Lifelike Clarity And Infused Realities

I have spent most of the past 67 years, developing and exhibiting Photo-Realist art. A Photo-Realist is an artist who uses a camera instead of a sketchpad, transferring images to the painting surface by means of a grid or a projector, and has technical ability to make a painting look photographic. I began oil painting in 1959 at 11 years old and I found that when I attempted to sit down in front of subject matter, and simply drew or paint what I saw, my work would look like any other academic realist work. It would lack the clarity, accuracy, and immediate detail for which photo realist painting is admired. For me, change and movement must be frozen to one second in time, which must be totally and accurately represented. Only a photo can do that. By the late 1960’s, it had become apparent that a new type of art was emerging from the abstraction – dominated art centers of New York and Western Europe. I sold my first painting at 16 years old in 1964 that was academic representational work. In 1968, after having seen the work of Richard Estes and Chuck Close, I realized that it was a photographic realism I wanted in both appearance and method. I then began my work in Photo- Realism. While attending Washington University, I started using two tools to put paint on canvas. The traditional bristle brush and the airbrush. The airbrush is a refined and controllable spray gun and is held like a pen, but never touches the canvas. My influence in portrait paintings was Chuck Close. Many portrait artists have used, and many still use, photographs, which they then interpret loosely. Close’s work has nothing to do with any type of portrait we have ever seen before. They look like their subject matter –a photograph. Living in the extremely liberal atmosphere of today, it is still regarded as cheating or “against the rules” to paint from or using the photograph. This prejudice can easily be dispelled if one accepts the concept that the subject matter of Photo-Realist painting is in fact the photograph it self. If it is acceptable to paint a picture of any object, it is also acceptable to paint a picture of a photograph.

In the early 1980’s Frank Stella paintings became fully three-dimensional sculptural forms that he derived from decorative architectural elements, and incorporating french curves, pillars, waves, and cones. My influence from Frank Stella, was not french curves and cones, but I use scientific microscopic or embryonic imagery like the subject matter I illustrated for Sigma Aldridge. My scientific illustrations combined with the three – dimensional work of Frank Stella, inspired me to create three – dimensional sculptural forms that include microscopic representational imagery in my paintings.