My friend, the realist painter James Valerio, insists that by painting he can show more of the subject than can be seen otherwise. He paints from life and from large format photos he takes himself. There are usually several different images of the same subject -- or details of an ensemble -- in a large viewing box nearby his work area together with the actual subject -- usually a built environment -- and they are all different. He has all these 'looking' sources and must carry them in his mind to the painting and apply paint. When he paints how much is a remembered amalgam and how much is a new invention guided by the painted surface? He says it's largely invented from memory at the moment of painting and the painting is the guide. That's why he claims to put more in than there is 'out there' to see. (see Forum Gallery for samples of his work).
----- Original Message ---- From: Michael Brady <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Thu, August 30, 2012 5:34:58 PM Subject: Re: is list dead? On Aug 30, 2012, at 4:19 PM, joseph berg <[email protected]> wrote: > - Perhaps the sketch of a work is so pleasing because everyone can finish > it as he chooses. No representation is "finished" because no representation is equal to the thing it represents. Representations are maps of smaller things onto larger things, and the fullness of the natural object cannot be matched by the representation, so that in the most "finished" looking painting, such as those incredible Flemish paintings of food and fowl or the hyperrealistic paintings of the 80s, there is so much that they are incapable of representing, just as the briefest Rodin drawing of Balinese dancers, that the viewer will not exhaust the possibilities. Note to Cheerskep: I am, of course, thinking of the way the viewer recognizes his own perceptions of the painted subject and correlates it, in his mind, with memories of the original--or even with the actual model if it's still present. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Michael Brady
