My favorite Emotional Painters. From today onwards I have decided to expand a little on my favorite artists. I do hope it does not bore but each artists personality has as much to say about the work they create. The work of Ron Hicks. Born in June 1949 on a small farm in Southeastern South Dakota. Lives in Spokane USA. Ron Hicks’ works have been characterized as a blend of representational art and impressionism. Some critics have compared them to paintings by Rembrandt and Daumier. The artist translates his own moody visions with a muted palette and rarely uses pure color. He particularly favors the variety he finds in gray. “Gray allows me to capture atmosphere, mood, and layers of emotion,” he says. “Gray sets the tone for the rest of the painting.” Shelves in the artist’s studio are lined with art books about Nicolai Fechin, James Whistler, and William Merritt Chase. There are also volumes featuring Hicks’ main muses-John Singer Sargent, Edgar Degas, and Diego Velazquez. As an artist, his philosophy involves guiding the viewer though a painting, much like his artistic idols, by striking a balance between revealing too little and not enough detail. “It’s a very delicate balance,” Hicks says. It’s no surprise that Ron Hicks spurns the academic approach to figure painting, which requires exactness-too stiff and boring, he says. It’s also a method that can yield models with pained expressions. His creative process involves explaining an idea for a pose to a model and then waiting for her to strike a comfortable facsimile. “The best postures are the ones that just happen; then the models stay comfortable,” he says. “I don’t want to paint a pose that is unnatural and has nothing to do with actual life.” If one asks Hicks about his favorite subject matter he replies without hesitation, “figures and interiors.” But he quickly qualifies “figures” by saying that painting them is really about painting shapes of color. “I am a shape guy. By that I mean I see things more in terms of shape rather than the objects or people,” he says. “Everything is about shape, medium shape vs. large shape, lighter shape vs. darker shape.”
Posted on: Sun, 27 Jul 2014 12:12:34 +0000
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015