| Arnold Levine was born and raised in Poughkeepsie, NY. As a child it seemed as if he was constantly drawing or sketching. In the beginning it was mostly airplanes and cartoon characters. Every teacher had a class project that Arnold was asked to do because he was the kid that could draw. It was assumed that he would attend Art School after graduation. However the one thing that he loved even more than art was football, and so he wound up at Northern Arizona University on a football scholarship. NAU had a small art department at that time and so Arnold enrolled in the fine art program. After two years of being knocked around on the field, he got a bad case of wonder lust and dropped out of school to enlist in the Marines. This was in 1964 and Arnold didnt know much about South East Asia. He soon found out. |  |
Two combat tours in Vietnam was enough to encourage the artist to return to school. In 1971 he received his BFA and in 1975 he followed with an MFA. In 1976 he had his first show at the First Street Gallery when it was still in Soho. A writer from Arts magazine likened his work to Corot. He had several shows at the gallery before leaving to pursue a teaching career in the West. After teaching in Art Departments in California and Illinois, he returned to the Hudson Valley where he was an instructor at SUNY New Paltz and Martist College.
The artist has been awarded a MacDowell Fellowship and most recently was granted a stay as an Artist in Residence at the International School of Art in Umbria. His work deals mostly with the Hudson Valley Landscape but he often travels to other Locations to gather material for his paintings.
Mr. Levine now lives and works in a loft building in Kingston, NY. |
