“Life Passages: Mid-Atlantic Artists” The Spartanburg Museum of Art February 27 - April 23, 2006 The works of Jason Arkles, Charles Philip Brooks, Lee Johnson, and Henry Wingate, are united by the core principles of the academic training found at the teaching studios of Paul Ingbretson and Charles Cecil. Both Ingbretson and Cecil studied with the renowned R.H. Ives Gammell, who had studied under Boston Painter William Paxton. Paxton received his education in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome, himself a student of Paul Delaroche, a pupil of Jacques-Louis David. It is from these sources of artistic knowledge that both Cecil and Ingbretson have established ateliers in Florence, Italy and Manchester, New Hampshire respectively, and continue to train a new generation of artists in the aesthetic principles, solid craftsmanship, and humanistic values that are our inheritance from the Renaissance.   Jason Arkles Jason Louis Arkles was born in Washington, DC and has since relocated to North Carolina. In 1996, he traveled to Florence, Italy, to study at the Charles H. Cecil Studio, in the studio’s recently inaugurated sculpture program. The sculpture department was an experimental one, charged with the task of regaining a nearly lost sculptural tradition; the program is the only fine arts school in the world offering this particular method of training. In April 1997, Arkles became the department's head. In June of 2000, the National Sculpture Society awarded him the George Gach Prize, for his entry in the National Sculpture Competition, and the Gloria Medal for his meritorious body of work. Since then Arkles has taken part in national and regional exhibitions, from New York to Washington, DC to Chapel Hill. In 2003 Arkles relocated his studio in Chapel Hill to Southern Pines, North Carolina. Jason Arkles is currently working on his first book on the technique of sight-size sculpture.   Charles Phillip Brooks Charles Philip Brooks, born in North Carolina, studied in New England in the studio of highly respected Boston School authority Paul Ingbretson and with the renowned American Barbizon painter Dennis Sheehan. He is primarily a landscape painter, focusing on the landscape of the southeastern United States. His work incorporates elements of impressionism and is firmly rooted in the American Barbizon / Tonalist tradition of landscape painting. He works out of the tradition established by such artists as George Inness, Alexander Wyant, Bruce Crane, John Francis Murphy, Dwight William Tryon, and North Carolina’s own Elliot Daingerfield. Further influences include the painters Eugene Boudin and Charles –François Daubigny, as well as the many other masters of the French Barbizon School.   Lee Johnson Lee Johnson began his artistic training with former pupil of Arthur Maynard, Betty Lou Totten. He subsequently earned his Bachelor's Degree in Fine Art from New College, and went on to study with Leo Neufeld in New Mexico. His interest in representational painting then led him to the atelier of Charles Cecil in Florence, Italy, where he studied and taught figurative and portrait painting for three years. Lee currently lives and paints in Saxapahaw, North Carolina. The focus of Lee's work is the human form, and his large body of work includes portraits, landscapes, individual figure paintings, drawings, and large-scale multiple-figure works which explore complex themes in allegorical compositions. Stemming from its roots in the Renaissance, portraiture and figurative painting executed from life provide the richly textured factual component in Lee’s imaginative work.   Henry Wingate Henry Wingate began his training as a painter at the age of 28, after having served six years as a pilot in the Navy. On leaving the Navy, Henry discovered that there was a small group of ateliers teaching painting in the representational style that he had always loved. In 1994, he moved to Boston to study with Paul Ingbretson. He spent five years in the Ingbretson atelier and then added two short stints with another teacher from the same tradition, Charles Cecil, in Florence, Italy. Both Ingbretson and Cecil studied under R.H. Ives Gammell. Wingate has won numerous awards, including First Prize in the American Society of Portrait Artists 2000 competition, the Gold Medal of Honor at the 2003 Hudson Valley Art Association annual exhibition, and the Best Painting from Life Award of the National Oil & Acrylic Painters’ Society in 2003. His work was featured as the cover article in the November, 2002, issue of American Artist.   For more information about the museum and its programs, visit our website at www.spartanburgartmuseum.org or use the search engine at www.sparklenet.com