I finally got out to the small museum here in St. Pete. It's the kind of museum where they have everything from pop art to Jain shrines. These sorts of places are hard to really enjoy as total experiences, but I did get exposed to a few interesting new artists. George Inness, the landscape artist (seen above), has a kind of mystical haziness that I really appreciate.
The museum also has a piece by Mary L. Proctor, a folk artist. The piece in the museum is really spectacular and wild, though unfortunately it seems that more recently Proctor, who is now something of an institutionalized folk art figure, has turned to slightly more kitsch work like that above.
Finally, there's Victor Dubreuil a late-18th century "painter of money," represented by the work above. I've been doing a lot of writing and research about money as a medium lately, so it's doubly interesting to learn that there was an entire movement of money painters who produced representations of representations of value.
