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Selma artist and Morgan Academy Art Teacher Cam Walker Guarino was the guest artist and speaker at The Kelly Fitzpatrick Memorial Gallery in Wetumpka on Tuesday, Feb. 15. While there, three of her paintings sold. Guarino is also a 40-year member of the Selma Art Guild (SAG). Photo by Fred Guarino.
Selma artist and Morgan Academy Art Teacher Cam Walker Guarino was the guest artist and speaker at The Kelly Fitzpatrick Memorial Gallery in Wetumpka on Tuesday, Feb. 15. While there, three of her paintings sold. Guarino is also a 40-year member of the Selma Art Guild (SAG). Photo by Fred Guarino.
Selma artist and John T. Morgan Academy Art Teacher Cam Walker Guarino was the guest artist and speaker at The Kelly Fitzpatrick Memorial Gallery in Wetumka on Tuesday, Feb. 15.
Guarino, who received the Selma and Dallas County Chamber of Commerce Woman of the Arts Award in 2021, has taught art for 33-years, including 21 years at Morgan Academy. She is also a 40-year member of the Selma Art Guild.
Guarino spoke on Impressionism and seven of the Impressionist artists going back to an Impressionist Show in France in 1874 which received “terrible reviews” where the painting “Impression Sunrise” by Claude Monet was recognized. She said that was actually “the dawning of Impressionism.”
Guarino said photography had been invented, artist paint became available in tubes, and the French Easel was in use that allowed artists to paint outside. Prior to the camera, she said, one had to commission an artist for a portrait.
“But the fact that people could get an exact copy of what was going on gave the impressionist the freedom to kind of branch out and try different things,” Guarino said. She said it was a turning point away from realism.
Guarino gave her take on seven artists from various backgrounds from poor to rich who she said “all had a love of art and the dedication to paint what they saw.”
Guarino touched on Claude Monet, whose painting Impression Sunrise was considered by critics as “unfinished and like bad wallpaper.” But, she said, he painted subjects in different light at different times of day and embellished colors. And he had a studio on a boat so he could float down the river and paint. But she said it was Monet’s brushstrokes which set the standard for impressionism.
Others were Guarino highlighted were Edouard Manet, Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt, Pierre Auguste Renoir and Paul Cezanne, who she said concentrated more on shapes and colors who is considered the father of modern art, which led to Cubism and Abstract Art.
Guarino said her own art was influenced by the impressionist including Monet and Vincent Van Gogh, who was a post-impressionist artist. Her early works included Water Triangle Sentinels and landscapes. The triangles were bodies of water. But in the last few years Guarino said her work has moved from impressionist toward the abstract.
She said she painted buildings or pieces of buildings because she liked the shapes, but has developed a love of landscapes, which she said can be “universal and can be wherever you want them to be.” She said a man once asked her if a painting she did in Wilcox County was the South of France.
Guarino also said she has moved from painting from photographs to her own imagination.
Guarino was given a stipend for speaking, and three of her paintings were sold.
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