Influential Imagery

My second painting harkens back to the cropped details seen in art history books and magazines. In many instances, I've admired theses tight crops much more than the fully realized traditional composition itself... Modern pictorial editing meets traditional oil painting.

If you haven't detected already, there's something about a certain degree of realism I simply can't escape. Also, after so many years working the digital prepress side of electronic design, I'm on an interesting — but comfortable — kick of painting with only 5 tubes of color: cyan, magenta, yellow, black and white. Keeps my trips to the art supplier simpler.

Here's a progression of a 4x4-foot oil on canvas, Figure With Quilt.

 

"I'm painting... I'm painting again!"

Above: My first painting after a 35-year hiatus: A portrait of my late grandmother, for my mother and aunt. I figured an accurate likeness to be a meaningful test of my capacity to paint again.

Talking Heads' early underground hit, "Artists Only," hit me right upside the head the year I finished college. But I was a lean, green buck with my head in the clouds, and was swept away somewhat by all the wrong things — the last of which was to follow my muse. It took me 35 years as a commercial graphic artist to get around to finally "cleaning my brain" and commence painting again — and realize what a truly cleansing act it can be.

So here it is: My new, chosen career — as it ought to have begun...

Painting details...