Agent and Publisher for Pettegrew, Caleb and the Artists of Cuba Oriente

YENDI TOMÁS ESTRADA CANCINO
b. (1978–) Manzanillo, Cuba
Graduate: School of Visual Arts, Holguin
Now residing in Santiago de Cuba
YENDI demonstrates an obvious reverence for Rembrandt, whose spirit infuses many of his paintings. His work can be found in many private collections in Cuba and abroad.
Yendi has exhibited extensively throughout Cuba including a Solo exhibition at the prestigious “Galería Oriente” in Santiago de Cuba, 2003.

Untitled Oil on Canvas (51″x70″)-Available

“Melancolia” Oil on Canvas (46″x34″) -Available

Two new tropical abstracted landscapes in a 36×36 square format, acrylic on canvas.

Four Palms

Three Palms

Santiago de Cuba is a lovely city nestled between the sea and the mountains, between blue and green. In order to understand that city and its artists, to its singular geological and architectural characteristics we must add a strong personality and a luminous, colorful, extroverted, noisy and welcoming setting.
Antonio Ferrer Cabello sings to the city and its residents. Portraying the former, he rejoices in improbable but real spaces, in the reddish tone of its locally made roof tiles, in the hundred-year-old balconies, in the cobblestones worn down by the incessant comings and goings of its inhabitants and curious visitors on steep, narrow streets.

He captures the city’s soul like no one else, beyond all visible forms. Gazing at his canvases, we forget that painting is two-dimensional as we “penetrate” those idealized panoramas, where it’s always noon and everything seems to doze in the stupor of the siesta. But that sun doesn’t burn us. That’s how pleasant Ferrer’s Santiago is.
In this regard, Jorge Hidalgo comments:
There are some of Ferrer’s cityscapes that I call “rooftop landscapes,” because clearly he has painted them from his studio or some high point, and they are impressive. This is something that no other painter has achieved, not even the golden watercolorists, as I call Hernández Giro, Bofill and others who – although they are masters – have not portrayed that Santiago de Cuba that Ferrer captures from the rooftops.
And Julia Valdés adds:
No one else is as adept in capturing our city’s luminosity and brilliant color in those landscapes, and from the viewpoint of composition, the city’s architecture and the contours of the land. His stroke is dynamic and I would say that his most recent phase is more daring than the previous ones, and his palette much richer.…
Ferrer Cabello creates Caribbean images. Feverishly devoted to them, he has delved into an iconographic world which is ever richer and more diverse, in constant evolution. The men and women are inserted in the city as if it were a huge, colorful fan. In careful detail, he explores the possibilities offered by his surroundings. Nothing escapes the master’s palette: carnival, the Cubans’ joy and love of crowds. He has given us a vast collection of portraits of conspicuous characters from Santiago de Cuba and other latitudes, as well as affectionate views of the countryside. Ferrer seems to feel a constant need to reveal life itself. He is a man in his 90s who is born each day, creating scenes full of images that are significant, among other reasons, for their documentary value.
His works are like windows opening onto the world, helping us to shape our values and ultimately our consciousness. This master has the constant need to find the essential nature of the reality surrounding us, often by delving into its narrative content. Ferrer presents us with his own universe, which seems to be inexhaustible.

Seven North and Arte De Cuba are proud to introduce Cuban artist Harry Ruiz Moreno.

Currently showing at the Goddard Center for the Arts, in Ardmore, OK, Harry’s works have generated tremendous interest and brisk sales.

"Our Masks, Our Selves" Harry Ruiz Moreno

Oil on Canvas, (43″x63″)

Born in Holguín, Cuba, 1973. Studies: 1984-1992: He attended Professional Holguin Art School “El Alba” at the same time he was receiving private lessons from another Holguin born artist: Cosme Proenza (a world-known painter graduated from Kiev Beaux Arts Institute.) Main Personal Exhibitions: 1992: Graduation Thesis. Moncada show room. Holguín,Cuba. 1995: Personal Exhibition. Anonimous Gallery . Panamá 1997: “Everything on Harry”. Graphic Workshop Gallery. Habana, Cuba. 1999: “Deceiving our eyesl”. Internacional Press Center. Habana, Cuba. 2000: “Harry”. Galería Adriano, Milán: Personal Exhibition. Galería Pernik.Holguín, Cuba. 2007: Personal Exhibition. San Lucas Gallery. Chueca, Madrid Collective Exhibitions : 1993: “From the drawing”. La Acacia, Habana, Cuba. 1995: Modern Cuban Art Exhibition . Santiago de Chile. 1996: “Comtemporary Cuban Landscapes”. Anonimous Gallery. Panamá 1998: Cuban Contemporary Art showroom,.Milán, Italia 1999: “Arteba” Fair :Buenos Aires, Argentina 2001: “20-21”. Collective Cuban Contemporary Art Exhibiton. Acacia Gallery Habana, Cuba. 2005: Collective Exhibición. “Encuentros” Gallery, Panamá. His works may be found in many private collections in countries such as Italia, Panamá, Estados Unidos, Puerto Rico, México, Costa Rica, among others. Under Cosme Proenza tutorial, he became a skillful painter, a very virtuoso exponent of the Russian academic school ready to mingle Cuban social speech and tropical spirit with ochre and sepia colors, accurate drawing with loose brush strokes to express a boring state of mind as well as a desire of intellectual freedom. On several of his canvas naïve characters appear just posing themselves as part of an absurd scenario with suspended stones and upside-down flying birds which somehow reflects the uncertainty and chaos that for decades has been dominating Cuban life. Masks serve to depict a double moral society. Houses refers to belongings we left behind when we part, the nostalgia of not recovering our roots, our past. Children and old men together are supposed to express a very short route from birth to death, as if middle age life doesn’t count that much (no plans, no future), while migration seems to be the only and eternal way out. Harry wouldn’t call his work surrealism but something rather closer to nihilism. As he often says he hates painting beautiful things unless absurdity is present. Absurdity is still the most representative characteristic of human nature.

Just about everybody has heard of Florida landscape painter Peter Pettegrew by now, but have you ever thought of him as one of South’s famous Highwayman? Alright, that’s a little bit of a stretch, but he is– in his own way– very much like a lone Highwayman painting on location all over Florida , Georgia and the Carolinas. In Pettegrew’s early days of selling his work, it was “the old paint ‘em and sell ‘em” right from his car, and later from a big van his agent Jim Cournoyer owned. And yes, sometimes the paint was still wet when the sale was made!

When Peter hooked up with Jim in 1993, Jim took over the selling so Peter could devote more time to hittin’ the highways and back roads finding new subjects with the “right place with the right light.”

Although Pettegrew’s style has more of a Hudson River School feel with many layers of paint– more like Beanie Backus (one of Peter’s favorites and a Highwaymen mentor), in fact, his work has a lot in common with the Highwaymen. All of the Highwaymen artists are largely self taught, sharing ideas and learning with fellow painters, occasionally doing workshops together and separately.

Here is Pettegrew with Sam Newton who, along with brothers Len and Harold Newton, are among the best known original Highwayman. Peter took Sam’s workshop and they had much to talk about… a lot of years and stories on the road painting in Florida.

Peter’s favorite time to work is always what is called the “golden time,” just like Beanie Backus and most of the Highwayman.

“My favorite times of day were late afternoon or early morning, because the light is more alive then. I like the effect of light on the color of an object, and how light differs from day-to-day, season-to-season, place-to-place.”
Beanie Backus

JC

Image via Wikipedia

The Havana Cultura site is an exciting, vivid destination that is, fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your bandwidth, all javascript/Flash driven. The site is financed by Havana Club brand rum. who appear to have spared no expense. Visual arts and contemporary music are presented TV magazine-style. Makes us even more anxious for the day that trade relations are liberalized.
The default language is Spanish, but English is one of the other languages offered. Offered, but perhaps ineffectively. We’ll be watching this site.

Florida landscape impressionist painter Peter Pettegrew talks to his fans at gallery openings in Jacksonville and Tampa, Florida.
Those who wish to may phone 727-894-5266 or email SevenNorth@gmail.com to obtain the whole documentary on a DVD for the cost of postage and handling, which is around 9 and change in the US, I believe.