Bodies of Work: Contemporary Figurative Painting

Human forms can be intensely intimate or broadly universal. Today’s best figurative artists use the human form as a tool to express varied content and contemporary topics involving race, gender, political and social issues. The paintings depict our feelings and sentiments, our sense of belonging to a larger community in the contemporary world, while capturing the impulses behind the range of figuration presented by today’s contemporary international artists. Bodies of Work examines the continuing compulsion in fine art to render the human figure through a curated collection of the work of international artists.

Painted Landscapes: Contemporary Views

This book explores American landscape painting today, its relevance in the contemporary art world, and its historic roots. This volume profiles sixty individual living artists whose contributions distinguish important aspects of the genre and address land use, nature appreciation, and ecology through landscape painting. Encompassing every style from traditional realism (with a contemporary edge) to abstraction and non-objectivity, these contemporary artists range from today’s art stars to emerging or regionally recognized talent in the eastern, western, and southwestern regions of the nation. An additional chapter addresses urban landscapes nationally. The range of styles and reputations presented creates an encompassing survey of the trends and enduring elements in this genre of painting and the art market today.

Available now at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Reviews of Painted Landscapes:

With Painted Landscapes, Lauren P. Della Monica illustrates the importance of variety and strength in landscapes in a way that resonates far beyond tradition.’ 

ArtDaily.org, 8/18/13

Lauren P. Della Monica rethinks contemporary art in her book ‘Painted Landscapes.’ 

Nancy Schoeffler, Hartford Courant. 

 Flying the Colors:

Flying the Colors: The Unseen Treasures of Nineteenth-Century American Marine Art, which I wrote in 2007-08 (and which is co-authored by Alan Granby and Janice Hyland) is available at amazon.com or through Mystic Seaport, The Museum of America and the Sea.  After so much hard work and such a long wait it is a tremendous pleasure to see it in print.  I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

For those with a keen interest in marine painting the illustrations in this anthology will be hard to resist.  The text of the book is also rich with pleasure and consists of five chapters: Fine Art (including the work of Robert Salmon, Fitz Henry Lane, William Bradford, Francis Augustus Silva, Alfred Thomas Bricher and William Trost Richards); American Marine Art (including paintings of harbor scenes, the work of the Luminists, refined ship portraiture and American primitive ship portraiture); Chapter Three is devoted to the work of American artist James E. Buttersworth; Chapter Four  is dedicated to painter Antonio Jacobsen; and finally the International chapter (including works depicting American ships in foreign ports.)

Reviews for Flying the Colors:

The Autumn/Winter issue of Antiques and Fine Art Magaizine raves “the scholarship and amount of information presented earns Flying the Colors a place on the bookshelf of anyone even remotely interested in the subject” and the material presented “is easily accessible to both the novice and seasoned enthusiast of maritime art.”

Art historian John Wilmerding writes “not since the first major publication on this subject over three decades ago… have we seen such a magisterial visual survey of the field.”

“A salt breeze lifts these pages,” writes Laura Beach for Antiques and the Arts Online.

“This book is one great leap to a fuller appreciation of American marine art,” writes A.J. Peluso, Jr.  in Maine Antique Digest.

“The prose throughout is a joy to read, and insightful and engaging,” writes book critic Sabu Advani on www.speedreaders.info.