Have you ever thought about being an artist? Selma Bortner said, "For me, being an artist was always a question of survival. I could not survive in this world if I could not do something creative. It's a commitment that I made when I was a child. I knew from the first time I could think about it that I wanted to be an artist."

Louis Bosa's paintings were influenced by urban realist John Sloan and depicted colorful scenes of city life. The figures in his works were highly expressionistic and stylized, bordering on caricature. He loved to tell stories, but said, “in a picture you must never tell the whole story. Part of the story must be hidden but you must get to the mood.” 

Diane Burko is one of the Philadelphia area's most celebrated contemporary landscape painters and photographers who uses her art to communicate issues of climate change. She often travels to exotic places to find inspiration for her powerful landscapes. Her fascination with the edges of continents, volcanoes, glaciers, and hot springs can be seen throughout her work.

Who was Franz Jozef Ponstingl (1927-2004)? Ponstingl was a man who wore many hats in his lifetime - he worked on his family farm, served in the U.S. Navy for two wars, and worked as a decorator and a draftsman. He traveled the world visiting Europe, the Middle East and South America.  A self-taught artist, Ponstingl created a body of work over his lifetime that was a blend of abstract, modernist and surrealist styles.

Do you like to travel? Traveling around the world is a wonderful way to help us learn about different cultures, languages, and customs. Sometimes if we don't have the opportunity to physically visit a place, we can use art to help transport us there.

Part of the beauty of art is that it can transport you to another place and time. A painting can tell a story that can help us learn about history. It can help you visualize a scene that you may have only read about in a book. Before the invention of cameras, artists recorded great historical events such as battles, explorations and events involving the church or royalty.

What do you notice about this image above? Surprisingly, each part represents a painting created by the same artist but at different points in his career. This Bucks County artist, Charles Frederic Ramsey, began painting early in his career using an impressionist style and color palette. As he continued to work throughout his life, his work became more and more abstract. This shift in his style was a result of his encounter with painter Arthur B. Carles, an influential instructor at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and an artist who embraced the movement of modernism.

Helen Mirkil, Love Letter/Gene Rochberg (after Woman with a Pink by Rembrandt, 1662), 2009, oil on canvas, H. 56 x W. 48 inches, James A. Michener Art Museum, Gift of the Artist. Do you [...]

For Charles Rosen, painting a single subject matter or specific style for his entire career, was not what made him happy. He enjoyed a very successful career as a landscape painter for the first 20 years of his creative life. In his late 1930's early 1940's, he became dissatisfied with landscape style and made a radical shift in his work. He abandoned his traditional landscapes and started to work in a modernist style.