April Gornik, Alexis Rockman, and Chuck Close

April Gornik

Since I'm currently painting a landscape for class, I feel like I should look at April Gornik's art and try to apply some of her themes. From what I saw, she does mostly landscapes that are detailed and realistic. While I don't want to get that detailed in my own landscape, maybe I can get inspired by the way she paints.

The fact that she is able to paint the exact colors of the ocean and the sky- I can imagine a day like this- is amazing to me. She seems very detail oriented; Nothing gets left out in this painting. Since my painting right now has a cloudy/sunset sky, I think I can try to apply her smoky clouds to my own work. Her landscapes are beautiful and well done, and you can tell they probably took a long time to do.

Alexis Rockman

Alexis Rockman's artwork reminds me of Salvador Dali's surrealism works. There is so much going on, and so much to look at and figure out. The viewer can see all of the levels of the space in the picture. For instance, you can see the the sky, the middle ground, and even underground- something you wouldn't normally be able to see. Also he provides a lot of detail that your eye probably would not be able to pick up at these types of distances. His works are intriguing to me because of the depth and the way he uses space. It's as if he's trying to tell us to remember that there is more to the Earth/area that we see in front of us. Whether that be in the ocean deep below, or the roots of a tree underground. He's telling us to not forget about that fragile part of the Earth- the part humans can't really occupy.

Chuck Close

Chuck Close is inspiring. He originally painted extremely detail oriented hyper-realistic paintings. I can't believe he paints on such a large scale and is able to show even the slightest detail of the human face. It looks just like a photograph. However, since 1988, he has been bound to a wheelchair because he was paralyzed from the neck down. He has regained some muscle control, and paints slower with the brush strapped to his wrist and on a grid system instead. Now, a lot of his ginormous paintings are done in this grid style in which every square is a different pattern. The squares still follow the color scheme of the picture though, so if viewed from a distance, the composition as a whole still makes complete sense. Therefore, the image looks as if it is made up of pixels. These works are HUGE and take such a long time to complete. He's 72 and still painting from a wheelchair! He was paralyzed! It's amazing!