Naples Artist's Work Featured in National Juried Exhibit

An ongoing fascination with water, boats and the ocean that led a Naples artist to Morro Bay, Calif. in 2007 to create a stunning painting of a moored sailboat is pitting him with more than 150 of North America's best oil painters and emerging artists in a juried exhibition.

Robert Bissett's oil painting, End of Day, will be featured in the Oil Painters of America 2008 Western Regional Juried Exhibition at Devin Galleries in Coeur d'Alene Sept. 12 through Oct. 11.

Total cash awards for this year's Western Regional are $11,500, including a $4,500 Best of Show.

Bissett - who graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1965 and served five years as a pilot, including two tours of Viet Nam - has painted on location in oils for years. Known for the life-like quality of faces he paints, Bissett's "plein air" landscapes done in Alaska, Idaho and Italy have received both wide acclaim and recognition. His paintings are a valued part of many private collections.

"I look to the great masters past and present, such as Andrew Wyeth, Sargent, Cassat, Parrish, Rembrandt, Monet, Vermeer and many others," said Bissett on his website. "My challenge as an artist is to strive for the standard of excellence they have established. I want to meld the physical and spiritual characteristics of each subject I paint into the most telling work of art possible. Conveying the essence is paramount."

So far, Bissett seems to have done just that.

In his first show at a gallery in Anchorage, Alaska in 1980, the majority of Bissett's landscape paintings were sold out; the following spring, one of his mountain portraits was selected as the subject for 4,000 edition "Beautiful Alaska" promotional print.

Bissett worked from photographs and one-inch wide thumbnail sketches of the sailboat for his juried End of Day painting, as part of a lengthy process he uses.

"This painting involved a lot of learning through trial and error," he said in the September issue of Art Collector Magazine. "In the end, I was pleased with the results, which express my feeling about sailboats, the ocean, and Morro Bay in May pretty well."