Romel de la Torre (1963)

Born in Cebu City, Philippines in a community of artists, Romel de la Torre's artistic interest started at a very young age. With the encouragement of his parents he began sketching the world around him. He started getting awards and recognition from school competitions and at age 10 appeared on TV after receiving a medal for his painting.
In the late 70's Romel and his family migrated to the United States where he began going to museums studying and learning on his own; works of famous artists like Sargent, Sorolla, Fechin, Mucha, and the American Impressionists. The exposure to these masters' paintings laid a strong foundation to his belief of what great art is.
He attended the American Academy of Art in Chicago, where he was awarded the President's Foundation Award and the Union League Scholarship Award. After graduating with a fine arts concentration, Romel continued to paint in the Chicago area and joined The Palette and Chisel Academy of Fine Arts, where he began painting with nationally renowned artist Richard Schmid and a community of other painters. It was a turning point of his creative and artistic career.
"My painting is the world, channeled through my eyes, through the prism of my own feeling, emotions and preferences. It is a unity of the visual world and the internal, abstraction and realism..." the artist's says. A consummate artist in all media, Romel de la Torre is one of today's most highly regarded artists. His figures, landscape, portraits, and still life paintings display unparalleled technical skill, fluid style, and thorough understanding of light, color, form and design.
The artist has been painting full time and currently instructs advanced painting and portraiture at The Palette and Chisel Academy on Fine Arts, Chicago. He is a signature member of the Oil Painters of America & the Portrait Society of America; his oils, pastels, watercolors, and portraits are housed in private collections throughout the United States and several foreign countries. His paintings have been published in The Artists Magazine, Southwest Art Magazine, U.S. Art Magazine and the American Art Collectors Magazine.

Among his most important honors is the Oil Painters of America National Exhibition/ Grand Prize and the Artists Magazine Portrait Artist of the Year. His most recent award includes; 2007 Raymar Fine Arts Competition, 2008 Gold Medal & the People's Choice Award from the Palette & Chisel Academy of Fine Arts Gold Medal show and one of the top finalist in the 2007 and 2008 International Portrait Competition given by the prestigeous Portrait Society of America.


Artist's statement:
"I find spiritual beauty in all the things that I paint. The innocence of a child's face, the endlesss blue color of the sky, the smell of flowers in the garden, the sound of raindrops falling on the roof. These gives joy in my heart, inspiration, and gratitude...... of being an artist."

Théo Van Rysselberghe | The Bather series

Théo Van Rysselberghe | The Bather series
Théo (Théophile) van Rysselberghe (23 November 1862 – 14 December 1926) was a Belgian neo-impressionist painter, who played a pivotal role in the European art scene at the turn of the century.
He discovered the pointillist technique when he saw Georges Seurat's La Grande Jatte at the eighth impressionist exhibition in Paris in 1886. This shook him up completely. Together with Henry Van de Velde, Georges Lemmen, Xavier Mellery, Willy Schlobach and Alfred William Finch and Anna Boch he "imported" this style to Belgium. Seurat was invited to the next salon of Les XX in Brussels in 1887. But there his La Grande Jatte was heavily criticized by the art critics as "incomprehensible gibberish applied to the noble art of painting".
Théo van Rysselberghe abandoned realism and became an adept of pointillism. This brought him sometimes in heavy conflict with James Ensor. In 1887 van Rysselberghe already experimented with this style, as can be seen in his Madame Oscar Ghysbrecht (1887) and Madame Edmond Picard (1887). While staying in summer 1887 a few weeks with Eugène Boch (brother of Anna Boch) in Batignolles, near Paris, he met several painters from the Parisian scene such as Sisley, Signac, Degas and especially Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. He appreciated especially the talent of Toulouse-Lautrec. His portrait Pierre-Marie Olin (1887) closely resembles the style of Toulouse-Lautrec of that time. He managed to invite several of them, including Signac, Forain, and Toulouse-Lautrec to the next exhibition of Les XX.