Clare Fallon
Painting 1
October
Daniel Sprick was born in Arkansas in 1953. Daniel went all over the place for school. He attended Mesa College in Grand Junction, CO in 1973. Then Ramon Froman School of Art. Followed by the National Academy of Design in New York, NY in 1976 and finally got his BA at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, CO in 1978. Now he currently lives in Denver working in his apartment studio. He most recent work focuses on the diversity of people. His subjects included the homeless, obese, skinny, ill, black, white, asian, pretty, ugly, old, and young. Each painting was pushed to the extreme with Sprick’s skill in realism. However this series is different from his previous realism paintings. Sprick’s portrait series is an exploration of abstract realism. All the faces are extremely realistic and immediately draw the eye in but as the eye moves farther away from the face, places like the hair and body are noticeably abstract and are more suggestive. Daniel Sprick’s artwork is wonderfully technical and the subject matter is strong as well.
I chose Daniel because he’s the first professional and nationally known artist I met. He and his art left an impression on me. He was incredibly nice and not snotty like the rich art buyers there to meet him for their own street cred. He was kind of shy and spoke more through his art than he did in his talk. I, being a fan of realism ever since kindergarten drawing animals that started with whatever letter we were learning about that day, was amazed seeing someone who had the skills like a renaissance artist. It inspired me to try to improve as much as possible in technique. I hope now I can start experimenting with suggesting shape rather than creating the whole.
He currently has work in the Denver Art museum.
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| Katie and Lulu 2012 oil on bored 20x16 |
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| Ketsla 2013 oil on bored 26x18 |
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| Chad 2010 oil on bored 20x16 |
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| Tho 2012 oil on bored 12x16 |
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| Jared 2011 oil on bored 30x20 |
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| Ketsla in profile 2013 Oil on canvas on bored 22x28 Photos from http://www.danielsprick.com/portfolio2.asp?ID=76 |
These are just beautiful! I like the choices you made in pulling out examples, especially because when you look at them all together you see such incredible skill in capturing the depths of all the different skin tones.
ReplyDeleteThe variety in strokes in the paintings gives them such a nice wispy look, and the contrast between realism and abstract is very nice.
ReplyDeleteThese are quite beautiful and expressive portraits. I like to see the hyperrealism in the faces and then part of the figure is more gestural. I question however if the viewer gaze at these portraits is one of reverence for the figure or one of objectifying the beautify of young models? This is an ongoing question with figures that are painted this way in the art world. We are always considering if the painter is coming from a Western view or one that is outside the cannon of painting history we hear about so much.
ReplyDeleteIn this body of work he also painted the figures of an obese women, a lesbian couple, a mentally ill person, and a cancer patient with no hair. The point of the work was to show all types of people. I just chose my favorite compositional pieces to share.
DeleteAlong with a homeless man, and an old man too. I forgot about those.
DeleteI really enjoy the uniqueness these portraits bring to themselves. Its something you don't see too often and I think that it is super creative.
ReplyDeleteThe artwork that is displayed has a static feel to me, something real yet fairy tale.
ReplyDeleteThe realism this is incredibly, I really like their style and choice of lighting. I wonder if they used a lighting studio and painted from life or if they used a reference.
ReplyDelete