For a portrait artist, the difficulty lies in capturing single emotions, moods, and moments. On the living room walls of a Marion home are portraits made by a self taught artist, who lives there with his wife. He put together the faces of an American tap dancer, an actor a scientist, the composite between three famous comedians, the traditional cast members of a long running science fiction TV series, a former TV reporter, various rock stars, athletes and entertainers, and his friends for a single montage called "Faces". The process starts by capturing a frame from a video, from which he gets all sorts of expressions. The montage documents a year and a half of people who influenced him.
He also has individual portraits, of the lead singer of Babes in Toyland, a Russian gymnast, and a songwriter. Much of his work is in pencil, graphite and charcoal. He decided to add to his abilities by learning to use conte crayon and colored pencils. His first drawing with colored pencils is of himself and his wife, a native of Kobe, Japan, at their wedding. He mixed and matched American and Japanese wood block print styles. Building from their close up wedding photograph at City Hall in December 1996, he added both personal and Japanese symbolisms.
He could not leave out their three cats, which could not be present at the actual wedding. The face of one cat was turned into a Japanese opera mask, said to fend off evil spirits. In a position of good luck he decided to draw the second cat.
Kimonos are the outfit of the day for the couple in the drawing. He depicted his wife decorated in a flower called the kikyo, which is also her matriarchal symbol. In order to draw notice to the gingko tree, he drew it past the third cat, past the vertical blinds, outside the room. The gingko symbolizes longevity, and he saw one at the University of Iowa.
The 1997 drawing is the couple's first collaboration. He left his wife in charge of developing and assessing new ideas. She said it means a lot to them. Landscapes are his next target, of course incorporating the figures he loves to draw.
He has achieved popular recognition for four of his pieces in a group, with one as the cover, and he feels no loss in not having an exhibit. The book editor caught wind of his artwork from a staff member. The editor emailed him to praise his work for its color, shading, composition, combination of portraiture and architecture, intelligence, humor, and complexity. Whereas action heroes and rock stars were his primary subjects as a child, his present subjects are much more complex. Today, he can render exactly what he wants. He explains that his drawings are like photographs, in which the likeness is embellished by adding or changing things.
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