Featured Artist for the Month of May

Lynn Salkeld

   The Charleston Artist Guild announces Lynn Salkeld, as featured artist for the month of May 2015. An opening reception, which is free to the public, will be held Friday, May 1st from 5:00pm-8:00pm. The gallery is located at 160 East Bay Street, and is open daily from 11am - 6pm. Sales made there support the non-for-profit Guild's Community Outreach work.

Her show "Lowcountry View" is a collection of the wonderful stories of the area that Lynn tells through her oil paintings.

Lynn is a 20-plus year transplant to the Lowcountry and just loves the beauty and the people of South Carolina. Art has been Lynn's passion since early childhood. Taking art classes at every opportunity has given her a strong background in oil painting and design.

Since retiring from her frame shop and gallery 2 years ago, she has devoted more time to painting and teaching. Lynn describes her style as loose realism. Her subjects are varied but her favorites are landscapes and animal portraits. Lynn has studied with Martin Ahrens, Joyce Hall, Adolph Conrad, Mark Horton, and Chris Hayes. She also attended Keane College and studied design at CPCC in Charlotte NC.

Honor� Daumier c.1850

    I first became well acquainted with Honor� Daumier at an exhibition of 243 of his works at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. in 2000.  Daumier began his career at a very young age creating lithographs for daily journals.  Like many great artists, such as Eakins and Homer, Daumier worked for many years earning a living under the pressure of frequent deadlines.  Having to draw and paint for a commercial enterprise to put bread on the table seems to bring out the greatness in some artists.

    Daumier had a gift for capturing the essence of a person in his caricatures, especially the greed and banality of political figures, and his satire first established his reputation. Character sketches of right-wing political figures published in La Caricature resulted in Daumier's arrest and imprisonment for six months in 1832, and changes in the law put La Caricature  out of business.  But this did not slow him down for long.

H. Daumier, 'The Uprising' c.1860

Daumier's output during his 50 year career was prodigious:  an amazing 4000 lithographs, about 300 paintings, 1000 some woodcuts and about 50 sculptures.  The Corcoran Art Gallery in Washington, D.C., has a collection of Daumier sculptures, which are mostly caricatures of political figures.  I enjoyed these many years ago, long before I had a true appreciation for his artistic genius.

'The Print Collector' c.1857-63

'Laundress on the Quai d'Anjou c.1860

    While his lithographic caricatures accounted for his success, Daumier yearned to be recognized for his paintings.  Throughout his life he was primarily appreciated as a major artist only by leading masters of the time, such as Delacroix and Degas.

    Daumier had a significant impact on the development of modern art, and his influence can be seen in the work of Manet, Monet, Renoir and Degas - his greatest admirer, who at one time owned 1800 of his lithographs.  Later artists, such as Van Gogh, C�zanne and Picasso were also influenced by Daumier.

'The Third Class Carriage'

    In 1867, at age 59, Daumier began work on his last paintings, inspired by Don Quixote and Fragonard's "fantasy figures".  The dead mule of the legend of Don Quixote was a favorite subject.  His vision began to fail and by 1877, Daumier was almost completely blind.  He died in 1879 at age 71, probably from a stroke.

    To see more of the work of this great artist, google "Honor� Daumier" and it will be there for you to see.  Or come to my house, and I will allow you to peruse a book by Pierre Cabanne: Honore Daumier, Painter of the Human Comedy.