Curator’s Statement:

Contemporary realism is an important emerging art movement in which living artists pursue standards of aesthetic beauty and good technique established by the master artists of the past while tackling a diverse variety of subjects and themes. A new generation of realists are emerging and are beginning to exhibit their work regionally and nationally. This exhibition, Local Visions of Realism, presents four such artists.

Michael Pianta, Audra Pianta, Andrew Boatright, and Daniel Thornton are four such artists. The work of these artists should appeal to anyone interested in well crafted, realistic artworks, the emerging contemporary realist movement, and the growing number of realist artists in the metroplex area.

Local Visions of Realism focuses on still life, with landscape and portraiture providing a secondary focus. Through the context of still-life paintings, viewers can see the consummate skill of these artists and also how their unique aesthetic sensibilities manifest despite superficially similar conceptions of art. This exhibition also includes of a selection of landscape and portrait work in order to begin to suggest the diversity of work that contemporary realists produce. The contemporary realist ethos can be applied to almost any subject and I felt that any exhibition intended to introduce contemporary realism would be remiss if it neglected to suggest the movement’s breadth of subject. The contemporary realist movement is still growing and seems poised to become one of the major movements in 21st century art. I hope viewers enjoy this small sampling of contemporary realist work and are inspired to look deeper into this exciting artistic development.