Featured Artist: Stanley Maltzman
Through the years students have asked what inspired me to paint a certain picture, or what kind of pencil I use for drawing. My answer is, “it is a thousand hour pencil”. In other words, the secret is not the pencil… it is the work, the devotion and the love of drawing. Art starts with the business of seeing.
Nature inspires you with her beauty, but you, as an artist, must take the elements nature presents to you and interpret them in the light of your own feelings to create your drawing or painting. I firmly believe that there is a certain sense of communion with nature that is captured by working in the fields or woods that cannot be achieved by working indoors. In natural surroundings one can touch, smell and observe the beauty that is all around them.
Biography
Stanley Maltzman is a highly acclaimed landscape artist, as well as an accomplished author and educator. He works in a variety of media, most often pastel, watercolor or charcoal, and lives in New York’s Hudson River Valley. He is a member of the Pastel Society of America, Audubon Artists, the Hudson Valley Art Association and the Academic Artists Association.
Stanley’s drawings and paintings have been widely exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the country including The Carnegie Museum of Natural History, The Butler Institute, The National Academy, and The American Academy of Arts and Letters. Recently Stanley’s work has been included in the Pastel Society of America Signature Member Exhibition at the Noyes Museum of Art in Oceanville, NJ and the Northeast Pastel Society exhibition at The View at Old Forge, NY. His work is represented in many collections including the U.S. Coast Guard Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which acquired three of his works as well as a copy of his book Drawing Nature. Stanley was chosen to contribute to Art Journey America Landscapes: 89 Painters’ Perspectives (2012).
In the past his work has been featured in American Artist and has also appeared in The Artist’s Magazine, Hudson Valley and Kaatskill magazines. He is curator at the Agroforestry Gallery, Acra, New York.
Stanley’s strong belief that good painting evolves from the ability to draw well leads to frequent invitations to lecture and conduct his “plein air” seminars and workshops for high school and adult students.