HenryIsaacs
Buyers are raving!
This shop got multiple 5-star reviews in the past 7 days.
Announcement
MAINE ON SALE: FIFTY PERCENT OFF anything to do with MAINE!
ONLY through January 31.
Please be aware that our shop produces prints in limited editions. That means that unlike posters or most offset prints these images are produced in finite numbers. You will find that some are limited to as few as five or ten. This is done to protect your investment as a collector. It's also frankly more fun for me to come up with an ever changing variety of pictures to present than to just keep offering the same ones over and over again.
Your special requests? Special orders ? Messages ? I’ll do my best. Just remember , Customer Service , Fulfillment, Packing, Shipping, Driving to FedEx, and to the Village Post Office here in Rural Vermont are all handled by the same aging workforce of one.
Have fun! Keep those cards and letters coming ! and despite all of the above words of caution –
My heartfelt thanks.
Henry Isaacs
Sharon, Vermont
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Any purchase is fully exchangeable or refundable if on receipt, the print or painting is disappointing for any reason whatsoever. The studio will fully refund all costs for return shipping and insurance fees so long as you provide tracking numbers and the print or painting is received back in good condition.
Announcement
MAINE ON SALE: FIFTY PERCENT OFF anything to do with MAINE!
ONLY through January 31.
Please be aware that our shop produces prints in limited editions. That means that unlike posters or most offset prints these images are produced in finite numbers. You will find that some are limited to as few as five or ten. This is done to protect your investment as a collector. It's also frankly more fun for me to come up with an ever changing variety of pictures to present than to just keep offering the same ones over and over again.
Your special requests? Special orders ? Messages ? I’ll do my best. Just remember , Customer Service , Fulfillment, Packing, Shipping, Driving to FedEx, and to the Village Post Office here in Rural Vermont are all handled by the same aging workforce of one.
Have fun! Keep those cards and letters coming ! and despite all of the above words of caution –
My heartfelt thanks.
Henry Isaacs
Sharon, Vermont
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Any purchase is fully exchangeable or refundable if on receipt, the print or painting is disappointing for any reason whatsoever. The studio will fully refund all costs for return shipping and insurance fees so long as you provide tracking numbers and the print or painting is received back in good condition.
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Reviews
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Jess on Dec 3, 2021
5 out of 5 starsSo glad I got this book on Henry and his work! Really very inspiring to read about the artist. I too am a new englander so really loved reading about his experiences and work in that area and also beyond. Thank you Henry for including some lovely brochures that have your work in them- so good to see those pieces as well! Appreciate that gift to make up for the lateness of the shipment. I know it is very busy and just one or two people working on this! If you are in a rush you may not get items in time from this shop, depending on how busy they are, but I feel they are totally worth the wait. :)
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pizzaflakes on Sep 25, 2021
5 out of 5 starsThe art is gorgeous. Print is on high quality paper and the image is really vibrant.
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Carole on Jan 21, 2022
5 out of 5 starsThis print is beyond beautiful and has caused me to return to Henry Isaacs' art repeatedly!
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caitlynemurphy on Jan 16, 2022
5 out of 5 starsThe print was perfect and the quality was beyond what I was expecting.
I wasn’t sure how to best frame the print and Henry promptly wrote back with suggestions. He was was exceptionally friendly and helpful. I am so thrilled with this print and seller - I will definitely be looking to purchase another print soon! -
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Betsey on Jan 13, 2022
5 out of 5 starsNeeded a lively, colorful facelift in my loft space and Henry’s works did just that! Can’t wait to frame and spread the joy⭐️
About HenryIsaacs
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Vermont Studio
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Islesford, Little Cranberry Island Studio
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Inside the Studio
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A Very Big Painting, 10 feet x 12 feet
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Winter Painting
HENRY ISAACS. FINE ART, Paintings and Prints
The art of Henry Isaacs: From place to painting
By Daniel Kany
"Look at nature, work independently, and solve your own problems."
--Winslow Homer
Henry Isaacs’ painting, Cove, Cranberry Island, Maine, folds along a horizon line. Above is a patchwork sky that starts off butter white and beige; it then reaches into cool cerulean and misty blue gray skeins punctuated by warm pinks blossoming up into the firmament. Below is the same sky reflected in the water but rounded by a cove of verdant land and punctuated by peninsula fingers and some green trees that zigzag past the far middle ground into the quilted sky. The far shore starts solid on the left but while it grows in painted density, its colors dissolve to meld with the sky seen above and reflected below.
It is a painting primarily comprising the immaterial sky and its reflection on the water. Yet the physicality of Isaac’s dappled passages sets the seemingly simple scene dancing between areas of color, the solidity of a few bits of inaccessible land, a lusciously painted surface and a set of questions about place and painting.
These new paintings by Isaacs seem simple but they have the strength to slow your eyes on the crawling edges of the flat forms. They take you along the land but without a path and they bring your eyes and thoughts back and forth between the saturated solidity of the terra firma and the light-inspired color theatrics of excitable skies.
Isaacs’ paintings begin with a conversation between traditional landscape and high Modernism. This seems like an easy-going meeting place, especially since it so often takes place under bright skies with a soft breeze blowing in over the ocean. Isaacs welcomes viewers with his lively flickers of color popping all over the thick and chewy surfaces loaded by a hand that obviously loves to paint.
Despite their easygoing introduction, however, Isaacs’ canvases dig deep through the culture of painting and present themselves – no matter how handsome – with serious intellectual heft.
Like the Impressionists, Isaacs generally doesn’t use black. For the Impressionists, this was theoretical dedication to the idea of emulating human perception in terms of light (rather than color) and that black is the absence of light.
But Isaacs is a colorist – not a painter of atmospheric light.
While he is no Impressionist, Isaacs engages in a visual dialogue with Impressionist painting – and consequently with New England plein-air painting in general.
Reaching to art responding to Impressionism, Isaacs opens the door to Cezanne, Fauvism, Homer and the Modernist moment.
Homer might sound out of place here, but he and the Impressionists were radical – and successful – revolutionaries who led the way to major changes in painting. They discarded prevailing technique (notably glazing) and sought more direct painting.
Isaacs’ paintings are so aesthetically appealing and well-executed that they need no introduction for anyone to enjoy them, but they also converse brilliantly with the history of landscape painting relevant to New England.
There is dialogue all through Isaacs’ paintings – beginning with how they are started en plein-air and then are mostly painted in the studio. In other words, at some point Isaacs shifts from observation to following his sensibilities to make the strongest painting possible. This is a shift much like the denouement in a film: We start with background and place, then there is a major transformation and the priority switches to finding the means of resolution.
This theatrical narrative is the narrative of Modernism: It takes you from fiction to reality – in this case, from a distant place to the actual painting in front of you.
As brisk and quick as they first appear, Isaacs’ paintings are often heavily painted, layered and glazed. It’s counter-intuitive that so much paint can feel so fresh, but it makes sense when we consider the work that emerged in the wake of Impressionism, in particular Van Gogh, Matisse and Abstract Expressionism.
Shop members
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Henry Isaacs
Owner, Artist
Henry Isaacs EDUCATION Slade School of Fine Art, University College London. MFA 1982 Rhode Island School of Design. B.F.A. 1973 TEACHING Islesford Workshops, Islesford, Maine 2008-2016. Professor, Painting, Printmaking,
Production partners
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Daniel Kany
Portland, ME
Author, Art Historian, Curator, Art Critic
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