New exhibit in Los Angeles!

This is an upcoming four person exhibit at the Thomas Paul Fine Art gallery in Los Angeles. If you are in the area be sure to drop by to see some spectacular, never before seen paintings by Harry Carmean and some miniature surreal paintings by Miriam Slater. All four artists have incorporated the ideas of Lorser Feitelson, a well known figurative and abstract painter. For more information click on the image.

Harry Carmean etchings

Harry Carmean has been making etchings beginning in the early 1970's on through to the 1990's. The first print done in 1972 was the "The Poem" (based on an oil painting of the same theme) which is the third image from the top. Carmean had just bought his press and this was the only lithograph he ever did. The subject matter of his other prints includes figure compositions and nudes (throughout the 1970's) and cafe scenes (done in the late 1970's after a trip to Spain). In the 1990's Carmean went off on a tangent and made some highly innovative prints with erotic themes and are we ever glad he did! (To see Carmean's erotic etchings please the erotic website coffeedrawings.com.) Many of the prints were made by master printer, John Greco of Josephine Press in Los Angeles, and others were printed by Carmean on his own press. There are still some plates that have never been made into editions and some of these will debut this year at the Poetic Eye.

Miriam Slater's telephones

Miriam Slater did a series of telephones in the 1970's. It all began when she painted one for herself and then all her friends wanted phones, too. She ended up doing about fifteen, with many of them being specific designs tailor made for each client. For example, the cubist phone above has a portrait of the client's golden retriever on it. The phones were featured in the tabloid Star magazine (bottom article) in 1983 and a few of Slater's phones are still available through the Poetic Eye Gallery online.

Harry Carmean exhibition at the Biltmore Hotel in Montecito

For those of you in the Los Angeles area, you are invited to come to an an exhibition of Harry Carmean's art while entertained by singer Lois Mahalia at the historic Biltmore Hotel in Santa Barbara. The Poetic Eye has collaborated with with the Bottoms Art Galleries in Santa Barbara to produce this event which will prove to be a visual and acoustical feast. It all starts on Thursday June 10 at 5:00 (and goes through 9:00). Carmean's work can be viewed anytime, so if you are in the area, be sure to drop by the gallery which is past the main lobby on the right.

Recent Miriam Slater sales

Above are some recent sales of Miriam Slater's art in a variety of styles, both eastern and western.

Recent Carmean paintings sales

The recession has not slowed down the sales of paintings by Harry Carmean and other artists at the Poetic Eye Gallery. The following pieces are some of the few that have been sold through this gallery.

About Lorser Feitelson

Lorser Feitelson was one of California's true master painters who worked in both a figurative and abstract style. He was also Harry Carmean's mentor and friend for over thirty years and so there is a strong tie stylistically between the two artists.  Feitelson originally lived and studied art in Paris, France and then moved over to the United States in the early 1900's with his wife Kitty (also an artist) who appears in his work of that time (second painting from the top is of her and her sister). He later moved to the Los Angeles area and married Helen Lundeburg who was also a painter and who became just as as well known as Feitelson.

His earliest work was inspired by the Italian Futurists where Feitelson uses simplified moving lines as can be seen as the third painting from the top. Although the kinetic works appear abstract they are actually based on the lines of the human figure, which was also the case with some of his later abstract works. He moved on to create some stunning Nazarine inspired works of peasants, then on to some Baroque and Mannerist inspired works in the 1930's and 40's. It is this period that influenced Harry Carmean the most in terms of subject matter, the strong use of darks and lights and a painterly style.

In the 1940's Feitelson started exploring more abstract forms of expression resulting in his Magical Space Form series and hard edge "Boulder" series. He was the founder of the Hard-edge movement in Los Angeles of which his wife Helen Lundeburg and Eva Slater (another Poetic Eye artist) were core members. He died in 1978, but his legacy continues, since aside from being a master artist, he was a well known teacher and historian as well. The paperback book shown above is out of print but still available if you look on the internet and it has some excellent reproductions of Feitelson's figure drawings.