You have to be quick to capture celebrities in the wild. Montville’s Ron Galella knows a thing or two about that. He was a paparazzo long before you’d ever heard that word—and became more recognizable than many of the stars he shot during his spectacular 50-year career.

Allen & Keaton
September 12, 1972 • NYC Woody Allen and Diane Keaton at a ‘A Tracy and Hepburn Film Memoir’

Steve McQueen
April 15, 1973 • Montego Bay, Jamaica Steve McQueen on location filming Papillon

Lennon & Jagger
March 13, 1974 • Century City, CA Mick Jagger and John Lennon at Film Institute Lifetime Achievement Awards honoring James Cagney

Redford
May 15, 1974 • NYC Robert Redford at Mary Lasker’s cocktail party for Wayne Owens

Elvis
June 25, 1974 • Philadelphia Elvis Presley leaving Philadelphia International Airport

Cher
November 20, 1974 • NYC Cher during Romantic and Glamorous Hollywood Design Exhibition at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Pacino & De Niro
February 14, 1982 • NYC Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro attend Night of 100 Stars Gala at the New York Hilton Hotel

Madonna & Penn
August 13, 1986 • NYC Sean Penn and Madonna break for lunch from the rehearsals for the Lincoln Center workshop production of Goose and Tomtom at the Mitzi Newhouse Theatre, Lincoln Center

Ron Galella’s work is in the collections of the Modern Museum of Art in New York and San Francisco, the Tate Modern in London and the Helmut Newton Foundation Museum of Photography in Berlin. Newsweek once called him a “paparazzo extraordinaire.” Debbie Harry, one of Galella’s favorite subjects, wrote to him that “any photographer that is fascinated with people, and then is able to catch them live, not in a studio set up, has a real gift.” He is sharing that gift in Shooting Stars, a collection of untold stories and rarely seen candid photos of entertainment and society icons. Sued by Jackie Onassis (another all-time favorite) and socked in the jaw by Marlon Brando, Galella has many a tale to tell—from his early life in the Bronx to his remarkable red carpet adventures.

Dreams come to everyone, day and night. Think of all the children who dream of what they want to be when they grow up. Lady Gaga? Batman? A paleontologist? As a young boy, Werner Carl Burger declared that he wanted to be an Abstract Expressionist. The German-born painter never wavered from achieving his dream, no matter what the waking world had in store.

Forest Flame
18” x 20”, Oil on Canvas

When Werner Carl Burger first began making art, he thought it was just something fun to do. “It was when I started teaching that I really felt something,” the Stockton resident recalls. “I wanted to be a guide and emphasize the intellectual aspects of art for my students, the history and philosophy, knowledge in general.”

In Memory of Peter Jones 24” x 30”, Watercolor

And teach he did…for 40 years at Kean University. It was an honor, he says, to be a professor of art. Though Burger garnered numerous awards during his career, he never let it go to his head: “I see other artists’ great work at art shows and always wonder if I’m good enough.” When informed that Leonardo wrote that one moment he’d ask God’s forgiveness for being a lazy lout—and the next moment he’d think he was the greatest artist in the world—Burger roars with laughter. His work graces museums and public spaces throughout the U.S.,

Liquid Forest
16” x 20”, Oil on Canvas

including the Smithsonian Institution, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Newark and Montclair museums. At 94, he is a major figure in the art community and, particularly, a New Jersey master. —Tova Navarra

Love Forest
16” x 20”, Oil on Canvas

Turnpike #2 Jersey City 60” x 55”, Watercolor

Tumble Town
8” x 10”, Watercolor

City Light
8” x 10”, Watercolor

Normandy France 11” x 14”, Watercolor

Rafael’s Town
10” x 14”, Watercolor

David Levy adores the purity of geometric forms. He is drawn to bridges, automobiles and musical instruments. Levy’s crisp, elegant lines, bold colors and the visual record of his brushstrokes move the eye and the intellect.

“Dubliners’ Delight” Acrylic, 24″x36″ 2013

“1967 Corvette” Acrylic, 24″x36″ 2014

“1968 Muscle Car” Acrylic, 24″x36″ 2013

“1963 Corvette” Acrylic, 24″x36″ 2012

“Dubliners’ Delight” Acrylic, 24″x36″ 2013

“Rhode Island Red” Acrylic, 28″x22″ 2012

Born in Manhattan and raised on Long Island, David Levy has been a New Jersey resident for more than 30 years. Levy was an Optical (Op) artist at age 15—well before he established his hard-edge style of painting he dubbed Engineered Abstraction as a Fine Arts major at Lehigh University, where he also earned a master’s degree in Art History. For more on David Levy’s story, visit edgemagonline.com.

Tova Navarra

Take a long look at the work of painter Gary T. Erbe and you’re likely to detect a sophisticated handshake between the familiar and unfamiliar. His paintings embrace the realism and perspective of traditional trompe l’oeil—with a contemporary update that has set him apart from his peers for more than  50 years. The virtual, mysterious, kaleidoscopic, collagistic world Gary T. Erbe puts on canvas can fool the eye—in French, trompe l’oeil—as well as sit you down to many huge holiday meals all at once, literally making your eyes bigger than your stomach.

Born in 1944 in Union City, Erbe is a self-taught artist who had a studio in Union City from 1972 to 2006 before moving to Nutley. Unable to attend art school while young, Erbe worked as an engraver and painter on weekends until he began trompe l’oeil painting à la 19th-century masters. He then developed modern departures from the masters. Erbe has exhibited extensively since 1970 with solo exhibitions at museums and galleries throughout America, Asia, and Europe, and is in the permanent collection of many prestigious institutions. Erbe paints flat forms enhanced by shadow, light, and color for pure three-dimensional illusion and for stimulating the mind. For more information, visit garyerbe.com or go to edgemagonline.com for an extended bio.

Subway Series, 2008 55” x 45”, Oil on Canvas The Heckscher Museum of Art, NY

In the hands of an accomplished artist, the manipulation of light can communicate a feeling, underscore emotion and elevate the means by which a canvas tells a story. The work of New Jersey painter Gabriela Gonzalez Dellosso conveys an intimate relationship with light, which illuminates—both literally and figuratively—everything she does.

Gabriela Gonzalez Dellosso can be called an alchemist. Her figurative art blends both classic and modern elements with mystery and spirituality. It conjures up paintings by Caravaggio,

Jan van Eyck, and others, whose treasures on canvas stop you in your tracks as though you were suddenly face to face with a panther.

The 51-year-old beauty from West New York, NJ, has taught at the National Academy of Fine Arts and elsewhere, and in the past decade has won more than 25 awards and accolades, including an artistic residency in Bulgaria. Of Ecuadoran and Cuban descent, Dellosso accelerates her stunning works with the latest exhibition “A Brush with HerStory,” which will run from August 31 through November 10, 2020, starting at the Heckscher Museum in Huntington, NY, and then moving to other museums and galleries. Her subjects lean toward the provocative and include many of history’s most intriguing women. Dellosso’s art brings fantastic images to the New Jersey Register of masters, and no doubt to the world in perpetuity.

—Tova Navarra