Commerce Gallery set for Meet the Artists event

The Commerce Gallery of Lockhart will have a Meet the Artists on Friday, Sept. 1 from 5-8 p.m.

Featured artists include Jacob Lovett, Molly Brocklehurst and Ralph Fulton.

Commerce Gallery will have an Open House on Friday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Jacob Lovett

Lovett is an American artist most notably known for his contemporary Western oil paintings. Born and raised in Fort Worth, his work is heavily influenced by the Western lifestyle and culture that has surrounded him since he was a kid. Although he does not wear the title cowboy, his admiration for the ethos that they uphold to this day is what draws him to this subject matter.

Lovett grew up drawing throughout his youth and took a few art classes during his time at The University of Mississippi, but it wasn’t until he graduated from Ole Miss in 2017 that he started to recognize art as more than just a hobby.
In the spring of 2018, Lovett was approached by a friend to paint a commission piece for their family. Never painted before, he accepted this project without any proper training, purchased the required materials and looked up “How to Paint” on YouTube. After days of work, he delivered them the finished piece. That moment led him to seek out proper training and went on to study under Laert Aleksi Xhaferi of Studio Sabka.

Today, Lovett primarily works in oil paint with a focus in contemporary Western subject matter, using old masters’ techniques in a minimalistic approach to achieve aesthetically clean, yet strikingly realistic compositions.

Molly Brocklehurst

Brocklehurst is a British, figurative painter based in Austin. Her work is characterized by her use of a limited palette to create nostalgic, dreamlike narratives. Brocklehurst holds a BA with honors from Leeds College of Art (2016) and an MFA in Fine Art from the University of Arts London (2019).

Her work has been exhibited in the United Kingdom, Scandinavia and the USA. She has had work included in the Wing’s private collection in London and currently has work included in Soho House’s private collection in New York. Being inspired by society and culture within the places she lives and travels to, Brocklehurst takes her subjects from across all forms of media, creating paintings that blur the boundary between documentary and fiction.

Ralph Fulton

Inspiration to paint comes to Fulton in many ways: nature, his immediate surroundings, figures, people in different environments in everyday activities, and some animals interacting with humans in indoor and outdoor spaces.

Fulton makes paintings from experiences, also actions that he thinks are about to take place, sometimes dreams that he’s never had. He doesn’t really have an explanation for the icons in his paintings, they just help in building the composition and he likes them. Color to Fulton is like a language that might convey a message or emotion of some lesson or an experience he’s about to learn. Viewers of his paintings sometimes become viewed by what or who is in the painting. He paints using acrylics on wood panels and canvas. Fulton studied art at Eastern Illinois University, BFA, working under James and Peter Anderson at Shearwater Pottery in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. He owned Chicken Farm Pottery with Billy Ray Mangham and Ruth Richards in Nacogdoches. He came to Austin in 1978 and raised a family of four children as a carpenter. In 2014 while trying to inspire his young grandchildren to paint and love art, he became inspired along with them and has been painting every day since. Along with making paintings, he builds furniture and plays trumpet with a band in Austin.