It occurred to me a while ago that the art of realism is having a hard time surviving among the modern onslaught of abstract expressionism and whatever one calls the ensuing trends that emerged from this movement. I was pained to see such unimaginative color slashes parading as serious art, and even worse, five-minute session of slash dash being sold at extraordinary high prices. At first I thought, why should I care...just do your own thing, and never mind what the others think. Which I did for many years. Then I thought, people will never know the modern alternative to sloppy painting, and who can deny that a lot of it is. (Wols,Tanguely, Gorky, Pollock, Twombly, deKooning, and many others) Perhaps this slap-dash technique appeals to certaint types of person with a certain amount of psychedelic drugs in their systems or an endless amount of cash. As well as to people who listen to promoters selling for their clients. It always resonated as false to me, as in impostor, or not caring anymore. Once artists receive hundred of milions of dollars for what is considered by the public as in, and they are gloriously rewarded for their art, no matter how it looks or how it?s done, then who?s to judge anymore? Yet I wanted to represent the alternative, the New Realism, so that those types of people who cared for exquisite painting would also be served with modern realistic beauty. I took my cue from nature, the grandest and most perfect example of good stuff. I worked with composition and backgrounds and color. It felt good to render something hard to capture, rather than easy to slap-dash. The bounds of realism are endless and worth discovering. The rewards are lovely as well as enormously satisfying. Seen in this book are four major categories: Landscapes, Still Life, Floral and Children studies.
