Friday, March 29, 2013

Ready Made Framing Room

The ready made framing room is looking good and organized---ready to go.... Come to JR Mooney Galleries for all your framing needs, this is our standard sizes that are ready to sell ...bring your pictures by to get framed ..

We are also experts in Custom framing......210.828.8214






X. Song Jiang-- 2013 ---At J.R. Mooney Galleries

These are the new  Xiao Jiang paintings that were purchased at ArtExpo 2013.  Available for sale at J.R. Mooney Galleries. 


Call 210.828.8214 for details on pricing and sizes. 







Thursday, March 28, 2013

Back to Texas from New York ArtExpo 2013


...New York ArtExpo 2013 was a success. Mr. Mooney of J.R. Mooney Galleries was impressed with all the vendors, the products available and the quality of the fine art for purchase. 

 Now, J.R. Mooney Galleries is proud to announce the availability of 5 new small paintings by internationally acclaimed Impressionistic painter, X. Song Jiang. 

--X. Jiang won the 2012 Gold Medal Award funded by the Oil Painters of America and the National Juried Exhibition Association Signature Division. 

***One of the new paintings available by X. Jiang for sale at J.R. Mooney Galleries of Fine Art is:

“Muskoka”
X. Song Jiang
Oil on panel
8” x 10”
 Call 210.828.8214 for pricing

A rocky buttress juts forth leading the viewer into the abyss of watery loneliness.  A central element in the figure/ground relationship, the seemingly abstract micro-levee is speckled with crops of hatched-in vegetation and water grasses. This angled outcropping of light colored earth tones abruptly ends at a buoyant but eerily still flatboat canoe.  The solo manmade component is reflecting an impressionistic rendition of itself in the cerulean tones below, a watery and mirrored doppelganger void of the same personification as seen in the desolate dinghy.  Heavily accentuated and contrasting shadows made by the setting sun add a much needed breath of richness to the lifeless vessel; an important element that acts as a connection point from the pier to the various strata of tree-lined reflections and bands of monotone viridian horizon lines.


Placed in the upper eight of the overall picture, these strong parallel delineations rise from the lower right, upside-down reflections to the yellow ochre autumn foliage which gleams in its seasonal beauty to darkened emulations of coniferous canopy. The escalating rhythm is broken by a dominantly impasto-esque shoreline of knee high grasses, a horizontal base for the majestic treetops of the Canadian wilderness; back-dropped by the lilac brume of mountainous ambiguity.   A bleached-out sky overcast with heavy atmospheric wintery gloom pushes down on this fleeting light with threats of snow and artic temperament.

© Gabriel Diego Delgado
gabrield@jrmooneygalleries.com
www.jrmooneygalleries.com


Friday, March 22, 2013

Blog Press Preview of Night of the Artists

Dr. Steven Karr hosted a blogger press preview for the Night of the Artists exhibition at the Briscoe Western Art Museum.

J.R. Mooney Galleries was in attendance to check on the great artwork of Mark Keathley and Cliff Cavin.

With two levels and multiple free standing walls, the layout of the exhibition compliments the interior of the Jack Guenther Pavilion.

Here are some images of Mark Keathley and Cliff Cavin's work at the Briscoe

Both Mark and Cliff are represented by J.R. Mooney Galleries of Fine Art .



To view Cliff Cavin's work that is for sale at JR Mooney Galleries click here:

http://www.jrmooneygalleries.com/index.php?route=product/manufacturer/product&manufacturer_id=587


To View Mark Keathley's work that is available for sale click here:

http://www.jrmooneygalleries.com/index.php?route=product/manufacturer/product&manufacturer_id=131











Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Night of the Artists at the Briscoe Western Art Museum


Cliff Cavin and Mark Keathly at the Briscoe Western Art Museum

--Two of the artists that J.R. Mooney Galleries represents is in the annual Night of the Artists at the Briscoe Western Art Museum.  

Read the full article at:


On page 74-75

***Thanks to NHOME Magazine and The Briscoe Western Art Museum!***







Night of the Artists

A Cultural Culmination of Contemporary Cowboy and Western Art


There is a robust and rustic rendition of contemporary Western Art rounding out the rodeo and Fiesta season at the Briscoe Western Art Museum in San Antonio with the Night of the Artists Art Sale & Reception on March 23, 2013.  For over a decade the Night of the Artists Art Sale & Reception  has had the opportunity to celebrate contemporary Western Art with the who’s who of Western artists. In its twelfth year, this art sale continues on display for a free month-long Night of Artists Public Exhibition which began as a conceptual art idea perfect for San Antonio and staged at the “gateway” to South Texas, says the Briscoe Museum’s Executive Director, Dr. Steven Karr.  


On its website fact page it states, “The Briscoe Western Art Museum (governed by the National Western Art Foundation), is a 501 (c)(3) non-profit corporation established to create a nationally recognized museum open to the public and devoted to the art, history, and culture of the American West, with a contextual emphasis on San Antonio, South Texas, and the Southwest.”  “The Briscoe Museum was formalized with a substantial financial contribution from the late Governor Dolph Briscoe, Jr. (April 23, 1923 – June 27, 2010),” says Karr.   This lead monetary gift established the funds to create a physical museum in downtown San Antonio that would house such a conceptual Western Art endeavor; ultimately located in the former San Antonio Central Library built in 1930.


The Briscoe is a non-profit corporation established to create a nationally recognized museum open to the public and devoted to the art, history, and culture of the American West, with a contextual emphasis on San Antonio, South Texas, and the Southwest.  “The Briscoe Museum was formalized with a contribution from the late Governor Dolph Briscoe, Jr. (April 23, 1923 – June 27, 2010),” says Dr. Karr.   This lead gift established the funds to create a physical museum in downtown San Antonio that would house the Western art endeavor; ultimately located in the historically significant former San Antonio Central Library built in 1930.

 “The Briscoe Museum has evolved along with the Night of the Artists”, says Karr. Previously staged at various venues and locations throughout the decade-long run, last year’s Night of the Artists (2012) finally saw its home venue christening on the picturesque grounds of the Briscoe’s Jack Guenther Pavilion; part of the one and one-quarter acres of land comprising two buildings and the new expansive McNutt Courtyard and Sculpture Garden located on the historic San Antonio River Walk.  



“There is something unique to this year’s Night of the Artists, says Dr. Karr. A new approach has reshaped this signature San Antonio exhibition into a fun and festive art sale with a competitive application process for the artists. “Night of Artists has turned into the largest contemporary Western Art show in Texas with 65 artists featured in this year’s exhibition,” said Dr. Karr.

Even through such rigorous processes, two of the spotlighted artists in the Briscoe exhibition are officially represented by a local San Antonio Gallery.  Cliff Cavin and Mark Keathley have been a fixture of the San Antonio Art scene for collectively over 30 years; Cliff Cavin at the Boerne J.R. Mooney Gallery and Mark Keathley at J.R. Mooney Galleries of Fine Art-San Antonio.

Although they have two different styles and aesthetics, Cavin and Keathley bring a true Texas flair to the Briscoe’s Night of the Artists. Cliff Cavin is a landscape purist, dedicated to the capturing of light, of atmosphere, of sub-stratospheric heavens bounded by impressionistic traditionalism, while Mark Keathley’s evocative sensibilities are hammered home with lively landscapes and nostalgic pictorial epiphanies of Native American cultural identity. 

In Clouds over Nambe, a large 36” x 48” landscape in Night of the Artists, Cavin portrays a cerulean skyline; full of Crepuscular light, enraptured with billows of atmospheric haze; lingering on the dying days of summer sentimentality. The autumn blossoming of the Chamisa, with its golden bloom accents this stellar impressionistic landscape painting of NambeNew Mexico; back dropped by the Sangre de Christo Mountains.

Winding stretches of desert sand obscured by dense patches of typical New Mexico vegetation invite the viewer into a bathed foreground of aureate shrubbery.  Exposed groundcover creates quasi dirt path trails that seem to dissolve into the background.  Tiered horizontal parallels of flora generate diminishing outcroppings; leading the eye straight to point “A” –aka center point on the horizon-line.  Placing this geographical line of demarcation line directly midpoint of the picture plane, the configuration plays neither favorites to land nor the sky; balancing the importance of the artist’s view. The silhouetted mountain range transforms into a strip of neutral value and tone easing the transition between the earthly divisions.

As derived from over three decades of careful study, Cliff knows that an object in the distance will shift toward blue because it does not reflect as much light.  He revs down his color palette by taking cues from the masters like Leonardo da Vinci who noticed that as a landscape recedes from the viewer its colors and tones alter (aerial perspective or atmospheric perspective). Well played Cliff, well played indeed! A textbook landing of hue-rrific proportions for such majestic geographical icons.  Nevertheless, Cavin ventures on and reverses the previously used conventional color theory tuning into another conjecture and depicts clouds growing darker and warmer instead of cooler; dipping in with subtle scarlet blends in the otherwise blanched firmament.

Contrasting Cavin, Keathley’s painterly essence is found in his quasi-hyper realism.  Capturing water ripples, muscle contours, textures and various other details, Keathley proves that Contemporary Western Art is making significant contributions to the Art World. Native Sun, a 36” x 48” painting depicting five Native Americans complete with War paint, mounted on horseback is a titled play on words; referencing American Patriotic identities with Native American religious celestial bodies. 

Careful attention has been paid to each horse’s coat, unique marking differentiate the equine selections; mimicked in the smeared applications of Native American bodily decorations. However, poised at various attentive gestures, the signatory Western Art animals are looking in different directions- each reflecting on his own territorial owning of the vast open plains. But, there is no outwardly distinction of the contemplative notions of the Indian riders. Silhouetted by the drooping setting sun, each face is hallowed by a illustrious glow, accenting the facial profile, eluding to a religious overtone or coveted nostalgic nobility of these long gone inhabitants. 

Bold highlights and accents of blue, orange, yellow and red litter the foreground grasses, while partly sunny and ephemeral heavens juxtapose the detailed subjects. The quadrigeminal composition of true “American” equestrians offsets to the right, placing the second from left rider in the center focal point. Holding the only modern technological weapon, the rifle, this warrior is surveying the immeasurable pride lands of this tribal band.  Mark Keathley does poetic justice with Native Sun, with all its sentimental and nostalgic portrayals of romanticized Native American Art.


Rounding out the one night of festivities for Night of the Artists Art Sale & Reception, Karr closes with a notable summary of events for The Briscoe Museum exhibition. “Even if you’re not an art purchaser, keep in mind it is whole heartedly a free contemporary Western art exhibition and will remain on view for a month at the Jack Guenther Pavilion…becoming a representational precursor to what the public will see in the adjacent galleries of The Briscoe when it opens its doors in the fall.”

The Night of the Artists Public Exhibition will run March 24 through April 28, 2013. The BriscoeMuseum is located at 210 W. Market St.San AntonioTX 78205, Tel. 210.299.4499.  For more information, visit their website at: www.briscoemuseum.org.



© Gabriel Diego Delgado





Tuesday, March 19, 2013

A generic gestalt of tranquility from Richard Riverin


Le Ruisseau
Richard Riverin
30” x 24”
Oil
$7250

J.R. Mooney Galleries of Fine Art
San Antonio, Texas
210-828-8214

A serene sky of cerulean stratums create a tiered arrangement of artist-invented blues and whites. The two houses are so plain in structure that they elude to an artist memory more than an actuality, each one with its own simplified tree. Riverin cares more for the impressionistic qualities of the setting natural light and dominate shadows blanketing the opposing walls of these residences. He completes this trademark landscape with picturesque buildings, but names the painting for the stream that trickles in through the lower half of the painting. 


 Several strong horizontal linear elements act as visual steps as we are led from horizon to riverbank to opposing shore and down to the foreground; all painted with repetitive palette knife swatches that compliment the levelness of the composition with their hard edged impasto ridges. Accents of a patented crimson color compose the brush, the only evidence of a turning season. 

Gleaming with a generic gestalt, Le Ruisseau succeeds as a straightforward and generalized account of ones man’s artistic vision.

© Gabriel Diego Delgado

Monday, March 11, 2013

Nostalgia for All Country Time Lovers


Arthur McCall
“November”
Acrylic on panel
$995.00

-In the backwoods of a scenic schmaltz lives Arthur McCall’s signatory world of Country Time aesthetic- memories of a rustic longing.  He revels in the days of wind pumps, water wells and simple living. He illustrates a sense of trouble-free days, ones on which you cannot help but stop and watch the quail feed on the scattered underbrush.

“November” is a 24” x 18” acrylic on panel that holds true to McCall’s self proclaimed purity of stoic sentimentality.

Systematically arranged by structural size, each constructional element increases in size from left to right. The shed bookended on the left side of the panel lines up against the gawky and naked tree which is countered by the crumbling façade of a rusting water tower- an abandoned architectural epitaph contrasted by the slender architectural lines of the elongated wind pump.


The circular water well is nestled in the middle of the composition, stained with corrosion dripping down to the parched soil. Semi-arid and hazy, the landscape seems to breathe dust while wearing a speckled skin of sagebrush and cactus.

Upon closer inspection, one can see a repeated shape in the barren landscape. Notice the shape of the middle fowl; wing down and slender body angled. Now compare with that with the contour of the vegetation-less area housing the feathered flights- visualize the outline of a downward wing, body, and beak.

Compositionally complete, the foreground, middle ground, background and horizon match up perfectly. The center line evenly divides the viewing in half with one being the ground and other the sky. Plain in its effectiveness McCall successfully alienates technology in this autumn landscape.

© Gabriel Diego Delgado
J.R. Mooney Galleries of Fine Art
gabrield@jrmooneygalleries.com


“November” is available for purchase at J.R. Mooney Galleries- $995.00 (canvas only).

www.jrmooneygalleries.com
210-828-8214

Texas Hill Country Revisited


Cliff Cavin
Texas Wildflowers”
22” x 30”
2013
$3275

Texas Wildflowers”, a simplistic but elegantly painted hill country scene is a new painting by San Antonio landscape painter, Cliff Cavin.  Although the title declares the painting should be about the broad expanse of the flower blooms; the Indian Paintbrushes, Bluebonnets, and such- the tree line steals the spotlight. I am not talking about the overpowering Oak that you might think, but the creeping silently and gangly small twig-like narrow saplings off to the left that divvy for our attention--like some outstretched alien finger; unidentifiable but curiously inviting.


Pictorially, Cavin angles the composition upward to the right side of the canvas; an unusual pictorial angle that accents the shape of Mother Nature’s irregular rows of wind dispersed flowers. Orange, Blue, Green, and White gently roll with blooming abundance as each distinct hue bears witness to the ever resilient Texas Hill Country. However, wallowing in the field of undisturbed meadow, there is an oddly pronounced large patch of chartreuse blooms.  This oasis of vivid greenery holds the field stable and in view, like a horticultural anchor, keeping our eye from wandering off the picture plane.  Shallow shades fill the mid-ground as we assess the midday sunlight. Profiled against the dark shrubbery are pockets of extended stems that hold some flowers high above others, extending out into the warmness of the day.

©Gabriel Diego Delgado
JR Mooney Galleries
gabrield@jrmooneygalleries.com

Texas Wildflowers” and many other paintings by Cliff Cavin are available for purchase at: www.jrmooneygalleries.com

Friday, March 8, 2013

Death Beckons


William Henry Margetson
 (1861-1940)

-Gabriel Diego Delgado
gabrield@jrmooneygalleries.com 
210-828-8214


William Henry Margetson studied at the South Kensington Schools and at the Royal Academy, where he exhibited from 1885. Known more as an illustrator for literary classics like The Tiger of Mysore, Trefoil, The Spider's Eye, A March on London, Red Morn, The Lights of Sydney, and Straits of Time by Christopher Hare; Margetson executed a series of small paintings he titled “In the Straits of Time”- a collective of watercolor/gauche paintings and prints that were based on a play of the book by Hare.

Usually upbeat and full of whimsical muse, Margetson’s female figures border on illustrious Art Deco beauties, however with “In the Straits of Time”, he  forces us to ponder the lives of the misfortunate.  Recounting tails of death, famine, misery and the Black Plague, Margetson provides a monotone palette of black and white melancholic images that evoke a sense of dire straits.

Of the 5 works available, one can be singled out as a masterfully denoted summarization of such a series. The singular painting depicts the scene in the book/play where four completely different types of people inhabit the same room; each wholly concerned about the deteriorating health of a little girl.

Grimly silhouetted in the background, a Catholic Nun and a Victorian Englishman lurk off to the left hand side. Concealed in shadows, they come to represent so much more than mere mortal aspirations.  Metaphorically, the older man’s grimace and fragility mocks the innocence and jubilation of the adolescent little girl, while the Nun ponders an existential afterlife bound by the glory of faith, accepting of her inevitable fate and infantile demise.

Stark contrasts can be drawn between the two characters [caregiver and child]. Head wrap, shawl, bedding, and nightgown give sterile misconstrued assumptions of purity. Engulfed  in a tender embrace, the motherly figures have eyes that are shut with tenderness; a sentimentality one can only give with sincere compassion; while the dazed and widen eyes of the child turn a gaze to the unknown, with an apprehension of a beckoning light drawing ever closer.

©Gabriel Diego Delgado

5 paintings by W.H. Margetson available at J.R. Mooney Galleries of Fine Art
11” x 8”, watercolor/gauche, on paper, artist signed $500.00 each