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RJ Miklos: AAN Featured Artist

Stories

ACK Artists

Fisher Real Estate
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We are thrilled to collaborate with the Artists Association of Nantucket this year to feature their talented artist members. The AAN is a non-profit organization supporting Nantucket artists, providing educational programs in the arts, and preserving the legacy of Nantucket artists. Visit their website, their gallery at 19 Washington Street, their studio at 24 Amelia Drive, or give them a call at (508) 228-0294.

Meet the Artist
This month’s “Meet the Artist” interview is with RJ Miklos, an Architect and Artist now living fulltime on Nantucket at his Greek Revival house in the Historic District.


RJ Miklos

RJ Miklos joined AAN in 2013 after participating in their first Plein Air Festival having received a Frank Swift Chase award for his watercolor.

He attended the Cleveland Institute of Art in the 70’s, a center for Pop Art + Op Art, where he explored drawing, printmaking, collage and image transfer.

In 2017 he received the Annual Award for Artistic Achievement from CIA.

He is an interpreter of scenes on Nantucket both popular and obscure as he connects the Island’s rich history and character with the contemporary condition.

His work is informed by the legacy artists of Nantucket’s past particularly John Austin and Marshall Gardiner. Austin recorded a remarkable number of Nantucket scenes, sometimes more than 100 in a year. He was fundamentally an illustrator working in tempera. Yet he often found a unique point of view translated into a compelling composition of forms and color.

Art Historians and Curators often make the distinction between ‘Painters’ and ‘Artists’.

Nantucket has many accomplished painters who seek to record places by careful observation painting on site, in Plein Air. Artists may start with a location or object for inspiration but are more interested in creating their own reality through ‘Design’ and ‘Composition’.

Bob is fundamentally an Artist, not Painter in that each work begins with the inspiration of a location but quickly becomes an experiment in composition, design and the combination of media. The intent is not to record what is seen as in Plein Air painting but to explore the energy, excitement and emotion of the situation.

This strategy is consistent with his work as an architect, where his firm designLAB aspires to develop a new type or model for the building commission while often situated in a site of history and legacy. Like most artists he has many influences such as Hopper, Sheeler, Demuth, Rauschenberg and the Wyeth’s but these are never direct, yet recalled intuitively. Each artwork is a ‘construction’ combining images and media as an exploration. Once initiated the artist enters a ‘dialog’ with the work as it takes on a life of its own.

Many years ago Bob had the pleasure of working with the Wyeth family to create their study center at the Farnsworth Museum. He recently visited a comprehensive show at the Farnsworth featuring 3 generations of Wyeth’s. The work of Jamie Wyeth continues to excite him for his ability to combine an unexpected range of media in each artwork, often working on paper.


Work available at AAN Galleries + Sylvia’s Antiques.

www.rjmiklos.com 

Instagram: @rj.miklos.artist

 

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Fisher Real Estate