Previewing upcoming art exhibitions from coast to coast, American Art Collector is a unique monthly magazine specially designed to bring living representational artists, galleries and active art collectors together in one place.
Welcome to the February issue of American Art Collector! I am writing this on the last day of 2025 and I am more excited than ever for the outlook of 2026. Having recently come back from Miami Art Week, I can firmly say that contemporary realism is not only the top genre for collectors, but also the style of art that people gravitate to the most. Sure, Rihanna was at Art Basel Miami this year and Leonardo DiCaprio comes every year to see the newest abstract art installations. The most viewed posts from the event on social media were Regular Animals by Mike Winkelmann (Beeple), which I would classify as a kind of realism. It featured robotic dogs with the hyper-realistic heads of famous figures such as Mark Zuckerberg, Elon…
As we settle into 2026 and have had a chance to catch our breath after what, at least for me, felt like a protracted holiday season that began in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving and lasted well into the first week of January, it’s time to look around and ahead at what’s shaping up to be an exciting year in the world of contemporary realism. The February issue is testament to it. As always, it shines a spotlight on the vast spectrum of what representational art can be. Having such a wide range of artwork that falls under the umbrella of contemporary realism is both the joy of the genre and sometimes the challenge. After all, we can’t be all things to all people, but we can make room…
January 30-February 12 Tony De Luz Blue Rain Gallery Santa Fe, NM • (505) 954-9902 www.blueraingallery.com Through February 1 Jon Ching: Escape Haven Gallery Northport, NY • (631) 757-0500 www.havengallery.com Through February 1 Art Palm Beach Palm Beach County Convention Center West Palm Beach, FL www.artpalmbeach.com February 6-March 1 Marcos Lucero: Somos Sueños Hecho a Mano Santa Fe, NM • (505) 916-1341 www.hechoamano.org February 7-March 1 Floral: James Andrew Smith & Owen Mann Wally Workman Gallery Austin, TX • (512) 472-7428 www.wallyworkmangallery.com Through February 8 Cynthia Daignault: Light Atlas UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum of Art Irvine, CA • (949) 824-1449 www.ocma.art February 10-21 Robert Moore: Step by Step Altamira Fine Art Scottsdale, AZ • (480) 949-1256 www.altamiraart.com February 3-March 13 142nd Annual Members’ Exhibition Salmagundi Club – Skylight Gallery…
When the New Generation Festival decided to commission a portrait for the grand walls of the Palazzo Corsini in Florence, they turned to British painter Jamie Coreth, known for his ability to blend classical poise with contemporary depth. The subject was none other than the Duke of Kent, a patron of the festival whose long and distinguished public life made him a fitting addition to the Palazzo’s storied collection. For Coreth, the commission was as much a dialogue as a depiction. “As ever with a portrait,” he explains, “my aim was to communicate the experience of sitting with someone in a way that resonates as true to them.” The Duke’s intelligence and thoughtfulness were immediately apparent, and Coreth sought to capture that quiet strength. Among the personal details that shaped…
This is love. In Stephen Early’s Come Away With Me, two dancing lovers seen through a subtle and subterranean veil of soft darkness arrive in a glow of light placed carefully to a cue called on a darkened stage, with their entwined hands of grace in a moment of touch in a sensual and naked intimacy. Their arms are concealed behind bodies pressed together in a tight embrace of mutual solitude. As unheard phrases of distant music play, gray figures of other dancers move close behind them, and they are caught in the gesture and delicacy of a private moment of connection, like a scene imagined in a smoky choreography by Damien Jalet, and that clean but soft-edged beam of theatrical light sequesters our couple from these others’ insulated isolation. What…
John Alexander believes in the saying, “Paint what you know.” But even one of his great influences, J.M.W. Turner, said, “My business is to paint what I see, not what I know is there.” Alexander and Turner use different meanings of the word “know.” Turner, undoubtedly, was referring to knowledge of facts and Alexander refers to experience and awareness. He says, “I like to paint a landscape I know. I know what it sounds like at night and I know what it smells like, how frogs sound, what’s harmless and what can kill you. My love and familiarity for nature gives me tremendous inspiration for imagery. I have a better understanding of what I’m doing…because I know.” His first New York exhibition had been at the American Academy and Institute…
