"All the colors of water come from the sky, because every color of the sky is reflected in that water.", Charles Vickery
Charles Vickery (1913 – September 22, 1998) was an American marine painter widely regarded as one of the finest seascape artists of the late twentieth century. Born in Hinsdale, Illinois, he attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the American Academy of Art in Chicago, although he himself credited Lake Michigan, and the example of Winslow Homer, as the most important teachers of his career. After a series of working jobs in the 1930s as a surveyor's assistant, silk-screen operator, mail clerk, and woodworker, he opened his first painting studio in Western Springs, Illinois, in 1937.
The decisive recognition of his work came in 1951, when the Chicago Tribune art critic Eleanor Jewett wrote about his paintings, and his career as a full-time professional marine painter built steadily through the following decades. He was a longtime member of the American Society of Marine Artists and Oil Painters of America, and won a long sequence of prizes at the principal American marine art exhibitions in Philadelphia, Gloucester, Rockport, and Mystic.