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Self portraits can be a kind of diary, they show not only changes in the artist as age changes the face, but also artistic growth or other stylistic changes. The subject of this painting seems relatively happy and confident. Moods change. |
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Mollie, with eyes closed. |
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Its been quite a while since my last self portrait. My intention was to be more honest than flattering. |
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Rochelle works at the Art Students League here in Denver. She is filled with a special kind of life, and her face has an incredible expressive power. |
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Ed McDonald is an artist whose studio is in the same building as mine. He is an odd combination of dirty-old-man and artistic-genius. He sat for a couple of us in the studio... |
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This is one of the very biggest paintings I've ever done. It seems to be one of the most communicative of possible subjects. |
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This is really two paintings, with two different stories. Here is the first story: This January I painted a wonderful woman who was eight months pregnant. Those paintings aren't on the web site, but turned out pretty well. We stayed in email contact, and a couple of months later she sent me some photos of George, her new son. In some sense I have known George his whole life, and here he is in a mood that probably seems to possess him more often than it actually does. |
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Keep in mind that the relatively older paintings are lower down on this page. So, if you start at the top, you don't know yet how much time and canvas I have spent on Camilla and her family. Her mom and I were trying to remember, and we figured I had painted 'Milla at least once a year for the last seven years. She is on the left, and her older sister is on the right. Annie is In Harvard, tutoring other students in math and science. Every time the family is together, they laugh and smile. This painting isn't complicated, as Tolstoy pointed out, "All happy families are alike." |
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This format, 12x36, is new for me. I wanted to emphasize just the eyes, a little off center... It is the most "rectangular" of all my paintings. Still, I think there is room to blow them up even more.
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This is an almost accidental painting. I was in a lull working on a commission, with my camera in hand, and cat in lap... The photo turned out well, so I took it to the studio. Sometimes, and seemingly at random intervals, magic strikes. There are moments when I stand in front of the canvas and feel like I can do no wrong. Like I could close my eyes, stick my brush in some paint, run it across the canvas, and have it be just right. I knew as soon as I had drawn part of one eye that I was in the zone. |
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While I like the painting above, it is only slightly bigger than life size. In order to make the cat seem like something new, I felt I had to dramatically alter the scale. This captures some of the vigorous, loose, and expressive character of my smaller paintings. |
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I have been working on a series of extreme close-ups of faces. There are many reasons for this new project. One is the simple joy I get in concentrating on people's faces. Beyond that, I hope to get artistic access to emotions by focusing on parts of faces in an abstract way. Looking so closely at the eyes, noses, and mouths ironically causes them to lose their individuality. When we look at a friend smile, we respond to a whole of which the smile is just a part. My friend smiles for a particular reason ("The Archers Of Loaf" is a stupid band name, but a great band.) In these paintings I want the smile... abstracted out of its context. This is not Camilla's mouth caught between a giggle and a smirk, it is some detached mouth expressing a very specific emotion between a giggle, outright laughter, and a pinch of smirk... That is how I see it, you may have a different point of view. |
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I spend a lot of time working on distant blue horizons under huge skies with threatening clouds that dwarf whatever lonely people might be lost in the vastness. It is a real joy to spend time on a painting like this. |
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Recently, my best friend brought his three year old daughter over to my studio. We hung out, he raided my cd's, and I shot a bunch of pictures. Claire was remarkably well behaved. I can't walk into the place without getting paint all over, but she didn't touch anything. With all the orange in the painting there is no way of telling that she's eating a carrot. |
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Here she is again, growing. Finally, as the painter I probably see these paintings differently than the rest of the world. Here, for instance, I am especially happy with the way the way the hair meets the head. The ear is subtle. If painting is 10% inspiration, then 90% is hiding where the inspiration ended. The ear should look like it flowed effortlessly from the brush. |
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I showed this to someone who thought she was sleeping. That was not my intention. Finally, any painting has to stand on its own, regardless of whatever intentions the artist may have had. So, here it is. |
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This is a bigger version of the painting that led to this page. I like to consider all of my paintings sketches. I am tackling ideas, emotions, and problems in different ways. If I think the approach is working, but hasn't finished saying what I want to say, I will tackle it again, in a different size, or from a different point of view. It seems to me that this painting even more than the smaller sketch has assured brush strokes that are direct, straightforward, precise, and not as characteristic of my work as I would like. |
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These next few paintings are erotic. Let me just leave it at that. |
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This is one of the early close-ups. |
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© Clyde Steadman 2005
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