Harry Carmean's art studio

Harry has two wonderful art studios, one large one that he designed and built himself in the high desert town of Acton, California, and a smaller sized studio in the beach community of Santa Barbara. The Acton studio shown here, was begun in the middle 1980's and completed by 1990. He divides his time between the two studios and does all his larger sized paintings in Acton which, as can be seen from the photos, is a quite a large space.

Harry Carmean's teacher Lorser Feitelson

The drawings above are by Lorser Feitelson, a well known abstract and figurative Los Angeles artist. It was no wonder that after walking in on Feitelson life drawing class at Art Center, that Harry Carmean's life was forever changed. The above examples show Feitelson's incredible skills in drawing the figure and in them we can see the root of Carmean's development as an artist. For my mind, these drawings show a complete understanding of the techniques of the European old masters but they are unique because they were done by an American artist in modern times. Feitelson had a large collection of old master drawings which was published in a catalogue and is available online.

Jack Albee mime who posed for Harry Carmean

One of Harry Carmean's favorite people to draw was the mime Jack Albee, who modelled at Art Center where Carmean taught. Jack was a member of the famous Albee theater family and had a face that artist's love to draw - full of character, wit and personality. The photo of him in costume was taken by Harry Carmean in the later 1960's at a party at his home in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles.  Jack Albee was an inspiring, upbeat person to be around and as can be seen here, he inspired some fantastic drawings and paintings from his friend Harry Carmean.

Photos of Harry Carmean's younger years.

Harry Carmean, (who grew up in the Los Angeles area), was a professional singer before he got involved with art. He had what people wanted in Hollywood at that time - not only did he look good, he also sang beautifully. In fact, he was so successful that he started getting some serious offers from the movie studios even though he had just turned twenty. However, at the same time WWII broke out and Carmean, enlisted and served in WWII which cut his singing career short. After the war ended he went on to study at L'ecole des Beaux Artes in Marseilles and then at Art Center College of Design and the rest is history. As it turns out Hollywood's loss was the art world's gain as I can't imagine the world without Carmean's dynamic and inspiring paintings and, as can be seen from these photos, he was one of California's most handsome painters!