Chairman's Message

I have never felt so encouraged and elated as I do from the results of the current ARC Salon competition.

My confidence for the future of the fine arts of painting, drawing and sculpture is surging in a manner and to a degree beyond what I ever dreamed would or could have been possible in my lifetime. This new era of art is now happening as we enter the 14th year of ARC's history as an organization devoted to the preservation, appreciation and resurgence of Traditional Humanist Realism.

After a hundred years of denigration and decline, a century of ridicule and suppression, when all art's true potential was squelched, inhibiting the most talented of our fine artists and summarily excommunicating them from the art world; while mind numbing iterations of Modernism with blotches and splotches and dabbles and dribbles, blips, blobs, smears, tares, were called glamorous creations and lines and angles, circles and squares were called original and powerful imagery; where con-men and artists were joined at their mercenary hips, and all knowledge of the 500 years of Western Art were in full decline; suppressed, deaccessed and banished from the halls and walls of societies supposed centers of civilization, we now have returned to great art .

Apparently the creativity of talented young people lay right below the surface, like a coiled spring waiting for someone to come along and release it. The Art Renewal Center is honored to have been a key player in doing just that. The surge I see in the quality and quantity of the great and masterful works emerging from the now thousands of artist studios and ARC Approved™ Schools, is already producing paintings and drawings every bit as original and brilliant as the finest works produced in the 30 generations of artists that came before the 20th Century. There now exists:

Landscapes that could be hung in the same gallery with Bierstadt, Church, Friedrich, Hobbema and the Ruysdaels.

Figurative canvases that could be shown unabashedly to Titian, Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Bouguereau and Gérôme.

Cabinet paintings that would be loved and appreciated by Meisonnier, Alma-Tadema, Vermeer and Von Mieris.

Still Lifes that could be placed near Pieter Claesz or William Harnett and Imaginative Realism which would surely win the praises of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the Nazarenes before them.

And what is so exciting is that all these new and original works carry the energy, creativity and spirit of the contemporary soul. They could have only been painted in the 21^st century.

Just 12 years ago ARC could only find 14 tiny schools, with a total of less than 200 students, who knew about and taught the techniques of the old masters. Today there are 70 ARC Approved programs with thousands of students who are positioning to grow the field tenfold again by 2025. Artists will now have the availability of instruction via DVDs, the Internet and all the modern technologies of communication. This will beyond doubt produce the greatest explosion of creative energy and the birth of many new masterpieces even more advanced than any that have ever come before. We are truly witnessing a 21^st Century Renaissance. There is no question that there will emerge from the ARC Salon artists who will in the future be welcomed by art historians into the ranks of artistic genius.