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    Contact Us

    Steven S. Powers
    109 3rd PL #2, Brooklyn, NY 11231
    phone: 917.518.0809
    email: steve@stevenspowers.com

    or at the gallery
    53 Stanton Street, NY, NY 10002
    phone: 917.518.0809
    email: steve@stevenspowers.com

PAINTINGS / WORKS ON PAPER:

Our interest in painting is primarily in American Folk Art and Outsider Art. The self taught artist and itinerant painters and those that had some training, but resisted becoming formalist and forged paths of their own - all of those who strived to go beyond the craft of painting and create real works of art.

Please review our Portfolio / Recently Sold page to see the extent of the offerings we have handled.
Portrait-Miniature of Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
Joseph-Aignan Sigaud de Lafond (1730-1810)
Satin by means of “electric spark,” paper, ink
Circa: 1785-1790
Size: 3 3/4" x 4 1/8"

An important and historically unique portratit of Benjamin Franklin done by means of an experimental electrical process.

With Franklin putting lightning in a bottle, electricity was one the most experimented forms of science in the Age of Enlightenment. Already revered as a Scientist worldwide, Franklin served as a diplomat to France following the American Revolution where he was known as “The Great American.”

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"Checkerboard Artist" House Portrait
Somerset County, PA
Oil on board
Circa: 1820-1840
Size: 10" (w) x 7 3/8" (h)

This deceptively simple work is subtle but remarkably indelible. It is attributed to "The Checkerboard Artist" of Somerset County, PA and relates to a small group of wall boxes and chests that share a common aesthetic and craftsmanship of incised, geometric design and a harmonious color palette of red, green, yellow, and black. This panel is the only non-utilitarian work associated with this maker.

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A Collection of Works by L. C. Spooner
L.C. Spooner (1863-1955), Inventor
Graphite, & Ink on Paper
Circa: 1935
Sizes vary - see descriptions

A collection of four works by Lee Cordova Spooner. Spooner was a visionary inventor of self-propulsion and self-defense. Two of these works are from Blue Mound, Illinois and two from St. Charles, Missouri (one on the back of a St. Charles hotel stationary).

From the WLD Foundation’s website: Little is known about the life of this highly original artist. L.C. Spooner's work, created between 1911 and 1935, is comprised entirely of plans of machines or everyday-life objects based on the principle of self-propulsion (self-propelled motors, self-propelled trash cans, self-propelled scales, self-propelled finger-lifter, etc.).

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Portrait Miniature of a Parson Russell Terrier
American or British
Oil on celluloid
Circa: 1910
Size: 3 1/2" (h)

Beautifully painted and detailed dog portrait in its original gilt metal pendant case.

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Putnam Valley
Emile Branchard (New York, 1881-1938)
Oil on artist board
Circa: 1925
Size: 11 1/4"” x 15” (sight)

A favorite Branchard landscape with divided fields over Putnam Valley, NY. Has a bit of a Grant Wood feel to it. Branchard's work is currently included in the traveling museum exhibit, Gatecrashers: The Rise of the Self-Taught Artist in America.

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Fashions 1887
Edwin Lawson (1911-1980)
Crayon, pencil on paper
Circa: 1977
Size: 17 1/2" x 23 1/2" (sight)

Edwin Lawson, a professor of architecture who died in 1980, left behind a cache of drawings he created in the 1970s that revealed a fantasy world his wife was unaware of. The large-scale pencil and crayon drawings illustrate Lawson cross-dressed as a woman in historic fashions from the 1880s to the 1960s.

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Folk Art Pug Portrait Painting
Oil on artist board
Circa: 1890
Size: 16” x 22 1/2” (sight)

Betcha smiled when you saw this :) Great Folk Art portrait of a pug wearing an orange bow-tied harness on flowered carpet in front of a red velvet curtain. One of the very best folk art dog paintings I have seen.

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The Fates
Evelyn (Eva) Almond Withrow (1858-1928)
Oil on wood (cigar box lid)
Circa: 1900-1910
Size: 4 3/4” x 7 3/4” (sight)

Around 1900, this pioneering woman, California artist, had an experience that changed the direction of her painting from portraits to more personal, spiritualist paintings. “An inspiration born… [unto her], she sat, half asleep and half a-wake....she seemed, a dream figure, looking into space, into the future, the mother-heart questioning the Fates as to the future of her child.”

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Grand Sweepstakes Young Herd at Chicago World’s Fair
Henry Dousa (1801-1903ish)
Pastel on paper
Circa: 1893
Size: 22" (h) x 29 3/4" (w) (sight)

Striking in its modern composition and brilliant color, this large pastel drawing by Henry Dousa depicts a herd of cattle shown at World's Columbian Exposition in 1893.

Henry Dousa is known for his iconic Folk Art painting, “The Farm of Henry Windle,” where he illustrates an out-of-scale giant steer. In this masterwork, Dousa arranges five cattle like pips on a die. A single sire, named, “Gay Harry,” is surrounded by four heifers, “Kitty Walls,” “Kitty Mayo,” “Cherry May,” and “Model.” Gay Harry won second place at the Grand Sweepstakes.

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Indian Encampment
attr. Richard Nisbett (1753-1823)
Watercolor on paper
Circa: 1822
Size: 13" (w) x 7 3/4" (h)

This remarkable watercolor from 1822 is one of the earliest American asylum works extant and likely the earliest in private hands. Further, it is attributed to Richard Nisbett (1753-1823), a published author and poet of note, and a patient at Philadelphia Hospital's asylum ward.

The painting is inscribed on the lower left, "1822. Painted by a maniac confined in the cells of the Alms House—the design his own." It is initialed "J.P.H" for John Pennington Hopkinson (1801-1836). Dr. John P. Hopkinson was a Philadelphia physician, author, and professor and was the son of Congressman Joseph Hopkinson, and Francis Hopkinson's grandchild, signer of the Declaration of Independence.

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Mock Orange [Philadelphus]
Ida Ella Jones (1874-1959)
Oil on canvas board
Circa: July, 1952
Size: 20" (w) x 16" (h) (sight)

Ida Ella Jones, the daughter of a former slave, had ten children and at the age of seventy-two began painting. Self-taught, her work focuses on local (Chester County, PA) landscapes, still-lifes and Biblical stories. Mockorange, (Philadelphus), is a shrub with a citrus scent and has white blossoms that bloom in the late spring to early summer.

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Mountain Peaks
Emile Branchard (New York, 1881-1938)
Oil on artist board
Circa: 1925
Size: 8" x 12" (sight)

A beautiful, small work with a compelling composition of two mountain peaks. The verso with an equally beautiful landscape.

Room 521 in the expanded and rehung Museum of Modern Art is dedicated to past director, Alfred H. Barr, Jr., and his groundbreaking exhibit of 1938, "Masters of Popular Painting." The show focused on self-taught and artists removed from the mainstream market or as they were called then, "folk artists, or naives," today we may term them as "outsiders." Emile Branchard was one of the artists represented in that seminal exhibit.

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Night Trees
Emile Branchard (New York, 1881-1938)
Oil on artist board
Circa: 1925
Size: 8" x 11 1/2" (sight)

A sensitively painted small work with a very specific light quality to the early night sky.

Room 521 in the expanded and rehung Museum of Modern Art is dedicated to past director, Alfred H. Barr, Jr., and his groundbreaking exhibit of 1938, "Masters of Popular Painting." The show focused on self-taught and artists removed from the mainstream market or as they were called then, "folk artists, or naives," today we may term them as "outsiders." Emile Branchard was one of the artists represented in that seminal exhibit.

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Hedonistic Hell
Oil on canvas
Circa: 1940-1950
Size: 23 1/4" (h) x 31 3/8" (w) (sight)

This extraordinary and ambitious painting is by an unidentified painter named, "Rodriguez" (signed lower right).

The hedonistic painting illustrates several nude women embracing a capital vice (lust, vanity, greed, wrath, sloth, and envy) while a gluttonous man drinks wine and gorges on watermelon bananas.

The cavernous landscape hints at death with grottos that mimic the shape of human skulls with dark, vacant eye sockets.

While not all the vignettes are precise, which sin they portray, some like the woman transforming into a Jaguar in front of a bifurcated snake is quite remarkable—as is the woman straddled on a large flying dragon.

The whole has the feeling of Gustave Dore illustrations for Dante’s Inferno and The Divine Comedy.

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Untitled [Three Figures]
Forrest Bess (1911 – 1977)
Oil on Canvas
Circa: 1946
Size: 14" (h) x 16" (w) (sight)

In 1946 Forrest Bess found himself as a painter. Although Bess had produced works in the 1930’s, it was not until 1946 that Bess, at the urging of his psychiatrist had he began to record the colorful visions that were troubling him. The visions were likely brought on from the trauma he suffered from being beaten by a fellow Army mate as a consequence of his homosexuality. In this year, Bess produced a wide range of work; representational, abstract and symbolic paintings. About this period, Bess expressed to his dealer, Betty Parsons, “Only by painting the goddamned thing out have all my symptoms of anxiety disappeared.” It was these works that got him through his PTSD and on his way to the visionary painter he would become.

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Rare Cyanotype of a Cadaver
Unique cyanotype photogram on paper
Circa: 1941-1949
Size: 13 1/2”(w) x 36” (h) (sight)

Though created for scientific purposes, this striking image of the male body with its stark composition and delicate tonal ranges of cyan has an unintentional air of reverence—a haunting witness mark—not unlike the Shroud of Turin or a Buddhist scroll.

In a recently published essay by Lita Tirak, Tirak reveals that the innovative radiographs were created by a General Electric technologist named Harold Mahoney. Mahoney was a formally trained artist by way of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Arts Students League of New York and became a radiologist during WWI.

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Rare Cyanotype of a Cadaver
Unique cyanotype photogram on paper
Circa: 1941-1949
Size: 13 1/2”(w) x 36” (h) (sight)

Though created for scientific purposes, this image of a male inner torso is strikingly beautiful with its deep blue tonal range and confrontational subject.

In a recently published essay by Lita Tirak, Tirak reveals that the innovative radiographs were created by a General Electric technologist named Harold Mahoney. Mahoney was a formally trained artist by way of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Arts Students League of New York and became a radiologist during WWI.

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Folk Art EYE Yarn Textile
Circa: 1960s
Size: 20" (h) x 36" (w)

So very 1960s. Bold yarn textile of a VERY BIG EYE.

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Variations of the Cross
Clara Bella Dunham (1901-1967)
Circa: 1940-1950
Size: 8”(w) x 10 1/2” (h) (each)

A collection of over one hundred variations of the cross painted by Clara Bella Dunham (1901-1967). Though the cross is now primarily associated with Christianity, it is an ancient symbol used by past cultures throughout time and the world over. 84 shown here - there are about 125 total. Displayed together they make a powerful installation.

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Study of a Male Nude & Young Highlander with Raised Arm
John Kane (1860–1934)
Pencil on note paper
Circa: 1930
Size: 8 1/2" x 5 1/2"" (sight)

A rare John Kane double-sided pencil sketch. Kane is regarded as one of the masters of self-taught American artists.

On the above or recto, note how Kane makes room for the hands to complete the sketch—he ran out of room while drawing the figure's arms, so he placed them to the lower left. Above the hands, Kane lists 18th-19thC English painters that he must have been studying.

The verso illustrates a young boy in a Highlander outfit (Kane would use this figure in a few finished paintings). The writing on this side lists the colors of the rainbow (Roy G. Biv).

Provenance: Galerie St. Etienne

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Folk Art Housescape with Couple and Dog
Virginia
Oil on window shade
Circa: 1930s
Size: 21 1/2” x 31 1/2” (frame)

Painted on a window shade mounted on early plywood with original artist painted frame. A Virginia Housescape with couple on Bench looking at a dog barking up a tree. Wonderfully flat and folky.

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17thC German Folk Art Family Tree - Great Fish
Germany
Watercolor on paper
Circa: 1680
Size: Size: 12" x 19.5" (sight) / 22" x 29" (framed)

Super graphic early watercolor on paper of a German Folk Art family tree. Have not done the research into the family - some of the names observed are Hoffman; Steiner; Pabst; and Haberman.

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Strange Brown Bear Painting on Tin
Circa: 1840-1860
Size: 21 3/4" x 18" (sight) / 23 3/8" x 19 1/2" (framed)

Unusual tole painting on a tin substrate (maybe a tray). The bear is strikingly (and maybe a bit unsettling) anthropomorphic.

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The Key To My Fantasy
Pen & Ink on canvas board
Circa: 1960-1970
Size: 16” (w) x 20” (h) (sight)

This is a remarkable illustration by an as of yet unidentified artist. The adeptly rendered nude figure and intricate design are masterfully worked and executed. It appears that the male figure to the center-left is a self-portrait and the large woman in the center and little vignettes are the same woman. A key is illustrated to the bottom center-left.

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Untitled [Woman with Apple]
Miroslav Tichý (1926-2011)
Monotype etching
Circa: 1970s (n.d.)
Size: 11 3/4" (w) x 16 1/2" (h) sight

This large Tichý monotype adds an element of art history beyond Tichý's persistant subject of the female. The apple adds a Biblical element and possibly represents Eve as a temptress.

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Untitled [Woman Turned Right]
Miroslav Tichý (1926-2011)
Monotype etching
Circa: 1970s (n.d.)
Size: 6 1/2" (w) x 10" (h) sight

This small monotype is one of my favorites, as it exemplifies Tichý's improvisational process as it is clear he used a shard of broken plastic or glass as the etching ground—the image is hazy and has a dark vignette much like his photographs.

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Pear Tree I
Stephen Brown (1950-2009)
Oil on cardboard
Circa: 2006
Size: 10 1/8" (w) x 17" (h) (sight) | 12 3/4" (w) x 19 1/4" (h)(frame)

In 2005 Stephen Brown had a stroke and a pulmonary embolism. In 2006, while driving home past an orchard, he noticed a pear tree in the exact shape of his stroke on the x-ray he had brought home. He instantly knew that the pear tree's pruning and regrowth duplicated the shape in his brain. Thus began his small series of paintings and pastels of this pear tree—a catharsis of healing. Writing in the 2012 "Legacy" catalog, colleague and dear friend Walter Hall wrote "These paintings are about rising above the daunting forces that threaten or obstruct one's way; both defiant and life-affirming, the vitality of the new branches, shooting up from the gnarled, suffering trunks, presents a noble and exhilarating image of the irrepressibility of the will to live."

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Memory Painting of Riga
Oil on plywood with taped labels
Circa: 1950-1960s
Size: 35" (w) x 18" (h) (sight)

The large memory painting calls to mind the work of George Morgan, who composed memory paintings from a bird's-eye's perspective. Intuitively we use this aerial device as a method of recall.

A massive wave of Latvian immigrants came to the United States after World War II. Having Suffered through Soviet and Nazi occupations, hundreds of thousands fled and spent years in European refugee camps before some of them immigrated to the United States in the early 1950s.

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"􏰁Texas is My Home􏰂": Family, Farm, and Daily Life.
Graphite on paper
Dated: July and August 1936
Size: each +/- 7 5/8" (h) x 11 3/4" (w) (sight)

This unsigned, but dated group of folk art drawings, completed over a few weeks in July and August 1936, capture the quaint insight into the world of an unknown artist.

The unknown, but proudly Texan artist illustrates a family gathering, the interior, and exterior of a small home, church, school, farm life and a couple in a field of bluebonnets. The renderings are drafted with a good sense of composition, perspective, and handling of the graphite.

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A Set of Four New York Paintings
Adolph Kronengold (1900-1986)
Oil on canvas board
Circa: early-mid 1920’s
Size: each 6" x 8" (sight)

(ul) Hudson River Brick Factories; (ur) Meatpacking District; (ll) Brooklyn Bridge; (lr) Westside Passenger Piers.

Kronengold was born in New Orleans and studied at New York’s Art Student League and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. In the late 20’s and 30’s he was a leading cover illustrator for the New Yorker.

These four small, en plein air, paintings exhibit an assured handling of paint with broad strokes and blocks of color that readily define the space and light of scenes in and around New York City.

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Desire From The Planet Called Pleasure
Henry Ray Clark (1936 - 2006)
Colored ballpoint pens, manila envelope
Circa: 1997
Size: 20" (w) x 13 1/2" (h) (sight)

A striking example of Clark's work with a female alien named "Desire" in the center panel. Unusually Clark uses loosened ink, similar to watercolor and a couple of the sections surrounding the figure. Titled on top, "MY NAME IS DESIRE FROM THE PLANET CALLED PLEASURE I AM HERE TO SERVE YOU WITH WHATEVER YOU WISH."

His street name was "The Magnificent Pretty Boy," because of his good looks and intense blue eyes. Armed with a sixth grade education, a life of drug dealing and hustling, Clark found himself in and out of the Texas penitentiary system until an assault landed him there on an extended stay.

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The Toreador
Edward Byrne (1877 - 1974), Missouri
Circa: 1970
Size: 11" (w) x 6 3/4" (h) (sight)

Byrne came into painting at 87 years of age and while living at a rest home like George E. Morgan. He got his inspiration from newspaper clippings and local real estate advertisements. Although known for his semi-abstract architectural works, Byrne loved to paint animals as well.

This work with its stark composition reminds one of Bill Traylor’s animal paintings.

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Tattoo You, You and You
Reverse painting on glass, collage
Circa: late 1980's / early 1990's
Size: 20" (w) x 10 1/2" (h) (sight)

A highly engaging work with insight into a San Francisco Bay Area tattoo parlor. Though the subjects and tattoo artists are unknown, they likely represent real people. I find the use of the ancient technique of reverse painting on glass a surprising, but effective choice.

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African American Man with Blue Bowtie
Albumen Print with watercolor detail
Circa: 1870
Size: +/- 6" x 9"

Early portrait of a good-looking, young African_american man holding a walking stick and wearing a fine black suit and a sharo blue bowtie.

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Please Send To Hans Bellmer
Ray Johnson (1927 - 1995)
Mail Art - torn out nudie magazine with marker
Circa: 1980
Size: 8" x 11" (sight) | 15 1/4" x 18 1/4" (frame)

Provenance: Peter Brams from Diego Cortez.

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American Folk Art Carved and Painted Album with Panels Depicting Various Landscapes
Circa: 1880
Size: 24" (w) x 36" (h) (framed)

A unique work of a carved "photo" album with carved panels inset with oval paintings of various landscapes. Story is that this was made as a loven token from a husband to his his wife, as a memory of the various places that they had traveled.

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The Tree
Aaron Siskind (1903-1991)
Silver Gelatin Print
Martha’s Vineyard, North Tisbury, MA
Dated: 1974
Size: 7” x 7” (sight) | 12 1/8" x 12 1/8" (frame)

Iconic old growth oak tree on the Vineyard.

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HUNGRY GULL
James W. Washington, Jr. (American 1909-2000)
Dated: 1977
Size: 7 3/8" L x 5 5/8" H

Washington occasionally did wood block prints - they are the perfect compliment to his sculpture - the carved lines of the wood block echo his carving of stone.

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STEVEN S. POWERS • 109 3RD PL #2 • BROOKLYN, NY 11231 • 718-625-1715 • email: steve@stevenspowers.com • © all rights reserved