BIG STORIES PANEL DISCUSSION

January 25, 2024
From left to right: Carl Dobsky (Moderator), Zoey Frank, Bo Bartlett, Amy Sherald, Vincent Desiderio and Noah Buchanan (Moderator)

Against the backdrop of the Big Stories exhibition at the New York Academy of Art, four of the nation’s leading figurative painters meet to discuss The Narrative in art, and its evolving role in today’s world.

Exhibition page: https://nyaa.edu/big-stories/

Bo Bartlett (b. 1955, Columbus, GA) is an American realist with a modernist vision. His paintings are well within the tradition of American realism as defined by artists such as Thomas Eakins and Andrew Wyeth. Like these artists, Bartlett looks at America’s heart—its land and its people—and describes the beauty he finds in everyday life. His paintings celebrate the underlying epic nature of the commonplace and the personal significance of the extraordinary.

Noah Buchanan (b. 1976) began his artistic studies in 1994 at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, where he studied classical drawing and painting, as well as extensive studies in human anatomy. In 2002, he received a Masters of Fine Arts from the New York Academy of Art where he intensified his training in figure painting and anatomy with Martha Mayer Erlebacher and Steven Assael.

Vincent Desiderio (b. 1955, Philadelphia, PA) graduated from Haverford College in 1977 and later attended the Accademia di belle arti in Florence, Italy followed by four years at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. He is a Senior Critic at the New York Academy of Art and has been a visiting professor at numerous universities both here and abroad, most recently with a three-year appointment at the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts in China through the country’s “Thousand Talent Program.”

Carl Dobsky is a figurative painter currently living and working in the Los Angeles area. His work is grounded in traditional forms of representation while still incorporating contemporary elements. Dobsky earned a B.F.A from Ringling College of Art and Design and an M.F.A from the New York Academy of Art. Beyond education at these institutions, he also studied classical approaches to drawing and painting at the Water Street Atelier in Brooklyn, NY. He has exhibited throughout the U.S. and in Europe. His work can be found in both private and public collections including the New Britain Museum of Art and the Seven Bridges Foundation.

Zoey Frank (b. 1987 in Boulder, Colorado) makes use of patterns and elements of abstraction in her large-scale multi-figure compositions. Her work draws on a wide range of approaches to pictorial space from across art history. Frank studied for four years with Juliette Aristides in the Classical Atelier at Gage Academy of Art in Seattle, before receiving her MFA in painting from Laguna College of Art and Design in California.

Amy Sherald (b. 1973, Columbus, GA) received her MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2004 and BFA from Clark-Atlanta University in 1997. She documents the contemporary African-American experience in the United States through arresting, otherworldly figurative paintings. Sherald engages with the history of photography and portraiture to situate Black life centrally in American art. In October 2022, Sherald presented The World We Make, her first European solo exhibition at Hauser and Wirth in London.