When talking about competitions dedicated to 21st Century Realism, the Art Renewal Center’s International ARC Salon® is the largest in the world, receiving over 5,000 entries from 87 countries last competition. It is no wonder why artists are entering. With over $130,000 in cash awards and international recognition through the ARC website which receives over 2,000,000 visitors annually, the ARC Salon also offers career changing opportunities through partnerships with prestigious magazines, museums, galleries and more. Don’t miss your chance to compete! Categories include: Figurative, Portraiture, Imaginative Realism, Drawing, Landscape, Still Life, Plein Air Painting, Fully From Life, Sculpture, Animals, and a special category for teens.

Click here to enter the 18th ARC Salon competition.

June 30 - July 25, 2025  

Masters of Line offers a unique opportunity to learn and practice copper plate etching at The Florence Academy of Art’s magnificent campus in Florence, Italy.

The course is studio-based, with accompanying Art History lectures, field drawing, material lectures, studio demonstrations, and intensive hands-on monitored studio/lab work. Students are introduced to all aspects of Line Etching, preparing the ground, biting, proof-printing, and plate correction, and finish the program with at least three of their own completed copper plates.

While ideal for beginners, this workshop offers substantial value to those with prior etching experience, covering both fundamental techniques and advanced processes involved in creating high quality works.

Location: The Florence Academy of Art, Via Aretina 293, Florence, Italy. Click here to view the campus.

For more information visit: https://www.florenceacademyofart.edu/workshops/etching-masters-of-line/ or email info@florenceacademyofart.edu.

If you have ever dreamed of an affordable way to partake in a painting trip of a lifetime, this is your opportunity.

Kegler will be partnering with the La Romita School of art who has been bringing people to the Umbria region of Central Italy to participate in its art workshops for over 50 years! The school is housed in an exquisitely renovated sixteenth century Capuchin monastery surrounded by olive groves. They will host his all inclusive workshop bringing their decades-long expertise to make this a truly unique, intimate, and authentic Italian experience. You just bring your personal art supplies and enthusiasm.

This workshop is catered for artists of all skill levels from very beginners to professionals. Kegler will cover all aspects of landscape painting from the initial concept sketches, field studies done “en plein air”, and studio composition approaches. Although he will work in oil, pencil, watercolor and pastel artists are most welcome to participate. You can work at your own pace, whether it be slow and meditative, or more immersive and driven.

The workshop runs from August 19th - August 29th, 2025.

Please visit the website for more information and to sign up. This will be a small group and spaces are limited, so please reach out soon!

https://thomaskegler.com/classes/italy/?mc_cid=e2e7c746ac&mc_eid=961c5434cf

Skill-Based Art: A Learning Resource for Art Students & Artist-Teachers have recently published a text interview on their brand new website with American painter, D. Jeffrey Mims. The interview covers Mr. Mims’ biography and includes images of his drawings and paintings. Totaling over 13,000 words in length, the interview is the most comprehensive document currently available on the artist’s life and work.

Follow the link below to read the interview:

https://www.skillbasedart.com/d-jeffrey-mims/

Although Vincent van Gogh is today perhaps the most famous Dutch artist of all, in his own time he was relatively little known, especially when compared to artists of the Hague School. This group, named for the city where many of its members trained and worked, was comprised of those who had different styles but shared a devotion to the depiction of everyday life, looking to the Dutch countryside for their subjects and themes. 

Visitors can see watercolors, prints, and drawings by artists such as Weissenbruch and Anton Mauve. Though they are not now household names in the United States, these figures had a profound impact on the artists of their time and future generations. Mauve, in particular, played a key role in Van Gogh’s early life and career. Van Gogh himself is also represented here, with two early works.

The exhibition runs from December 21, 2024 – June 22, 2025 at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, 465 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA 02115.

For more information, click here.  

For more exhibitions, visit the ARC Calendar

Presented in honor of the 250th anniversary of Friedrich’s birth in 2024, Caspar David Friedrich: The Soul of Nature is the first comprehensive exhibition dedicated to the artist held in the United States. The exhibition will present approximately 75 works by Friedrich. Oil paintings, finished drawings, and working sketches from every phase of the artist’s career, along with select examples by his contemporaries, will illuminate how Friedrich developed a symbolic vocabulary of landscape motifs to convey the personal and existential meanings that he discovered in nature. The exhibition will situate Friedrich’s art within the tumultuous politics and vibrant culture of 19th-century German society and, by extension, highlight the role of German Romanticism in shaping modern perceptions of the natural world.
 
The exhibition runs February 7 – May 11, 2025 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 5th Ave, New York, NY 10028.

To learn more, please click here.
 
For more events and exhibitions, visit the ARC Calendar.

The Conru Art Foundation announced the Seattle Prize Masters Fellowship, a new two-year immersive educational program to cultivate early-career artists dedicated to classical, representational painting. The Seattle Prize comprises a $50,000 annual stipend, free studio space in Seattle’s historic Pioneer Square, expert mentorship and a program to support their professional success.

The Seattle Prize is the centerpiece of a broader initiative around arts education featuring the relocation of ARC Approved atelier, The Masters Academy of Art, to Seattle and the appointment of its founder, internationally renowned artist and educator Ryan Brown, as its first director. 

Under Brown’s leadership, the Academy will administer the Seattle Prize and build new capacity for education, advocacy and support for representational art.

“We believe great representational art should engage with the entirety of the human experience - our joys and triumphs, as well as our struggles and sorrows,” said Brown, who created the Academy in 2008 in Utah. “In a world where so many people feel isolated, we need artists who can create paintings that empathize and connect with people in a manner that provides solace and invites contemplation.”

For more information, please click here.  

Join SARA teachers and students for an hour to find out more about the program, student life, finding housing, funding etc. 

Viewers are welcome to send questions during the stream.

Wednesday, February 12, 2025 - Swedish time: 18:00 - 19:00 (EST 12  - 1 pm)  https://www.youtube.com/live/M3EY3A64_xo

This comprehensive four-day workshop is designed for artists who want to deepen their understanding of portrait drawing from life, using charcoal as the primary medium. Over the course of four immersive days, participants will work directly from live models, exploring advanced drawing techniques to capture the human portrait with accuracy and emotion.

Each day will feature a balance of demonstration and personalized coaching, starting with a 3-hour morning demonstration followed by a 3-hour afternoon session dedicated to hands-on practice with individual feedback. Whether you are a beginner or more experienced, this workshop will provide a solid foundation for developing essential life-drawing skills.

The workshop runs from May 22-25 (Thursday-Sunday), 9am-4pm at Studio Incamminati - 1901 S. 9th Street, BOK, 7th Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19148.

Visit https://studioincamminati.edu/workshops-and-classes/ or email info@studioincamminati.edu for more information.

Transcending Tradition celebrates women figurative realist painters who have changed the landscape for women in the arts. Featuring iconic paintings from The Bennett Collection, this exhibition highlights work by both historical and contemporary women painters, such as Artemesia Gentileschi, Mary Cassatt, Elaine de Kooning, Andrea Kowch, Zoey Frank, Katie O’Hagan, Anna Wypych, and many more. 

The exhibition runs from February 6 – May 11, 2025 at the Muskegon Museum, 296 W. Webster Avenue, Muskegon, MI 49440.

Click here to learn more.

For more events and exhibitions, please visit the ARC Calendar.

This exhibition explores Tonalism in the United States from the 1880s to the early 20th century, through artists from the Northeast such as George Inness, John Henry Twachtman, James McNeill Whistler, and John Francis Murphy. Tonalism is a transitional movement that grew out of and reacted to the Hudson River School of painting and laid the groundwork for modernism. Evocative landscapes, evoking a spiritual connection to the natural world, often painted from memory, are the primary genre of this movement. The more than fifty artworks in this exhibition are drawn from private and institutional collections.

The exhibition runs from January 17 – April 12, 2025 at Fairfield University Art Museum, 1073 N Benson Rd, Fairfield, CT, 06824.

To learn more about this exhibition, click here.

Visit the ARC Calendar for more events and exhibitions.