Lowell Tolstedt

Contemporary American Works on Paper


We have additional works by this artist in our inventory. Please inquire.
Click on a thumbnail below to see an enlarged view and detailed information:

 

Apples with Reflections
*

Apricot, Apple, Peach, Strawberry and Plum


Bowl with Candy and Shadow


Black Grapes
*


Cherry with Candy
*


Glass Bowl with Berries
*


Composition in Orange and Gray


Composition with Blue and Green Gumballs
*


Composition with Daffodil


Composition with Dark Chocolate Caramel
*


Composition with Mixed Nuts


Composition with Red and Yellow Tulip
*


Green and Red Candles II
*



Pear and Strawberry
*


Still Life with Foil Wrapped Pear
*


Paper Bag with Jelly Beans


Composition: Basket with Pears *


Sprouting Branch
*


Truffles with Wrapped Candy
*


Four Apples
*


Three Roses


Two Flowers


Kauai Pears
*


Lowell Tolstedt earned an M.A. degree in painting and drawing from the State University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, and a B.F.A. degree from the State University of South Dakota, Vermillion, South Dakota. He is currently Dean of the Division of Fine Arts at The Columbus College of Art and Design in Columbus, Ohio. Tolstedt has had many one-man exhibitions and has participated in two-man and group exhibitions nationally. In addition, he has been awarded prestigious fellowships, from the National Endowment for the Arts and from the Ohio Arts Council.

Tolstedt is known for his exquisite drawings done in silverpoint, gold point, and colored pencil. His works range from intimate to mural in scale. His subjects, chosen from everyday life and experience, are investigated with a sensitive and penetrating intellect. His drawings are often iconic presentations, simultaneously recalling the American tradition of still-life painting and engaging the viewer with contemporary questions about the fundamental relationship between reality, perception, abstraction, and creation.

"Lowell Tolstedt's meticulous colored pencil and metal point drawings of food and flowers celebrate the act of looking and the powerful physical sensations that we often experience through objects. . . .By adjusting the pressure he places on the tips of his pencils and sharpened sticks of gold, silver and platinum, he suggests an array of textures and achieves remarkable depth of color."

Katherine A. Wat, Curator of Exhibitions, Akron Art Museum,
Excerpt from New Master Drawings, a forthcoming exhibition
at the Canton Museum of Art, August 20 - October 30, 2005

Selected Corporate and Museum Collections:
Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock
Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois
Battelle Institute, Columbus, Ohio
B.F. Goodrich, Richfield, Ohio
Canton Museum of Art, Ohio
Cleveland Clinic, Ohio
Columbus Metropolitan Library, Ohio
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio
Evansville Museum of Art, Indiana
Minnesota Museum of American Art, St. Paul
Nationwide Insurance Companies, Columbus, Ohio
Pfizer Corporation, Cleveland, Ohio
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

Recent Reviews:
EXQUISITELY PRECISE:

Richly detailed pencil drawings shimmer with color, vitality

Published: Sunday, April 22, 2007

FEATURES - ARTS 04D

FOR THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Lowell Tolstedt, a professor emeritus at the Columbus College of Art & Design, is a master draftsman. * Thirty-one of his recent still-life drawings, so colorful and luxurious as to seem like paintings, are on view at Keny Galleries in German Village. The images of fruit, flowers and candy -- each one a visual delight -- play games with light, reflection and reality.

Tolstedt, 67, is a 21st-century exponent of a still-life genre that dates from the 17th-century Netherlands. Carefully representative and meticulously executed, his subjects are placed in neutral or abstract contexts. They exist as isolated entities that -- even with the most mundane objects -- are transformed into icons.

Most of the pieces in the show are small and intimate. Amazingly, they are as assertive as the monumental drawings that the artist has produced in the past. Tolstedt achieves his superb textural and color effects with colored pencils handled skillfully in delicate layers.

Composition: Gala Apple With Reflections, only 6 by 6 inches, is powerful. In a plane slightly tilted forward, the marvelous apple looks ready to roll into the viewer's lap. The fruit's rich color is reflected onto the surrounding crushed foil with its cool, silvery sheen.

In Anonymous Still Life With Orange Wrapped Candy, he duplicates the look of cellophane and foil, adding the delicate reflections in the highly polished surface on which the pieces rest.

Tolstedt's subtle and delicate drawings are at their best in the demanding metal-point medium -- silver or gold point -- which allows for no error. Grapes (Kailua) is a superb example of silverpoint drawing.

One of the most outstanding floral pieces is Kula Still Life With Palm and Protea Leaves, a complex arrangement of petals and leaves. Tonal gradations from pink to white in the petals are impressively refined.

In contrast is the surprisingly bold image Composition With Red and Yellow Tulip.

A new subject for Tolstedt is artificial light, captured in Composition: Red and White Candles. In this fascinating drawing, light from the flames, punctuated by the incandescent tips of the wicks, makes the waxy core of the candles glow richly.

For all the emphasis on technique, Tolstedt's drawings have irresistible charm that subtly lead the viewer to contemplation and meditation.

Illustration: Photo appeared in newspaper, not in the archive.

Photo caption: (1) LEFT: Composition: Red and White Candles
(2) BELOW: Composition With Red and Yellow Tulip

 




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