liz majored in Fine Arts at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, received her Master of Arts in Teaching at Tulane University in New Orleans, and taught art for nine years in private schools in Indiana and Hawaii.

Her style is influenced by American Folk Art, as well as, Flemish painters of the 16th Century, primarily Breughel. Liz’s “signature” is a…

Jan Pawlowski

Jan Pawlowski was born in 1949 in the small rural village of Dabek, which is 75 miles from Warsaw, Poland.  His drawing ability was apparent at an early age and he enjoyed experimenting with various art forms.  At the age of seven, Jan received recognition from the Polish National Radio for the series “Pictures from Around the World.”  During his early life he did not have a formal instructor, so nature became his teacher while painting in the countryside near his home.  His sense of sight may have been sharpened as a result of having been born with a hearing…

Camille Pissarro (1830-1903)

Camille Pissarro was born in 1830 on the Island of St. Thomas.  At the age of twelve his parents sent him to France for his education.  It was at this time that he became interested in drawing and was encouraged to pursue his new pastime by the director of his boarding house. The director, Mr. Savary, taught him to paint from nature and the principles of direct observation.  When he turned seventeen he was called back to St. Thomas by his father to learn the family trade business. In his free time Camille continued to draw on any scrap of…

Tomaso Porcacchi 1530-1585

Tomaso Porcacchi (1530 – 1585) was an Italian writer, born in Tuscany.  He lived in Venice in 1559, where he joined the celebrated printer Gabriele Giolito in making a collection of works from Greek historians and other Greek writers, all pertaining to the nation’s history.  He also published various works in poetry, history, antiquities, and geography, as well as translations of several Greek authors and improved editions of several valuable Italian works. 

His chief original writings are L’Isole del Mondo and Funerali Antichi di Diverdi Popoli e Naziono, con Figure.  L’Isole del Mondo, published in 1572, contains a series of superbly…

John Powell

As a young man, John Powell spent many hours with his father, a prominent artist in California. He began to frequent his studio, and such occasions proved to be an important step towards John’s career as an artist.

John recalls one weekend in particular when long hours were spent in the studio listening to his father and artist Will Foster discuss color.  “I was on a bus going home to Hollywood. The evening was warm and the shadows strong. Suddenly it hit me – there they were all the colors my father and Will were talking about.  The trees weren’t just…

Pierre-Joseph Redoute (1759-1840)

Pierre-Joseph Redoute has been considered the most famous botanical painter in the world and many of his works hang in palaces and museums.   He was the official court painter to Queen Marie Antoinette and Empress Josephine of France. 

Born in Belgium in 1759, Redoute was blessed with exceptional artistic talent, much of which was inherited from the artists within the family.  At the age of thirteen, Redoute left home and worked as an interior decorator and commission painter.  It was during this time that Redoute became acquainted with the work of Dutch flower painters Brueghel, Ruysch, van Huysum and de Heem. …

Marilyn Simandle

Beginning with finger paints and progressing to national acclaim, Marilyn Simandle has been a painter since age 6.  Originally taught and encouraged by her mother, herself a painter and musician, she grew up in the San Francisco Bay area.  Marilyn received a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Art from San Jose State University.

Perhaps inheriting a love of music from her mother, Marilyn has a baby grand piano in her studio and enjoys playing it during her breaks from painting.  After graduating from college in 1969, Marilyn put her brushes down to become a stewardess.  She and her husband Ted Goerschner are…

Aleta Steward

Aleta Steward has been painting since she was very young.  Fascinated by the natural world, she made regular trips to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Natural History, and the Hayden Planetarium.  It was these forays which marked the beginning of a unique career specializing in wildlife and animal paintings. 

With exacting attention to detail, Aleta applies years of observation to create a scientifically honest representation down to the smallest features of her softly drawn animals.  From the placement of an ear to the size and shape of a bird’s beak to its seasonal plumage, Ms. Steward’s creatures have…

John C. Traynor

John Traynor combines the 19th century element of atmosphere with the realistic, yet soft rendering of color and light reminiscent of the Dutch Masters to create his own distinctive style.

John was born in 1961 and spent his early years growing up in Chester and Mendham, New Jersey.  His classical training began at the Delbarton School in Morristown, New Jersey, and afterward continued his art education at Paier College of Art in New Haven, Connecticut.  As a merit scholar, John studied figure painting with Frank Mason at the Art Students League of New York.  He concentrated on his understanding of form…

Christie Velesig

Attending parochial school in Providence, Rhode Island, did not provide Christie Cardillo Velesig with an opportunity to study art; neither did business courses at the University of Louisville.  But she would drive up College Hill to the Rhode Island School of Design to look at the sculpture and would go alone to the museums in Louisville.  Later, in her first art class at Cape Cod Community College, it all came together for her.  “I sat down and I started to draw.  I thought, ‘My God, why didn’t I do this before?’  It came easy.”

After Christie finished taking every art class…

Lynn Walker

Think of a clear day and the colors of Lynn Walker’s paintings will vividly come to mind.  With bravura brush strokes and the colors of sea and sky, Lynn is able to capture a fleeting moment in one’s life on canvas.  Whether it is young children playing, an interior scene, or a luscious bowl of fruit, Lynn gives the viewer a glimpse of a private scene.  With light splashing across her canvases she illuminates both the painting’s subjects and the viewer’s memory, inviting him or her to establish an immediate personal connection with the image. 

With skill and a joyous freedom,…

Lori Zummo

Contemporary artist Lori Zummo paints in a style evocative of the American Barbizon School. She received her BFA from Syracuse University in 1984. After receiving the first place award in oil painting from the New York chapter of the National Society of Arts and Letters in 1986, Ms. Zummo was granted a full scholarship to the New York Academy of Art’s Master Class program. The NYAA’s extensive study program, based on the Italian Renaissance and the French Academic training tradition further enhanced her style and technique.

Drawing inspiration directly from nature, her landscapes wonderfully capture the soft detail of land and…

Gazette du Bon Ton

Gazette du Bon Ton was a legendary Paris fashion magazine that provided inspiration for designers and dressmakers all over the world from 1912 until 1925.  Each month, a group of major Paris fashion houses, including Worth, Lanvin, Poiret and Vionnet, collaborated on a monthly portfolio of up-to-date designs for dresses, hats and outerwear.

Lucien Vogel, the director of the magazine, assembled a team of regular illustrators and gave them carte blanche to interpret the fashions in their own way.  Each artist developed his own style, often using witty titles to suggest a story behind each drawing.

A method called pochoir was used…