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05-Mar-2007
Water & Wine exhibit at Benjamin Art Gallery
Hagerstown, Maryland - Benjamin Art Gallery, LLC presents the Water and Wine Art Show featuring artwork by Brad Clever and Steve Luhrs. Original oil
paintings representing wine, women in water, scenes of Italy, portraitures,
still lifes, etc. will be featured. Meet the Artists during public
reception on March 23 at 6pm that will include a live jazz ensemble,
appetizers catered by the Gourmet Goat, wine, and beverages. The show will
be on display beginning March 23 through March 31.
In addition, Captain of Redskins' Super Bowl Championship teams in 1982 and
1987 Dave Butz will attend the preview reception. This all-time NFL great
is an art collector and is supporting the show Artists.
Original paintings and limited edition prints will be available for
purchase. Admission is free and the gallery is handicap-accessible. 1303
Pennsylvania Avenue, Hagerstown, Maryland; www.benjaminartgallery.com,
877-797-4775.
More information about the Artists:
Brad Clever
A painter of wine.
Brad has been an illustrator for all of his professional life. He retired
after 35 years as Art Director for a company that manufactures seasonal
decorations. Brad has been painting still life themes for the past 25 years.
He has been represented by art galleries around the country. His work has
been shown from Washington DC to New York City, Carmel CA, Palm Beach FL,
and Charleston SC. With that national exposure Brad's work is in many
collections nationwide and his work has been featured in "American Artist"
magazine with an article and the cover.
Several years ago Brad first saw the work of Thomas Arvid in Palm Beach Fl.
Arvid is the pre-eminent wine theme painter in the country. Being a novice
wine enthusiast at the time, Brad was quite taken by the visual power that
the objects associated with wine drinking can elicit. Brad is known for the
realism and the extraordinary detail in his work, so the leap to putting his
own stamp on the theme was a natural. Brad's solution was to bring objects
and patterns into the work as he had done so many times before in his many
still life paintings. The rendering of the many and varied surfaces in
Brad's work were always a delight for him, and with the glass, metal and
woods in the wine theme, Brad was in his element. Hopefully you will
appreciate the results of Brad's work and he hopes that you will be moved by
them and that you too will visually enter that state of mind that only the
enjoyment of wine can evoke.
Stephen Luhrs, Artist's Bio
Stephen Luhrs is a local area artist and has been painting and sculpting for
more than 40 years though not with any formal art training. Previously, he
has used his design and sculpture skills as a "Bench" jeweler. "They," he
explains, "are the people who actually make the jewelry sold by retailers."
This is his first showing with Benjamin Art Gallery, LLC. He is a liberal
arts graduate of Gettysburg College and currently employed with The Beistle
Company in Shippensburg, PA where he has worked for more than 36 years.
Beistle, which has a commercial printing and graphics arts design operation
within its business, has influenced his approach to his artwork and it can
be readily seen in the strong graphic composition of his subject matter.
His graphic arts design background results in a fresh, contemporary feel to
his paintings which are vibrant with color. He works almost exclusively in
oils on canvas, preferring them for their working qualities. On occasion he
mixes his own pigments when he needs paint "with color saturation and values
not always found in a tube [of paint]."
His style lies somewhere on the spectrum of post-impression to
expressionism; ranging from at times to the nearly abstract to "life-like."
Often described as an unusual technique by those who see it for the first
time, he describes it as just the evolution of the influences of the art
that he is fond of namely: Roman mosaics, Early and Mid-Italian Renaissance
paintings and Canadian Impressionist painters. Not surprisingly, his
paintings use detailed and discrete "patches" of color and his subjects are
predominately figures and portraits which he finds to be "more interesting
than landscapes alone."
"I work with live models and use photos as subsequent references for my
paintings," he says. "I paint the images for viewing from 10 to 12 feet
away, but I also like to add enough detail so that there's still something
interesting to see closer in the painting." When asked about the way he
uses color, he shrugs and simply says, "Life's in color."
A strong interest in art runs in his family. One younger sister is a
professional graphic artist and another was the art director for a
commercial enterprise. His cousins, who are both sculptors and
entrepreneurs, began a prominent foundry operation several years ago called
Laran Bronze near Philadelphia for the casting of large architectural
bronzes, including recently, the 12-foot eagles for the World War II
Memorial in Washington, DC.
Molly Amos, Art Gallery Director
Benjamin Art Gallery, LLC
1303 Pennsylvania Avenue
Hagerstown, Maryland
301-797-4775
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