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In the Grip of Winter |
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JAMES A. FETHEROLF
American
James Fetherolf was born in Nazareth,
Pennsylvania in 1925. He attended Syracuse University and after graduating
in 1949 moved to California hoping for an acting career. For five years
while struggling to develop his acting career Fetherolf worked as a part-time
matte artist for Twentieth Century Fox Studios.
The difficulty of finding acting jobs eventually convinced Fetherolf that
his future in the arts lay in painting and he began to work at Fox full-time.
In 1957 Fetherolf then went on the work for Walt Disney Productions.
Fetherolf claims that his years at Disney were educational in several
ways, partly because the standards of perfection were very high, and partly
because his work was tied to deadlines. He produced detailed paintings
on glass, usually three or four feet in size, of cities or landscape scenes.
These "matte shots" were later combined with live action. His
work appeared in such classic films as Zorro, Pollyanna, Mary Poppins,
and Third Man on the Mountain.
After a visit to a local art gallery, during which he decided he could
do at least as well as the artists represented, Fetherolf turned to the
fine arts. He began by painting seascapes, which were enthusiastically
received; these and his landscapes had become so popular by 1969 that
he left the film industry and devoted himself entirely to oil painting.
Fetherolf's work is noted for its precise rendering of fine detail, a
skill he may have mastered during his years as a background artist for
Fox and Walt Disney studios.The dramatic quality in Fetherolf's paintings
is his ability to capture the reaction of light, a quality most evident
in the work of the great landscape artists of the nineteenth century.
His paintings are also distinguished by clarity of detail. For example,
individual timbers are discernible inside a distant barn and cacti on
the horizon are individually painted. He is also known for the moist,
billowing quality of the clouds in his large skies, a quality he achieves
by working on the sky in each painting in one sitting while the paint
is wet.
Fetherolf has the exceptional ability to bring the viewer into the scene
in the paintings he creates. The viewer can feel the warmth of the sun,
the coolness of the shadows, the approaching storm, the first spring rain,
and the early snow clinging to buildings, trees, and the land.
Fetherolf has received seven gold medals from the Franklin Mint Gallery
of American Art and was selected to paint the centerpiece work, America!
America!, for the Mint's "America the Beautiful" series. His
work was also represented in the Bicentennial exhibition of the R. W.
Norton Museum in Shreveport, Louisiana.
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