Fine Art Cincinnati

Cincinnati's Krohn Conservatory in Eden Park

"Cincinnati: Krohn Impressions"

36" x 36" acrylic abstract on hardboard

Artist: Dale Wolf

Much of this piece was painted with a palette knife and with very stiff brush strokes. The paint is piled on in deep layers as if carved out of the hardboard surface.  The dark and light values hold the composition, but the grayed petals and leaves round the shapes. I find that the success of many paintings, if not most, hang on these mid-range colors. 

If you want to see real flowers, the place to go is Cincinnati's Krohn Conervatory in Eden Park. A glass shrouded palace for flowers and plants, even a waterfall, has attracted huge crowds year-long for as long as I can remember.

The outdoor Christmas stable at Krohn is complete with lights and live animals to honor the birth of Christ We took our young children to see it every Christmas. Now they take their children. And the Easter lilies in the photo to the left celebrate the Resurrection.

My painted flowers in "Cincinnati: Krohn Impressions" celebrate gardens in neighborhoods all around the city. It is the second abstract I have painted based on my hometown. The other is "Cincinnati: Rocks in Creekbed" -- a view looking down into a creek flowing behind my daughter's home.

 

The Roebling Bridge -- An Architectural Wonder in Cincinnati

 

"Cincinnati: Roebling"

24" x 36" acrylic on canvas

Artist: Dale Wolf

This stunning bridge, built in 1856, spans the Ohio River at Cincinnati.

My painting focuses on  the south bridge tower, with the dramatic sweep of the suspended bridge across the Ohio river toward the Cincinnati skyline. I wanted to capture the architectural beauty of this iconic bridge without getting tied up in photographic realism. 

"Cincinnati: Roebling" was an award winner in The Artists Magazine 2017 Annual Competition, from among 5,700 entries.

This bridge is probably the most photographed and painted figure in all of Cincinnati. My first task was to get a composition that was a bit different than many of the paintings local artists have created of this bridge.

I photographed the bridge from every angle I could find. I went under the bridge and shot up. I went to both ends and shot into the steel road. The view I finally selected was from the Kentucky side looking out across the Ohio. 

I did a "plein air" study to work out the perspective, choosing not to show the actual river but to capture the sweep of the bridge hanging over the river. I sat near the statue of John Roebling while painting this study. I hoped my final piece would make him proud.

My initial concept was to paint a cloudless sky to keep the focus on the tower. But Ken Buck suggested clouds would actually work to pull the bridge visually forward. He was dead right. They create more dimension in the final work.

There is a tremendous amount of detain in the tower architecture and I wanted to be as true as possible to Roebling but still produce an artistic painting. The real fun in creating this painting was finding the muted mid-tones of green and blue shades of browns in the tower stones. I then applied warm orange highlights to capture the sparkle of sunlight across the structure.

I enjoyed working the colors in the tower.  The crown of the tower is a remarkable display of architectural design that marked Roebling's two most famous bridges:  Cincinnati and later, the Brooklyn Bridge. The suspension cables pass through the two towers to create the sweep across the river. The constant challenge was in choosing which architectural details to show and which to ignore, especially in the crown.

 Once I was fairly far along with the tower and ready to tackle the bridge ironworks, I went back to the bridge and took another batch of  photos of the details in the structural work. Roebling's attention to the engineering of the bridge was as masterful as his sense of design in the towers. I wanted to capture some of this  so that my artistic rendering would be as accurate as possible. Using a pair of small sable brushes, I constructed my impression of the bridge ironwork.

I did the cables last. Partly out of fear of messing up the entire painting because they had to be painted over parts of the tower and across the sky. For the cables, I first positioned them using a watercolor pencil. I then applied the acrylic along the pencil lines. In places the acrylic paint covered the pencil lines and at other places the acrylic blended into the watercolor pencil line to create a nice roundness to the cables. I took a deep breath once the cables were in place.

Last came the Cincinnati skyline. 

It takes courage to be an artist, and this project took all I had. 

 

A  bit more on the history of the Roebling Bridge:

Construction of the Cincinnati Suspension Bridge (later renamed the John Roebling Bridge) began in 1856.  It took over a decade to complete, interrupted by financial shortages and the Civil War, during which the city and the unfinished bridge were under threat of attack.  The 1,057ft. main span was at that time the longest in the world.  Not only was the Cincinnati Suspension Bridge the world's longest, but it was also the first to utilize both vertical suspenders and diagonal stays fanning from either tower.  This advance was next seen on the Brooklyn Bridge (also designed by John Roebling), which surpassed the Cincinnati bridge in length in 1883.

 

 

 

 

 

A Few More Paintings of Roebling Bridge

I just did a quick search for a few images of paintings of this classic suspension bridge. Unfortunately, Google did not include artist or other details. But still an interesting display.

If anyone knows the individual who painted any of these submissions, please let me know and I will add an attribution. And if you would like me to include other paintings in this review, just send them along to me as a comment to this post or to my email address (dwolf @ outlook.com).

 

A Life-Moment in Cincinnati 

"Cincinnati: Together at Hyde Park Square"

48" x 60" Acrylic on Canvas

Painting by Dale Wolf

More and more I enjoy creating life-moments instead of static landscapes.

The Square is a favorite place for all of us to visit—a  two-block long sitting park lined on both sides by restaurants, shops, offices, and the fire house. But for the Pickert family, Hyde Park Square is a place where the couple met, dated and became engaged. They commissioned this 4’ x 5’ canvas for a large wall in their home.

We gathered at the park last Fourth of July to take photos of the family in the park.

As we continued talking about the painting project, the focus shifted from just the fountain area  in the park to include other areas of the Square.

Of course, they wanted the painting to include Tellers (where they met), Graeter’s (where they went after dates) and the Kilgour Fountain (where Dave asked Kate to be his wife). Now their children also love The Square because there’s Graeter’s ice cream whenever they visit.

The challenge was in manipulating perspective a bit to get all three meaningful locations into a single painting. I combined elements from several different photographs to create the final scene. 

As I began the composition, I determined it would be a better painting if I placed them in front of Graeter’s instead of in the park. This would allow me to create a life-moment every Cincinnatian would identify with—eating ice cream cones from the parlor that has been a fixture on The Square since 1938.

So I moved them from the park where they were photographed with each other and placed them in front of the crosswalk sign on the left side of the painting. Their children were painted further to the left, holding vanilla ice cream cones.

This busy scene in the lower left of the painting is filled with holiday morning activity: Kate and Dave paused by the Don’t Walk light, children Ashley and Jack to the left with big cones in their hands, another ice cream eater sitting on a bench, a little girl standing on the bench looking inside the parlor, a few shoppers walking the street, a runner getting ready to dash across the busy intersection and the blue Ford making a right turn from Erie onto Edwards.

The finished painting was unveiled in their home this morning.

A big moment for all of us as artists is getting to watch the expressions and reactions of our clients when they see the final work. Lots of shouts of joy. Dave crawled over the carpet to get a closer look. Cameras flashed. They took the painting out to their entryway to get a family portrait with the painting. Mission accomplished.

Cincinnati's Oldest Surviving Tavern

Cincinnati: Arnold's Tavern

16" x 20" acrylic on canvas

Artist: Dale Wolf

This Cincinnati cityscape was a command performance by my daughter, Courtney Tsitouris, who worked as a writer at a nearby advertising agency. At the time, Arnold's was the frequent habitat of her co-workers and she encouraged me to paint the tavern. She has since gone on to be an associate creative director at BBDO's Barefoot Agency at Longworth Hall.

I was intrigued with the tavern's place in Cincinnati's history, contraposed by the Shepherd Fairey mural on the side of the building (unceremoniously decorated by a row of trashcans below the mural).

Tavern History:

Simon Arnold purchased a barbershop at 210 East 8th Street and what was once a stable and carriage house in an adjacent courtyard that were built in the 1830's. Simon reopened the complex as a saloon. Over the years, a kitchen was added, the living quarters on second floor became dining rooms, the bartenders have changed, new rules allow women to enter the front door and the beer prices have gone up a bit. Today, Arnold's is the oldest tavern still operating in Cincy--now under Rhonda Androski's proprietorship. It was a perfect subject for my series of Cincinnati cityscapes.

The Painting:

I wanted to capture the 2010 Shepherd Fairey mural on the side of the building--bringing the antique tavern into the new century.  This mural, almost hidden in the side alley, is another of Fairey's street art  of hope and introspection. This alley mural questions the sanity of opposing the science of polluting our environment for the sake of misguided politics.  To the right, you can see Fairey at work in the 8th Street alley alongside Arnold's.

The late morning sunlight baked the red brick building into an "orange-ish pink" that beautifully reflected into the awning over the entrance. The letter "A" on the side of the awning challenged my calligraphy but was accomplished with a very fine brush that had about 3 hairs left in it. It also cast the side alley and mural into dark shadow. Then came the row of trash cans below the mural and the well-known motorized bathtub that has participated in many downtown Cincinnati parades. 

The finished painting, of course, hangs in my daughter's home. 

 

.  

 

 

How Do We Choose What to Paint?

So many possibilities. So little time.

Life’s little joys: when someone who commissions my painting for their home first sees the finished project . . . and they jump up and down with happiness. What a wonderful moment for any artist!

I typically paint 12 to 15 paintings a year so choosing the subject is not a light decision—unless it is a commissioned project, and even then I need to love the subject before accepting the project.

Each project has to be something I can get into and will enjoy spending two or three weeks (or more for the larger canvasses) in the process. For me, this emotional connection is essential. I can be a lot more casual in snapping photos than in this kind of time intensive decision.

Sometimes I think an idea for a painting will be wonderful only to discover after a day or so that it is not what I expected. These paintings seldom get finished unless I feel I am learning something from the experience that will make a new painting better. Otherwise a failed subject will likely be painted over with a subject that I can enjoy.

It is not a perfect process.

As a guide, I often paint along themes that I trust will produce a painting I have fun doing and that others will find interesting to view or to own. Cincinnati Landscapes. Athletic Figurative. Memories. Citiies I Visit. The test is whether or not the scene makes a strong composition, plays with light, subtle colors, frozen motion, a story.

I love my hometown so I go searching for views of the city, the river, the parks, the places we all frequent. The challenge here is to get the best view into the landscape. Angles. Connections. Colors. A story with people wandering about in the scene. One that catches the eye for a first impression and then pulls the eye across the canvas with new areas of interest.

Does it need to be tightly painted? Can it be more impressionistic? Or maybe it can be the basis for an abstract … as in “Rocks in Creekbed” that I saw in a little creek running through a neighborhood in Loveland. I could see the stones and rocks lying just below the flowing water and I pushed it into a 36” x 36” abstract painting using hues of blue and brown along with a lot of texture in the paint.

The Cincinnati Series

My recent Cincinnati series began with the Roebling Bridge (view) and the challenge was capturing a view that dramatized the architectural beauty of the towers along with the sweeping drama crossing the Ohio River. For my Eden Park painting (view) in this series, I wanted the sweep of the two mirror lakes with the well-known bridge held in the background and sunlight glistening across the foreground.

A New Series of Figurative Paintings

The challenge of painting figures is that you have to get the figure right or it just plain looks weird. A landscape without people is challenging, but add people and it is just bit harder. Everyone knows what a human body is supposed to look like, and somehow we all seem to enjoy looking at one another. So this adds a level of interest to a landscape that I enjoy.

I was attending a cooking class put on by a local chef and took a bunch of photos of him as he prepared gourmet boiled pork sandwiches. When I got a look at the photo stream, one jumped out as a possible painting. I could envision this "The Teaching Chef" (view)as a bold figurative work with strong highlights from a spotlight sharpening every object. As I worked on the painting, I felt the background lacked interest so I created a backdrop from a more upscale restaurant. This is part of painting what you can see in front of you, but painting it the way you want it to be.

A few years ago at Easter, I felt it was time to tackle a religious subject. Given that it was Easter, logic told me the subject should be Christ trudging along Via Del Rosa ("Christ Alone"), under the weight of the cross. I set the figure to the left with the path ahead on the right so viewers could tell exactly where He was located and where He was headed. 

Where Does it All Come From?

I’m not quite sure where artistic inspiration really comes from . . . somehow it seems to be planted inside from something far bigger than myself. Some of us, He makes into people who create art, others into people who enjoy art, and yet others who have skills and interests in math or science. But even science and medicine are sources for potential paintings.

So many possibilities. So little time.

A Chef Teaching How to Prepare Poached Salmon Sandwiches

 

"The Teaching Chef"

20" x 16" acrylic on canvas

Artist: Dale Wolf

I photographed this chef at a local restaurant where he was doing a teaching demonstration to guests of the Cincinnati Food + Wine Classic.

I loved the spotlight that starkly pulled him out of the dark room background. Bright light cutting through the steam rising from his pan, hitting his forehead, arms and the cutting board. Everything else quickly faded around him and the food he was preparing. 

 

 

Remembering Bill

 

 

 “Joseph Roy, Portrait of Worker”

1934 oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Artist: William E. Gebhardt

 

Many of my memories now are fuzzy, back to 1954 when I completed my first oil painting at the William Gebhardt School of Art in downtown Cincinnati. I was in the sixth or seventh grade and Bob Hebenstriet, my friend at College Hill Elementary School (already an accomplished artist) suggested I enroll in the art school with him.

As a young and immature kid who just loved drawing, Bill was a big, very imposing man. Despite his constant laugh, he scared the crap out of me. Intimidated would have been the operative word.

I can still picture myself walking up the steps to the second floor on my first day at the art school. It was  a long dark stairway leading to a large painting studio and a smaller commercial art studio, above an Empress Chili Parlor and across the street from the Greyhound Bus Station on Fifth Street.

I had no idea what to expect.

I was put at a drawing table in the commercial art and drawing studio. My first assignment was one that would stick with me for the rest of my life. He sat me down and showed me how to hold a pencil and draw ellipses. One after another after another. That I did not expect. When I graduated from ellipses, I could draw them in my sleep. I still can.

But it was the art studio that held the excitement for me. The smell of oil paint and turpentine was everywhere. Lots of big easels and stools. A wall of bins where students stored their works in progress. My friend Bob was already painting in the big room. He was the school’s star student. I couldn’t wait to escape the ellipses and get in there with him.

That day came and Bill set up a cluster of artificial carnations in a vase and a few pieces of fake fruit. He patiently guided me through the process of painting a still life. He kept urging me to find subtle colors in the flowers—colors that for the life of me I could not actually see. I can still remember exactly where I sat in the painting studio during this exercise. Many more paintings were to come after the carnations, and I eventually learned to see the colors that were actually in front of me all the time.

While I was attending his art school, he was commissioned by Pigall’s Restaurant to produce a huge still life mural. I got to paint a few of the grapes in that painting.

Born in 1907, Bill was five years younger than my own father. And like my dad, Bill was far from wealthy. He was a graduate of the Dayton Art Institute and the Cincinnati Art Academy. He studied in Europe for five years and attended the Sorbonne and the Academy of Scandinave, both in Paris. He taught at the Cincinnati Art Academy, Dallas County Art League in Selma AL, and the Central Academy of Commercial Art. He also painted portraits of many prominent Cincinnatians.

Bill had paintings displayed in American and European art galleries including the Metropolitan Art Museum and Whitney Art Museum, both in New York; the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University; Tel Aviv Art Museum; Cincinnati Art Museum and Dayton Art Museum.

He moved to Florida after retirement and a few years later tragically died in an auto accident.

While my first impression of him was intimidating, I grew to appreciate him as a teacher. He set me off on a journey of painting and appreciating fine art that would last a lifetime.

Bob Fabe -- Artist and Professor of Art

Untitled

18" x 24" oil on canvas

Artist: Robert Fabe (1917-2004)

I knew Bob when I was one of his post-graduate students at the University of Cincinnati. We have two of his prints hanging in our home.

Bob was a relaxed,  inspirational teacher. We would all be set up in the studio when he would wander in a bit after the official start time. He'd grab a wooden box and sit in the middle of the room and launch into a story. A different story in every class. And every time, by the end of his story, we were all so motivated that we would have walked through a brick wall just to have the chance to pick up a paint brush and do art.
Bob Fabe made my Saturday mornings special for three years.

What I took away from his teaching was his sense of color and the impact that a well-placed highlight can have on the success of a painting. Hitting these high tones takes a bit of courage. Too much ruins all your work and too little leaves the painting looking for life.

Biography: Robert Fabe (1917-2004)

Robert Fabe moved to Cincinnati as an infant. His father, Morris, was a talented amateur artist, and Robert worked along side of his father, painting from an early age of 7. He attended Withrow High School which had an educational relationship with the Art Academy of Cincinnati.

After graduation from Withrow, he received a scholarship at the Art Academy.

In 1939 he received the “out of town” scholarship to the Art Students League in New York City. Here he studied with Raphael Soyer, George Grosz, and Arnold Blanch. In 1940 he returned to Cincinnati and opened his own art studio.

In 1941, Robert was drafted into the United States Army, where he served for five years. He participated in the Battle of the Bulge and D Day invasion in Europe. He was wounded twice while serving in Europe.

He returned to Cincinnati after the war and taught at the Art Academy of Cincinnati.

In 1958 Robert joined the faculty of the University of Cincinnati in the College of Design, Art, Architecture and Planning. He stayed until 1987.

Throughout his long, creative career, Robert painted daily, and won numerous awards. His work is in many museums, private and corporate collections.

"Cincinnati: Rounding the Bend"

24" x 36" painting on canvas

Artist: Dale Wolf

This painting began in the city's west side hills with a view of the Ohio River sweeping along toward the downtown skyline. "Rounding the Bend" is the most recent addition to my Cincinnati series.

I used a broader, more abstracted style and muted colors to reflect the cloudy Cincinnati evening. The only real burst of color is the orange barge being pushed around the last big bend in the river, passing under the Cincinnati Southern Railroad Bridge. The abstract landscape captures the majesty of the valleys and structures that foreground the unmistakable Cincinnati skyline.

It's why we call our home The Queen City.

This nickname was coined in 1826, when co-authors Benjamin Drake and Edward Mansfield referred to city as the “Queen of the West” in their book, Cincinnati. Then in 1854, poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote "Catawba Wine" which memorialized Cincinnati’s vineyards. In the last stanza of his poem, he refers to Cincinnati as the “Queen of the West.”

The other views in my growing Cincinnati series of representational paintings include three 24" x 36 canvasses of our Theater District, the Roebling Suspension Bridge and Mirror Lake in Eden Park. An 18" x 24" painting features Arnold's Tavern, the oldest bar in the city built in 1861. The next to join the series is a recently commissioned 48" x 60" canvas of Hyde Park Square. More will be added in the coming year.

"Cincinnati: Front Row Seat"

24" x 36" acrylic painting on hardboard

Artist: Dale Wolf

This painting started in an open plein air outing with the Cincinnati Art Club. Participating artists all gathered early in the morning in Eden Park, next to the club's headquarters. I knew exactly where I wanted to set up my easel--looking at the bridge over two adjoining lakes. Decades earlier I did a painting of this same bridge--but from the other side--and now I wanted to work the opposite side of the bridge.

As it turned out, the plein air effort was not as successful as I had hoped, but the composition was intriguing enough that I later went back with a much larger surface to capture this scene. I took photos so I could finish the painting in my home studio (see side photo where I was establishing my value strategy for the landscape).

The early morning sunlight was glistening sharply across the grass and turned the green into a golden yellow. The ducks were sliding along the lake surface creating ripples that made the reflections shimmer. The bridge was set back in the distance

I realized I had a front row seat to God's beauty.

 

The idea of having a front row seat captivated me as I got deeper into the painting. It was then that I recalled a different photo I had shot earlier in the year. The photo was of a couple sitting on a park bench looking out across the Ohio River toward the Reds Stadium. They have no idea that I plucked them up off the river bank and put them in a front row seat in Eden Park.

It turned out to be one of my favorite paintings that I did that Spring.