Allen Bentley | Love story

American painter Allen Bentley received his MFA from the University of Pennsylvania in 2000 and his BFA from Western Carolina University in 1996. Bentley’s work has been exhibited across the country, with solo exhibitions in New York, Chicago, San Diego and Philadelphia.

He has shown in the Philadelphia International Airport and in Artworks at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In 2009, Bentley had his first solo museum show at the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts.

He teaches Life Drawing and Intro Drawing at Montgomery College in Rockville, MD. When Bentley is not traveling the country working with professional to celebrity dancers, he lives in Montgomery Village, MD with his wife and children.

El Greco | Technique and style

The primacy of imagination and intuition over the subjective character of creation was a fundamental principle of El Greco's (1541-1614) style.

El Greco discarded classicist criteria such as measure and proportion. He believed that grace is the supreme quest of art, but the painter achieves grace only by managing to solve the most complex problems with ease.

El Greco regarded color as the most important and the most ungovernable element of painting, and declared that color had primacy over form.

Francisco Pacheco, a painter and theoretician who visited El Greco in 1611, wrote that the painter liked "the colors crude and unmixed in great blots as a boastful display of his dexterity" and that "he believed in constant repainting and retouching in order to make the broad masses tell flat as in nature".

Nicolai Fechin (1881-1955)

Nicolai Fechin was born in the city of Kazan, Russia, the son of Ivan Alexandrovitch Fechin, an accomplished icon maker, woodcarver, and gilder.

 At the age of thirteen Fechin was ready to begin his life's work, attending the Kazan School of Art (1895-1901) and then the St. Petersburg Imperial Academy of Arts, where he was taught by the great Russian master, Ilya Repin.

His work appeared in America for the first time at the 1910 International Exhibit of the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh.

In both western Europe and America, Fechin was greeted with instant acclaim.

Among such distinguished contemporaries as Claude Monet, Pissarro, Gaston La Touche, Sisley and John Sargent, he won his first prizes and medals. He was called a "Moujik in art", the "Tartar painter".

Zhiwei Tu, 1951 | Romantic / Impressionist painter

Awards winning painter Zhiwei Tu was born in Northern Guangdong Province, China.

As a child he worked his family's land, herded sheep, and attended the village school.

It was there that he became infatuated with painting and drawing.

When he was in high school, a professional artist was sent to the village to paint a portrait of Mao Zedong.

Tony Pavone | Last Lover

Born in Ohio from parents of European descent, Tony Pavone's childhood was filled with art, operas, musicals and passion for culture.

His artistic abilities became evident when, at the age of 3, he opened his father's anatomy and art books and drew the internal anatomy of the human body.

At the age of 10, his family moved to Florida, and after high school, Tony received a full scholarship to the University of South Florida for symphonic string bass.

"The more I played music, the more art pulled at me". Before long, Tony left USF and enrolled in the Ringling School of Art and Design. Earlier in his professional career Tony worked as a graphic illustrator and rose quickly to creative director, then to Art director.