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Category Archives: Figure Painting

Opening – Studios at the Fox Building, Baltimore – May 31st, 2019, 6:00-9:00 pm

16 Thursday May 2019

Posted by fineartsbaltimore in Artistic Exchange, Artists, Baltimore Art History, Baltimore Artists, Exhibitions, Figure Painting, Gems and Stones, Jewelry, Maryland Artists, Metal Work, Painting, Uncategorized

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Artistic Exchange, Baltimore Art History, Baltimore Artists, Drawing, Exhibitions, Maryland Artists, Oil Painting

studios fox building 2

 

The Fox Building in the Hampden neighborhood in Baltimore is an example of a successful refurbishment of an old factory building.  The adaptive reuse of this early 20th- century structure helps keep intact the neighborhood’s  rich industrial history. This was the original home of Noxzema and more recently, Fox Industries. The structure has been transformed into a vibrant mixed-use community of apartments and artist work spaces. Many of the building’s original features have been retained and restored, such as original maple wood plank flooring, glass block windows, soaring ceilings, and much more.  On the front side of the building are loft-style apartments, and the 18 studios are located in the old loading dock area in the back.

The artists will mount a first annual “Artists’ Showcase” at the end of May. The opening is scheduled for Friday, May 31st, and the artists will be there to talk about their work. A wide variety of disciplines and techniques will make for an exciting show.  The group includes painters, photographers, print makers, fashion designers, jewelers, actors and sculptors.

Join us in celebrating this newly revitalized space!

Enduring Concerns II: Next Show by James Hennessey

19 Friday Jan 2018

Posted by fineartsbaltimore in Artists, Baltimore Art History, Baltimore Artists, Figure Painting, Italy, James J Hennessey, Landscape Painting, Maryland Artists, MICA, Painting, Uncategorized

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American Academy, Baltimore Artists, Baltimore painters, Exhibitions, Figure Painting, French Landscapes, Italian landscape, Maryland Artists, Sorrento

 

Eutaw Grey: oil on canvas

James Hennessey’s exhibit at the Creative Alliance in Baltimore, Enduring Concerns, closed a few days ago on January 13.  Part II of Enduring Concerns has opened at the Maryland Institute College of Art’s Lazarus Gallery. 131 W. North Avenue, Baltimore, Md., 21201,

About 25 different paintings are hung in the spacious gallery space. Not one repeat from the last show.  This exhibit offers a fresh look at Hennessey’s production from the past 50 years.  He came to Baltimore in 1966 to teach at the Maryland Institute, where he was a member of the painting department for 37 years.

MICA’s Exhibition Department released this description:

Enduring Concerns: Paintings by MICA’s James Hennessey

A career-spanning exhibition by the MICA emeritus faculty member, focusing on work produced in Baltimore from 1965 to the present day.

Reception: Thursday, Feb. 15, 5 – 7 p.m.

Biography:
James J. Hennessey earned his undergraduate degree at Illinois Wesleyan University and a graduate degree at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he studied with Richard Diebenkorn, Wendell Black, and Roland Reiss. Hennessey’s first teaching position was at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, where he was hired in 1960.

In 1962, one of Hennessey’s paintings was included in the Museum of Modern Art’s (MOMA) exhibition, “Recent Painting U.S.A., The Figure”. The show was a juried exhibit that subsequently toured the country after the New York opening. In the same year, the American Academy in Rome, Italy awarded Hennessey “The Rome Prize”. As a result, he was in residence for two years in Rome and exhibited in several galleries both in Rome and Milan.

In 1965 Hennessey joined the faculty of MICA, where he taught until he retired in 2002. During this time he accrued an extensive exhibition record with works shown in New York at the Marilyn Pearl Gallery, the Boris Mirski and Alpha Galleries in Boston, and at the Pensler Galleries in Washington, DC, among others. He directed programs for students, faculty, and professional artists in Italy and France, including the MICA Italian Program in Sorrento, Italy, and the Alfred and Trafford Klots Residency Program in Rochefort-en-Terre, France. His paintings continue to be fueled by his extensive European experiences.

James Hennessey maintains an active studio in downtown Baltimore, Maryland.

 

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James Hennessey, Retrospective at the Creative Alliance, Baltimore, Maryland

28 Thursday Dec 2017

Posted by fineartsbaltimore in Art History, Artists, Baltimore Art History, Baltimore Artists, Exhibitions, Figure Painting, James J Hennessey, Landscape Painting, Maryland Artists, Uncategorized

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American Academy, Baltimore Art History, Baltimore painters, Drawing, Exhibitions, Figure Painting, French Landscapes, Irish, Italian landscape, Maryland Artists, Oil Painting

Press Release from the Creative Alliance, 3134 Eastern Avenue, Baltimore, Maryland, 21224, 410-276-1651

On View: ENDURING CONCERNS, December 9, 2017 – January 13, 2018
Opening Reception: SAT DEC 9 | 6 – 8PMjim hennessey image
Gallery Talk: SAT JAN 6 | 7PM | FREE

When artist James Hennessey moved to Baltimore in 1965 to teach painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), he never anticipated the influence he would have on thousands of young painters who took his classes until 2002. Beyond his impressive career as a teacher, Hennessey’s success as a painter has seen his signature soft palate aesthetic and subtle depictions of mythological fables exhibited across the globe. Enduring Concerns focuses on Hennessey’s large paintings and celebrates more than 50 years of his work in Baltimore.

James Hennessey is a painter’s painter: his daily studio practice finds him methodically working his large canvases, adding and subtracting inflections of color and light, scraping and sanding away excess, and repeating as necessary to achieve his thoughtful surfaces. While his subject matter varies slightly between series, he concentrates on landscapes, interior spaces, figures, light, and atmosphere in his carefully constructed compositions. Hennessey paces himself when creating work, sometimes taking months to complete a single painting, and generally working on only one painting at a time.

The exhibition’s title, Enduring Concerns, references his steadfast consistency, and intense focus on a small number of subjects. According to Hennessey, “my work is episodic – there are clusters of paintings that fall into categories, such as ‘Windows’, ‘Irish Paintings’, ‘Italian Paintings’, and ‘Furniture’, among others.” All episodes of the artist’s illustrious time in Baltimore will be represented in this rare survey.

Artist Biography:

James J. Hennessey earned his undergraduate degree at Illinois Wesleyan University and a graduate degree at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he studied with Richard Diebenkorn, Wendell Black, and Roland Reiss. Hennessey’s first teaching position was at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, where he was hired in 1960.

In 1962, one of Hennessey’s paintings was included in the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition, “Recent Painting U.S.A., The Figure”. The show was a juried exhibit that subsequently toured the country after the New York opening. In the same year, the American Academy in Rome, Italy awarded Hennessey “The Rome Prize”. As a result, he was in residence for two years in Rome and exhibited in several galleries both in Rome and Milan.

In 1965 Hennessey joined the faculty of MICA, where he taught until he retired in 2002. During this time he accrued an extensive exhibition record with works shown in New York at the Marilyn Pearl Gallery, the Boris Mirski and Alpha Galleries in Boston, and at the Pensler Galleries in Washington, DC, to name a few. He directed programs for students, faculty, and professional artists in Italy and France, including the MICA Italian Program in Sorrento, Italy, and the Alfred and Trafford Klots Residency Program in Rochefort-en-Terre, France. His paintings continue to be fueled by his extensive European experiences.

James Hennessey maintains an active studio in downtown Baltimore, Maryland.

ALEXA

James Hennessey Gallery, website

10 Thursday Dec 2015

Posted by fineartsbaltimore in Artists, Baltimore Artists, Figure Painting, Maryland Artists, Painting

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American Academy, Artistic Exchange, Baltimore Artists, Baltimore painters, Drawing, Figure Painting, French Landscapes, Irish, Italian landscape, Maryland Artists, Oil Painting

http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-53200-19255-0/1?ff3=4&pub=5575560308&toolid=10001&campid=5338637638&customid=Photograph+Artworks&mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.com%2Fitm%2FNikon-D3500-Digital-SLR-Camera-Black-3-Lens-18-55mm-VR-Lens-32GB-Bundle%2F223183887864%3Fepid%3D4026509361%26hash%3Ditem33f6cbddf8%253Ag%253AsLsAAOSwb3hb9Zu7%26_trkparms%3D%252526rpp_cid%25253D5cc1dee8e7abc5604619e775Well, we’ve been talking about creating a web page to show Jim Hennessey’s paintings and drawings for a long time, and we’ve finally done it.  The platform is Square Space, which offers many options for artists, in terms of page design, as well as terrific ongoing support. The link to the page is below and if you would like to type it into your browser you can also get to it via jameshennessey.com

Explore the Website

04 Saturday May 2013

Posted by fineartsbaltimore in Artists, Baltimore Art History, Baltimore Artists, Figure Painting, James J Hennessey, Travel, Uncategorized

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Second installment of James J. Hennessey video.

28 Sunday Apr 2013

Posted by fineartsbaltimore in Artists, Baltimore Art History, Baltimore Artists, Figure Painting, Italy, James J Hennessey, Travel

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A recent film for Shine Creative’s “Bright” series is a studio interview spotlighting Baltimore’s veteran painter, James Hennessey.  The artist reveals some of his strategies for painting while chatting with the film maker in front of several large-scale works, including a close-up view of a painting about Mad Sweeney.

Film maker, Drury Bynum, chose to highlight Hennessey’s working methods, tools, materials, inspiration and subject matter in this intimate view of a contemporary artist in his working environment.

Inside/Outside: Views by the Painter James J. Hennessey

29 Saturday Dec 2012

Posted by fineartsbaltimore in Artists, Exhibitions, Figure Painting

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JH25Flaneur

For decades, James Hennessey has been painting interior scenes with a view to the outside world.  Flaneur, a recent painting, reminds the viewer that the artist was heavily influenced by his teacher Richard Diebenkorn.  He studied with Diebenkorn at the University of Colorado, and the West Coast painter became a significant, life-long influence on Hennessey’s aesthetic. Hennessey’s translucent veils of color, with layers of rich tones reading through, seem suspended in shifting space, part of a tug of war between color and line– the dual concerns driving Modern painting.

Whether Hennessey’s paintings depict the actual view from his studio, from a hotel window, or even if they are made-up scenes and interiors from the artist’s imagination, as in the Flaneur, the viewer senses a relationship between the figures and objects within, and the scene outside.

Picture7

A 1979 self portrait of Hennessey smoking, while standing in his Eutaw Street studio with his back to the windows, again suggests an interplay between outside/inside.  Has Hennessey stepped back to look at the painting of himself smoking? More than merely a painting of an interior figure with a cityscape as backdrop, the composition suggests a direct relationship between the dark, smoky jumble in the studio and the activity in the world outside with sharply defined architecture and deep blue sky.

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  • Gallery at the Fox Building: “Call and Response,” works by Kristin Fuller and Robert Hoffman June 23, 2020
    The Gallery at the Fox Building will hold an online “Zoom” opening on July 9th from 6:00pm to 7:00 pm. …Continue reading →
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  • Second Opening for the Hampden/Woodberry Artists’ Exhibit at the Studios at the Fox Building Gallery August 2, 2019
    The most recent exhibit at the Studios at the Fox Building highlighted the production of Hampden/Woodberry artists. There were 13 …Continue reading →
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  • Opening – Studios at the Fox Building, Baltimore – May 31st, 2019, 6:00-9:00 pm May 16, 2019
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  • Meet Chris Darway and Learn the Aura 22 Technique: Master Jeweler Holds Class at the Gem Cutters’ Guild, Baltimore, September 8th. May 1, 2018
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  • Enduring Concerns II: Next Show by James Hennessey January 19, 2018
      James Hennessey’s exhibit at the Creative Alliance in Baltimore, Enduring Concerns, closed a few days ago on January 13.  …Continue reading →
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  • Lapidary Class at the Gem Cutters Guild January 12, 2018
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     Wire Wrapped pieces by Jackie Orsini The name of the Gem Cutter’s Guild is a bit of a misnomer. While …Continue reading →
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  • James Hennessey, Retrospective at the Creative Alliance, Baltimore, Maryland December 28, 2017
    Press Release from the Creative Alliance, 3134 Eastern Avenue, Baltimore, Maryland, 21224, 410-276-1651 On View: ENDURING CONCERNS, December 9, 2017 – January …Continue reading →
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  • Sendak Exhibit Now in Toronto January 23, 2016
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  • James Hennessey Gallery, website December 10, 2015
    http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-53200-19255-0/1?ff3=4&pub=5575560308&toolid=10001&campid=5338637638&customid=Photograph+Artworks&mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.com%2Fitm%2FNikon-D3500-Digital-SLR-Camera-Black-3-Lens-18-55mm-VR-Lens-32GB-Bundle%2F223183887864%3Fepid%3D4026509361%26hash%3Ditem33f6cbddf8%253Ag%253AsLsAAOSwb3hb9Zu7%26_trkparms […]
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