Bridgeview School of Fine Arts in New York

[lena murray]

I am somewhat biased because I am a founder and an alumni of this school. I founded it in 2001 with a bunch of classically-trained Russian artists who ended up in New York City. I've been studying myself on and off at Bridgeview for 5 or so years, did sculpture, drawing and painting. I ended up going to the Repin Academy in Russia for a year afterwards. Bridgeview has helped me a great deal. I particularly recommend my own teacher at Bridgeview Samuel Kudish, an amazing man, 80 years old, superbly trained at the Russian academies in Moscow and St. Petersburg in the 40s and 50s.

Our website is www.academicart.com but here are a few pictures of Samuel Kudish's work (the self portrait in oil, the apples in oil. The rest is student work.

Our winter session is starting January 5.

[Maxine Schacker]

Thanks for the post. Are the paintings shown true to the actual colors?

[lena murray]

I guess they are true, since they are not adjusted on the computer, but each monitor is different, so you always have some color distortion.

[lena murray]

The student work displayed here is by former students of Samuel Kudish including myself, Lena Murray, John Murray, Ilya Mirochnik, Katya Kuznetsova and Tim Dose. The first two paintings (a self portrait and still life with apples) are by Samuel Kudish during his academic years in the Soviet Union.

[Maxine Schacker]

I'm originally a New Yorker (Brooklyn, to be precise, but I worked for awhile in LIC!). I've been in Toronto since the 70's, and am a founder of Max the Mutt. We too are blessed with many instructors from eastern block countries, especially Russia and the former Yugoslavia. If you have the time, take a look at our website...and welcome to conceptart.org! You'll find many talented young people here doing extraordinarily well teaching themselves to paint.

Midgaard Serpent and Pancho Simpson come to mind immediately. Do take a look at their work. Your input will be greatly appreciated by them, I'm sure.

PS Happy new year!

[lena murray]

maxine, can you post the links to these guys please, Midgaard Serpent and Pancho Simpson, I could not find their work on your site.

[lena murray]

These are some classroom photos including Samuel Kudish teaching a portrait class, students at work and the area of Long Island City near the school.

[lena murray]

here is a link to our new video featuring college portfolio program for kids, take a look.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DvnaeQ5TxY

[panchosimpson]

Hi Ms. Murray,

I thought I'd chime in, since Maxine was kind enough to mention my work :) Your student's work is very impressive, I've been following the development of your school for about a year now, particularly because of my interest in Russian impressionism and because I'm friends with Tim Dose. If I lived anywhere near NY I would definitely drop by your school!

Best,

Ramon

Ps. If you are interested in taking a look at my thread it's at
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=91471

there's some really old stuff in the first pages though :)

Midgard serpent's stuff is here
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=83867

[Maxine Schacker]

Pancho, I hadn't been to this thread over the holidays...so thanks for providing Lena with the threads.

[lena murray]

Pancho, I looked at your threads, really good work, you've progressed so much and so quickly. And I realize Tim has been giving you some pointers. Do you study on your own just by copying or do you study with instructors? Also, your structured figure studies are very impressive. Do you use Bridgeman as your reference for the construction or is it from any other book?

[panchosimpson]

Thank you Ms. Murray, I really appreciate your feedback :) I've studied composition and structural drawing with Karl Gnass, Glenn Vilppu and one of his best students, Will Weston (who also worked at Disney). I use different sources for construction, but it largely comes from Glenn, and from studying Bridgman (also Glenn's teacher studied with Bridgman).

I study painting on my own, although I get critiques from my instructors when possible. I also am unbelievably fortunate in that I've received helpful critiques from mature painters like Maxine, and Alexey Steele, a Surikov grad. I'm going to start my first painting class in about a week's time, so I'm really excited :)

Thanks again for the feedback!

-Ramon

[lena murray]

I like how you copy old master works somewhat deconstructing them. Titian's young boy at the National gallery is also one of my favorites and you did a good job with it (a little bit of the scull is missing though). Most people (myself included) fall into that trap sometimes, copy the superficial stuff, which is on top of very strong plastic idea, that a great old master always has. You seem to be successful avoiding it, same with your life drawing. In Russia, we studied with Professor Zaitsev (Tim did too), very briefly. He is a major artist with works in the Russian museum who in the 60s and 70s even created his own movement called the Hermitage group, where they deconstructed the Old Master paintings from the Hermitage trying to find the formal compositional ideas behind the paintings, the S-curves, pyramides and etc, much more complicated though. If I ever have some time, I will post a few pictures from Zaitsev's book. Of course, there is always a problem of limiting yourself to construction and robotics, and there is always a golden medium between construction and fluid organic form, so we always have to be conscious of this. I've seen extremes on both sides. In the States, it's usually the photographic extreme, no structure, just "shadow shapes". So, I am glad you've found the teachers who understand this problem and take you into the right direction. I will look up them online as well.