I believe I am almost finished with the “Wrestlers” painting but want to add some more careful linear elements to define the figures. The painting I am working on now is “Family Portrait” which combines images of my father as a child with images taken from Library of Congress photographs of other sentient beings worthy of compassion. I am beginning to blend both of my styles, the more realistic with the expressive, in one work. So far, I am happy with the results.
What I like about this image is it gets me outside of myself. I have had to figure out how to compose the painting to get a message across without hitting you over the head. I have been thinking more, and learning to be patient. The hours spent looking at anatomy books, late Goya paintings, and photographs from the Library of Congress are beginning to pay dividends.
These are exciting times for me. The William Way LGBTQ Community Center of Philadelphia featured one of my paintings on the cover of their June newsletter.
And…on May 20th, at the opening of the group show at William Way, it was announced that I won first prize, which is a solo exhibition at the Center. Look for that in January of 2012. Never one to procrastinate, I have begun some new paintings for the upcoming show. Using digitized photographs from the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/ I have completed a painting of one Frank Bryant, wearing a pretty funky costume, and am in the process of combining three other images to create a painting that is tentatively titled, Wrestlers with boys. These are detailed images and they take me a while to get the composition, color, and poses to express exactly what I want.
