Waller-Yoblonsky Fine Art

C. Smith Marks - Maryland Artist C. Smith Marks, AKA Cissy is a Baltimore artist who shares her life with husband and fellow talented artist/architect Paul Marks.  Smith Marks has exhibited extensively within her community and works to show off her paintings in local coffee shops to formal gallery shows.   Some of her latest work involves portraits, and we take on a bold assumption that they are paintings of local Baltimoreans serving as models, (some nudes and some neighbors/friends).  Out of all her portraits, I like a painting called Ellen .  It seems most reflective of what Baltimore should look like.     Smith Marks also takes on flowers and fruit in her version of the still life.  Her website says, "My love of brilliance, vibrancy of color and composition in regards to interplay of negative and positive space best describes the priorities in my work. I have a bold, graphic style using flat planes and minimal modeling.” I ...

Harlan H. Holladay Born 1925 Time has a way of getting away from all of us.  Harlan H. Holladay who is now in his early 90s, spent most of his life being an educator and researcher.  He is most noted for his time at St. Lawrence University first as an instructor, then ahead of the art department.  University professors and department heads spend a lot time serving on committees and providing outreach to their communities.  A simple internet search demonstrates that Dr. Holladay had a life filled with such activities and was a member of such organizations, as:  College Art Association; Society of  Architectural Historians; American Association of Univ. Prof.; Northeast Museum Association; Cooperstown Art Association, etc. Holladay, was born in Greenville, MO, has three degrees, and studied at a couple of different institutions:  SE Missouri State College (B.S. Education); Washington University; State University of Iowa (M.A.) and Cornell Unive...

L. Jean Liberte, Artist (1896-1965) “ Grand Manan ” “ Grand Manan ” is one the great strong examples of a nocturnal coastal scene by Liberte.  Grand Manan is located in the midwestern end of the Bay of Fundy, a body of water between the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.  It is home to some of the strongest tides in the world. The painting has rich impasto textures that provides a dramatic dark brooding image, and some say that he was influenced by Albert Pinkham Ryder, whose paintings were also dark and moody.  The painting is oil on canvas, approximately 30 by 24 inches.  It still includes its Babcock Galleries tag on the reverse, and it is from the mid-1940s.   L. Jean Liberte, Artist (1896-1965)    Starting in the early to mid-1940s, L. Jean Liberte was hot!  His paintings were now in the collections of the Whitney, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Walker Art Center, Tel-Aviv Museum and at n...

"Reclining Nude" 1962 - Oil on Canvas Size: 19.9 X 24.1 in.  Signed LRC:  '62 Asoma Provenance: Gabriel Rosenfeld, Chappaqua, NY (French Legion of Honor) Sold at Swann Galleries, NYC, March 2000 The Signature is 正 (the Japanese Kanji Symbol for Tadashi), and then below Asoma ‘62. Tadashi Asoma  Tadashi Asoma is a wonderful American success story. Born in 1923 in pre-war Japan, he received his higher education at Saitama Teachers College, Urawa (a Saitama ward), the Bijitsu Gakko (Tokyo University of the Arts), Tokyo. In 1952 he held his first exhibit in Tokyo, and then four later he was awarded a Japanese Government scholarship to study in Paris, at the Grand Chaumiere. After studying in Paris he arrived in New York City, where he continued studying at the Art Students League. Tadashi Asoma’s first major show was held in 1961 at the Japan Society in New York and San Francisco. These early years in New York were spent living in an apartment near the East V...

Ronald Werner Muckelberg: A Young New Jersey Artist "The Sea" “The Sea” - Maine Oil on Canvas Board, Framed NYC   for the 6th Floor Nurses Dated: April 9th, 1956 Signed Ronald Muckelberg Ronald Werner Muckelberg Today we are going to celebrate the life of “Ronald Werner Muckelberg.”  His small oil on canvas board painting, The Sea , arrived in my house a couple of years ago.  It had a sketch quality and I put it under my desk.  One day I went to research the artist for fun of it and found the following memorial write-up for his class reunion:   Ronald Muckelberg:  After leaving Pascack Valley High School, Muckelberg was accepted to Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY, where he studied Commercial Art. The courses were very rigorous. He was only able to stay in college from September to January due his Hodgkin’s disease that started when he was a freshman in high school. His parents knew for four years that his illness...

Margaret Casey Gates, Washington, DC Artist (1903-1989) An Observer is lead into the paintings of Margaret Gates by their charming simplicity, and then is fascinated by the wealth of beauty they contain. Throughout her work there is a delicacy of touch and a consistent rightness of taste and feeling that has caused her paintings to be exhibited at museums and acquired by numerous private collectors.  Below is “Nancy’s Goldfish” - Exhibited at the Phillips Memorial Gallery in 1948; Oil on Canvas Board (18 x 21 inches).      “Nancy’s Goldfish” has a flat, cube, color plane quality.  The goldfish tank sits in the open window with a view out to the barnyard with pink petaled flowers and orange centers.  The barn is made up of a triangle, squares and rectangles of flat color and the day is almost done with evening setting in.  It is the fish tank that captures our attention, we see four goldfish swimming about in a green garden.   ...

Louis H. Musgrove (1893-1963) Detail of "Flowers on the Window's Ledge" Today we are going to look at a rare mid-century modernist painter, Louis H. Musgrove.  Musgrove considered himself a “Sunday Painter,” but that was far from the truth.  Born and trained in New York City, Musgrove studied under some art greats of the time:  Douglas Volk, Frederick Cecil Jones and Howard Giles.  Clearly Giles influenced his work, as Giles was an illustrator extraordinaire using watercolor and pastels.   With the skills Musgrove obtained from his instructors, he went on to be an advertising executive with such companies as Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company and Pepsi Cola.  During his prosperous career, he found time to exhibit and share his work.  He exhibited at the Whitney Studio Club, the Art Director’s Club and Manhattan’s famous Ferragil Galleries (which closed in 1955).  He was a member of Art Director’s Club and the Institute of Graphic ...