Photo By Jon Hughes/photopresse.com

Richard Luschek (left) and Carl Samson hope to reintroduce a traditional art school to Cincinnati.

Two Cincinnati-based artists want art instruction to move forward by looking back, to return to a hands-on, skills-based curriculum they believe will give students real tools to communicate visually.

"We don't want our school to be a throw-back but to build on traditions of the past while developing new interpretations," says Carl Samson, widely recognized portrait painter and, with painter/illustrator Richard Luschek, instigator of plans for a new art school with a back-to-the-basics approach. "Realism is in the early stages of return, and in the next 10 to 20 years amazing things will happen. I'm excited."

The two have studios within a block of each other and are themselves examples of atelier training, the traditional artist-to-artist teaching methods they want to emulate. Samson was one of the last students of R.H. Ives Gammell, whom he calls "a legendary link to early 20th-century American art," and continued studies with individual artists here and abroad.

Luschek, who had entered the University of Cincinnati as a biology major left it with a degree from DAAP and a feeling that he needed to know more about making art. A painting of Samson's, the subject a model who had posed for artists Luschek knew, seemed to him so superior to what others had done that he tracked down the artist and asked to study with him.

Samson, too busy to take on a student, referred Luschek to another of Gammell's former students, Paul Ingbretson. From 2001 to 2004, Luschek spent much of his time in New Hampshire in a rigorous study program with Ingbretson.

"Thank God for cell phones," says Luschek, as they kept him in touch with his wife in Cincinnati.

"The grammar of painting, not ideas" is the object of atelier training and begins with a long period of drawing from plaster casts. "You learn how to see, to understand basic proportions and shapes," says Samson. "It's very disciplined and not for everyone."

This technique is reviving in some circles after two or three generations of derision. "Casts were dumped into the river in Boston, and in Philadelphia they threw them down the stairs to break them up," says Luschek. "Here the story goes that they were used as landfill for the Art Museum parking lot."

Accurate drawing with "sensitivity to form and edges" is the end result of such training. Cincinnati artist Constance McClure admiringly calls it "hard-core drawing."

North light is another maxim.

"North light is like acoustics for musicians," says Samson. "It lets you see values and colors. My spirit lifts when I see it."

North light, tempered and even, flows into both their studios. Luschek's small, square, free-standing building was Jane Cone Becker Freiberg's studio for many years. Down the street Samson has the house where Herman and Bessie Wessel lived. The Wessels, students of Frank Duveneck and central figures in what is called the golden age of Cincinnati art, added a generous studio at the back of their Queen Anne house. In it is Duveneck's easel, bequeathed to them by the artist whom some have called the father of American art. Samson works at it now.

However, the projected school is not intended as a mausoleum. "Subject matter should be contemporary, dealing with issues relevant to today," says Luschek.

"The pendulum is swinging," Samson adds. "Both coasts already have schools of this type, but there's nothing here. It will not be a degree program -- Sargent didn't have a degree, neither did other good artists -- and so it will be cheaper than expensive art schools. It will be hands-on, 20 students maximum, focused on drawing and painting but perhaps ultimately including sculpture.

We're doing some informal instruction now and looking into locations, considering whether to be profit or nonprofit -- if the latter, we might be able to have handpicked students and no tuition. It's an exciting time."

Sometimes everything old is new again. ©