I had to write an essay about my painting for the
Blossom II: Art of Flowers show. I think it summarizes what I have being talking about so far on this blog, so I decided to post it:
I come from an artistic family, which allowed me to learn my craft and get familiar with many different techniques from a young age. While I am very adventurous and I have studied various modern and post-modern schools of thought, there is something about realism and its derivatives that has always fascinated me. From Rembrandt to Chuck Close, I enjoy studying the representational process, each artist’s motivation and more importantly, their personal technique.
While at school, I became familiar with classical under-painting techniques, more specifically
grisaille. I fell in love with it to the point that I have used
grisaille almost exclusively in my figurative painting. After a couple of months working with it, I decided to give it a personal twist and execute
grisaille with acrylics. It was only fitting, given the technique’s labor intensive layer application process, that I should try to master it with a media that dries quickly.
To my surprise, this combination proved to offer me some deep and rich color combinations. It allowed me to deconstruct colors and the way I apply them to the canvas. Along with contemporary tools such as image processing software, it has shaped the way I conceive and present a work of art. This blend of classical and modern techniques has managed to influence my work more than the work of any one particular artist.
“
Breezin” is the latest chapter in my quest to reinterpret realism, understood from my own point of view. I part from that primal impressionistic concept of the pigment itself, the texture of paint daubs on a canvas as elements of beauty; and I mix it with the aesthetics of photo-realism. The result is a painting that flirts with hyper-realism yet it maintains a raw, organic, quality.
An excerpt from my blog, about this painting:
“I purposely reserved some areas of the painting where, if you look closely, you will see brush strokes from the initial 'gray' thin coat I applied as I was getting started. That "richness" in my opinion is worth the time and effort, because it brings an additional blending element. More importantly, it emphasizes the fact that this is a painting, not a photograph. I want the audience to appreciate the painting's photographic quality, but I also want them to see the different kinds of strokes and textures obtained by the brushes. To me, that is what makes a realistic painting interesting and alive.”
Aron Ortega
