Painting

When local artist Zina Poliszuk started getting headaches, an allergist recommended that she throw away her oil paints. With the oils gone, the headaches went away. Poliszuk shifted her work to watercolors, and the change has been a successful one. Not only does Poliszuk show her art professionally, for nearly 20 years she has been teaching a popular watercolor course for area seniors. "She's very creative, and she's very solid herself as a painter," said Janet Epstein, 60, a veteran of Poliszuk's class.

Philanthropist Dorothy McIlvain Scott's $10 million pledge to the Baltimore Museum of Art continues a long tradition of leadership by women who have helped shape the institution's collections and character. Scott's gift, announced last week, will allow the museum to revitalize its collection of American furniture and decorative arts and support exhibitions and programs in the American wing. With her gift, Scott joins a distinguished company of female philanthropists whose generosity made a strategic difference in the museum's growth and development.

In her studio at Mill Centre, Charlene Clark talks about her paintings and the people she's painted and those who look at them. Among other things, she's a kind of personal historian for residents of Baltimore and Ocean City and lots of the rest of Maryland. She paints the places that live in their memories. "They're always telling me stories," Clark says. "Constantly." "One year at Artscape a man pointed to my Edmondson Drive-In painting and yelled, `I lost my virginity there.' " The Edmondson Drive-In is gone now. Indeed, lots of the scenes captured by Clark have passed.

Ella M. Human, a retired secretary who enjoyed playing the cello and painting, died Monday of Alzheimer's disease at Stella Maris Hospice in Timonium. The Cockeysville resident was 83. Ella M. Uelsmann was born and reared in Cape Girardeau, Mo. An accomplished cellist in her youth, she earned part of her college tuition at what is now Southeast Missouri State University playing at faculty functions with a string quartet. In 1944, she moved to St. Louis and continued her education at Washington University.

In the postmodern era, street culture is the most invigorating influence on American painting, and graffiti artists are the new avant-garde. That, at least, seems to be the idea behind the paintings of Carl Thurman and others in the uneven but lively group show, Anonymous Rage, at Sub-Basement Artist Studios on Howard Street. The exhibition is an off-site venue for this year's Artscape, Baltimore's annual outdoor arts festival that opens Friday. Most of the show's seven artists began as graffiti taggers who later received formal training in art or as art school students who took up graffiti as an extension of their training.

WASHINGTON -- By the light of a lone desk lamp in the dank kitchen of a Northeast Washington house, Gong Nai Chang hunches over a large sheet of rice paper and dips the carefully sharpened nail of his index finger into a bowl of thick, pungent ink.He pauses for a moment, then begins to paint.Slowly, deftly, he creates an eye, then another, then a nose and a mouth. And when the fierce, ugly face of the legendary demon-slayer Zhong Kui is formed, he dabs more digits into the bowl and produces a beard, hair and then a body outline and sword -- all with swift strokes made by the tips of his fingers.

Fellow students, friends and family members yesterday mourned the death of Marc David Levy, a promising painter with an eccentric flair who was killed Friday when a driver fleeing police slammed into his car.Levy, who turned 21 last month, was a senior painting major at the Maryland Institute, College of Art, a school of 1,200 in downtown Baltimore.Levy was driving his Honda Civic when a 1999 Nissan Altima with at least two police cruisers following it ran a red light at East 27th and St. Paul streets and broadsided him.Agent Ragina L. Cooper, a Baltimore police spokeswoman, said police had recognized the driver of the Altima and, knowing that he did not have a driver's license, pulled him over near Barclay Elementary School at East 29th and Barclay streets.

The quiet gardens of Westminster City Hall came alive yesterday with music, poetry, painting and dance.Art in the Park, a daylong festival in the Carroll County seat, drew more than 1,000 people browsing among exhibits by 52 artists."

The painting that was pulled from the walls of the House office building in Annapolis did not show a crucifix immersed in urine. Nor was it provocative, homoerotic shock work, in the vein of Robert Mapplethorpe.But some who cruise the hallways felt the classical depiction of a male nude -- legs crossed discreetly, eyes in contemplation -- was a tad too racy to keep on display. So they took it down.The decision was viewed as benign in the corridors of the Lowe House Office Building, where virtually all of the art depicts sailboats, landscapes, birds and other innocuous scenery.

In the second half of the 20th century, New York replaced Paris as the center of the art world, and American artists suddenly became preeminent for the first time in the nation's history.The emergence of America as a world political, economic and cultural leader after World War II is one of the most fascinating developments of this tumultuous century. In the Whitney Museum of American Art's epic exhibition, "The American Century: Art & Culture 1950-2000," it also is a story heroically told.

Twenty-six years ago, Maryland farmer Robert Bealle finished second in the Federal Duck Stamp art contest, when his painting of redheads lost to a pair of American wigeons. This year, he won by painting a wigeon himself. Bealle beat entries from 223 other wildlife artists from across the country Saturday to win the 2010-2011 Federal Duck Stamp contest held at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Refuge. His oil-on-Masonite painting of the colorful waterfowl will be on the $15 stamp, which is purchased by migratory bird hunters and collectors.

Three months shy of his 84th birthday, Gino Marchetti sees life as an all-out pass rush. Forget old age - he hurdles it as nimbly as he did all those blockers before sacking the quarterback. Marchetti walks up to three miles a day and bowls four times a week. In West Chester, Pa., where the former Baltimore Colts Hall of Famer lives, they're still buzzing about the 299 game Marchetti rolled a couple of years ago, one pin shy of a perfect score. This year, he took up painting - not with brush and palette, but with roller and paint tray.

John Adams once said that he had to study politics and war in order to give his grandchildren the right to study painting, poetry and music; history shows that he was right. His whole generation in America put its best creative energies into politics and war, particularly politics, and the generation of his grandchildren produced the first notable American literature and painting. Not until Americans had established their new nation would they have surplus energy for letters and the arts.

Painter. Scientist. Inventor. Designer. Engineer. Visionary. Genius. Has there ever been a man with more labels attached to his name than Leonardo da Vinci? Probably not. In a world where mere mortals struggle to master just one profession, da Vinci seemed to master them all. He painted "The Mona Lisa" more than 500 years ago, and it's still probably the most famous painting in the world. He was a key developer of the camera obscura, an early projection device whose descendants include the still camera.

They go by such names as Booda Monk, JaziRock, Curve and Refuge, and they're known for turning drab city landscapes into colorful, artistic expressions. On Saturday they and other urban artists gathered in Mund Park to celebrate their craft: Spray-painted works often referred to as graffiti. The art is a part of hip-hip culture that was once widely disparaged but ultimately garnered some acceptance as hip-hop music hit mainstream. Saturday's Urban Eyes: Fuel for the Arts event gave urban artists, some of whom have been painting such works for more than 30 years, a chance to not only display finished works but to stage live painting demonstrations and hold workshops on the craft.

Taking its origins from 17th-century Paris salons, the summer salon show tradition flourishes every July at Annapolis galleries, which hold invitational exhibits to showcase artists' new works. Last weekend this event was celebrated at McBride Gallery on Main Street, where for the past 29 years gallery owner Cynthia McBride has introduced a growing number of first-rate representational artists to local admirers. The shows encourage artists and viewers to get acquainted through an understanding of the artist's work.

Herman Maril had two worlds, and each provided him what something the other lacked. The artist, who was born in Baltimore in 1908 and died here in 1986, spent his life painting some of the grittier aspects of the city. Invariably, his astute and affectionate eye discovered the aesthetic appeal of even the homeliest objects. But for nearly every summer of Maril's adult life, he took his family to the beach in Provincetown, Mass., filling canvases with the ever-changing interplay of water and light.

The historic Senator Theatre isn't just steeped in cinema history - it's surrounded by it. About 100 commemorative sidewalk blocks bearing the autographs of film stars such as John Travolta and director Barry Levinson sit outside the city's last single-screen theater. Since the writing on those blocks has faded with time, weather and foot traffic, theater officials are throwing a sidewalk painting party from noon to dusk Saturday and Sunday, weather permitting. Popcorn and soda will be provided to volunteers, and films will be screened inside the theater.

CHESTERTOWN -If Tanya Banks-Christensen hadn't acted on a certain whim as a college senior, it's safe to say she would not have scored a big-screen cameo at the end of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. Or was it Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End? She can't remember. And for that matter, the shot consisted only of her legs on the ship's boom. Either way, her brush with Hollywood was just an amusing caper in an unusual and wholly unexpected career that has allowed her to sail replica sloops and schooners up and down the Eastern Seaboard.

Nathaniel K. Gibbs said the inspiration for his Barack Obama-themed oil painting, which made its debut yesterday at Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park and Museum, dates to election night. Gibbs remembered watching the emotions of millions spill over in November as Obama announced his victory in the presidential race. "I saw so many people crying, and that's what I wanted to bring to the show," Gibbs said. Gibbs' painting, which depicts a black woman with gray hair who is wearing an Obama shirt, is part of the Dreams Fulfilled: Images of Obama exhibit at the museum.