Three different takes on female nude figurative painting
Three different takes on female nude figurative painting, nudes with red drapery…
Raoul Middleman must be Baltimore’s biggest artistic champion since John Waters – wait, Middleman’s been at it longer, painting his native city and its colorful denizens in a homegrown expressionist manner for upwards of half a century. Middleman’s manner finds the middle ground between Oskar Kokoschka and Alice Neel, so you can imagine how he does faces and bodies and even clothing, how uncomfortable his sitters sit but how comfortable they seem in their skin.
For at least half his career Middleman has taken great delight in rendering various female friends and acquaintances in provocative, often risqué poses and garb (if not situations). Some are as floozed-out in real life as they are on canvas, but the bulk, apparently, are just bohemian belles getting a little raunch on for uncle Raoul. I mean, look what they do for Waters.
By Peter Frank, Huffington Post Review
Anatomy Series
This is an ongoing series of three-quarter portraits that I began to develop many years ago. It was the initial series that introduced both cartooning and medical illustration into my studio practice in order to explore what I believe to be the varying degrees of comprehension associated with each image type. Through this process, these two sub-sets of body images began to represent the visual bookends of the individuals I was portraying in my work. Each image is based on a series of five questions I ask the models during the initial sitting (ranging from favorite color to predicted cause of death). It is a series I hope to continue with each new person who sits for one of my works.
Born in Aberdeen, Scotland, Stephen Hall moved to New York in 1978 and began exhibiting his work in the East Village in the early 80’s. Since then his work has been featured in exhibits throughout the US, India, Japan, Korea and Mexico. His work is part of numerous corporate and private collections and has been featured in major motion pictures, music videos and magazines. Mr. Hall has illustrated numerous book covers for internationally published authors. “Red House Mystery” A.A. Milne, “High Rise” J.G. Ballard and “A Can of Worms” by Russell Greenan to name a few.
“There are no digital prints, photographs, collage, airbrush or projections involved in my work. The subjects and ambiguous light sources are hand painted rows and rows of acrylic colors or tones, going from dark to light in countless layers. All the patterns are drawn first around a cardboard template upon the background field color and then painted tonally to match the background. Each painting can take anywhere from three to six weeks to execute, depending on the size.
I am interested in showing the relationships we all have, whether in time or place. I also try to show the pattern in chaos and, perhaps the overload of information that we are bombarded with in our modern times”.
Sep 14, 2016