The web site, ArtDaily.org, keeps track of new exhibits as museums and galleries. Today the site features a new show of paintings by Louis B. Sloan, who died in '08. Louis Sloan used to visit Frost Valley and one of his FV landscapes is in this exhibit and is mentioned in the article.PHILADELPHIA, PA.- Louis B. Sloan (1932-2008) was a prominent figure in the Philadelphia art community. An alumnus of Fleisher Art School and PAFA, Sloan taught still-life, landscape, portrait and figure painting classes at PAFA from 1962-1997. Sloan worked in the conservation department at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1961-1980.D'Arcy Oaks saw the painting and was intrigued. Where is the painter standing? What scene is the painter painting? His guesses: "My guess: perspective is from somewhere near the water tower, looking through some of the recent trees at Wildcat. Second guess: beyond the trees is bank's hill." Anyone else have a guess?
The recipient of many prestigious awards, including, PAFA's third annual Distinguished Alumni Award and the Jennie Sesnan Gold Medal, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Grant, the Emily Lowe Grant, the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and the James Van Der Zee Award from Philadelphia's Brandywine Workshop, Sloan also received tributes in the halls of government from Pennsylvania Governor Edward G. Rendell, Philadelphia Mayor W. Wilson Goode, and most recently on November 4, 2008, from Mayor Michael A. Nutter.
The exhibition, curated by Philadelphia art collector, Lewis Tanner Moore, will display over thirty works spanning Sloan's long career. Early works include Backyards, 1955, painted during Sloan's student days at PAFA. The painting captures a moment in his west Philadelphia neighborhood and "that glorious light that glows", indicative of Sloan's work, particularly his landscape paintings. While Sloan's cityscapes favor a more somber palette as seen in Early Streetscape and Gathering Storm over Philadelphia, c. 1961, Sloan's landscape paintings embrace brighter colors to emphasize the varying light and atmospheric conditions as seen in Moon Light, 1978 and Lifting Fog in the Poconos, 1980. Sloan's true passion was landscape painting and it is in paintings such as, "Frost Valley in the Catskills, 1995," that his great techinical skills, unique artistic vision and masterful rendering of nature are brought together.
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A few weeks after posting this entry, I got this note from John Giannotti: a note about Louis Sloan, the painter of "Frost Valley in the Catskills". Lou was a delightful man who first came to FV with me in 1977 when we did our first Weekend in October painting marathons with his students from the Pennsylvania Academy and my students (and Bill Hoffman's) from Rutgers. Lou fell in love with FV at first sight. That fall was the beginning of a long association with Lou and FV. We came back dozens of times and Lou continued the tradition with his plen-air painting friends from all over the East. By the way, Chuck White loved to watch Lou paint. In fact, Chuck was in awe of him. I loved to watch Chuck watching Lou -- loved to watch that heavily lined, Marlboro man face turn all warm and fuzzy when he discovered a new color in the mountains that Lou had found for him on his canvas.
