Panel Discussion: Getting Paid for Art

Getting Paid for Art: Perspectives on Portrait and Public Art Commissions

with Ted Xaras, Rob Roesch, and Alexandra Tyng

This panel will focus on the procedures for finding and executing commissioned art. Panelists will share their stories of the rewards and challenges of creating art for a patron—whether the patron is a private corporation or a government agency.

Robert Roesch is Chair of the Sculpture Department at PAFA where he teaches a Sculpture Seminar, Digital Imaging, and is a critic. He has completed 20 major public art projects nationwide including the "Wind Spirit Gateway" in Wichita, Kansas, and "Momentum" at the entrance to Texas A&M University in Corpus Christi. “Transduction,” a collaborative sculpture created with his wife, artist Suzanne Horvitz, is a permanent installation at Grounds For Sculpture in Hamilton, N.J.

Ted Xaras has over 30 years of teaching experience as professor and Chair of Fine Arts at Ursinus College, where he taught painting, drawing, printmaking and art history from 1973 until his retirement in 2007. He has since taught a variety of studio courses, including portrait painting, and has presented art history lectures at PAFA. He has completed numerous public and private commissions, including for Time magazine, Merck & Co., Ursinus College, and recently for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and the Bucks County Court of Common Pleas.

Alexandra Tyng is a realist painter whose work combines traditional methods with a contemporary viewpoint. Her work is included in many public, corporate and private collections in the U.S. and abroad. Her figurative paintings and portraits have garnered awards from the Portrait Society of America, the Allied Artists of America, the Woodmere Art Museum, The Artist’s Magazine, and American Artist. She is the founder of Portraits For the Arts, an ongoing philanthropic project that uses the power of portraiture to raise money for the arts in the Philadelphia area.