Colleen Browning: The Enchantment of Realism
“The post-modernist mind-set—which exalts cultural anarchy, bereft of academic, intellectual or technical standards—usually dismissed artists like Browning,” Dr. Eliasoph notes. Colleen Browning started as a child protégée. With a career spanning seventy years, she garnered praise as one of the country’s leading Realist painters, even as the movement at that time was dominated by men. Browning grounds the scope of her work in the New York arts scene of the 1950s, when she excelled at Magic Realism, a period of particular interest to Eliasoph. “Inspired by so many of these superbly multitalented mid-century painters, my professional task has been to restore these artists—Paul Cadmus, Robert Vickrey, and now Colleen Browning.” A Browning retrospective will begin touring on May 24; see it at Fairfield University (“Early Works, 1930–60” at the Bellarmine Museum of Art and “Late Works: 1961–2003” at the Walsh Art Gallery). January 24–March 24, 2013.
Robert C. Jackson: Paintings
Eliasoph lights up when he talks about “satirical complexities” in the work of contemporary Realist Robert C. Jackson. Self-taught, he began as a systems engineer at Motorola and switched to painting in 1997. A stream of exhibits around the country followed. Robert C. Jackson, the second new book, features more than 130 images of paintings, photographs, and sketches that document the rise of a unique talent, which Eliasoph calls a “feisty independence…fortified with healthy dosages of nonconforming eccentricity."