Category: Painting

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Update on my WIP Model in the Studio

newberry-model-in-the-studio-wip 4

Today’s update on Model in the Studio, wip, oil on linen, 42x56” It is very interesting that there is a war going on now in the humanities, arts, and in politics. Essentially it’s reason, perception, truth, science, human values, benevolence, resolution, sense, and evolution vs. misinterpretation, manipulation, lies, opinion, ignorance, snark, malevolence, arbitrary, senseless, and devolution. I could not be happier and I chose wisely. Everything in this painting is in the first group, the 2nd group is post modern crap. Hard work and flourishing or bitter rage? Apparently for many people it’s not an easy choice.

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The Surface Vs. 3D Paradox Solved

06-Newberry-Color-Vibration-Study-LightE

There was a crazy split in art history between the modernist perspective of being true to the surface of the canvas vs. the classical window looking at out the world. Paradoxically, both are true but they missed what connects them: light and color vibrations dance on our cornea's surface.

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Pushing the Composition Envelope, Melissa Hefferlin Still Lifes

It is interesting to contrast Hefferlin with Picasso (he is one of my favorite artists). He created some of the best compositions of all time, but he frequently distorted the subjects – like the woman's face, body, and other objects – to make very clever compositional arrangements. But in distorting reality so much he threw the baby out with the bathwater. He was visually saying that reality is a chaos of distorted perspectives that are not true to real life. What is exceptional about Melissa is her ability to tweak these pattern motifs while keeping a realistic perspective, a feat of integration that Picasso doesn't match up to.

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Towards Puccini

contemporary oil painting of Opera composer Puccini.

They say that art is the technology of the soul. The best of it integrates sensory experience, appeals to our thinking, an internal logic, our imagination, and taps our emotions. When those things come together it triggers our circuits to fire on all frequencies.

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Transcending Oblivion

Oblivion cut

Horrified by the subject's meaning backfiring I went through my options, never forgetting that I had already put 3,000 hours towards this work. Every way I looked at it there was no solution that appeared to improve the painting. Michelangelo hacked away a figure not working ...