Flute, 4-3/4"x14", Oil, (SOLD!!)

PURCHASED BY COLLECTOR FROM RAGLEY, LOUISIANA

Many of you have expressed an interest in learning more about the long history of painting in order to better understand what you have collected. I’d like everyone to ponder the following notion, which happens to be the fundamental difference between what many define as “realism, hyper-realism, or photo-realism,” and “naturalism or natural realism.” My work is connected with “natural realism.” In hyper-photo realism the artist strives to replicate the photograph, which presents a facsimile of a moment in time. In “natural realism” the painter strives to represent the particular “ambience or mood” of an actual physical space before them, hence the element of time is in flux. We are part of this continuum. As humans we do not have the ability to see like machines. When we gaze at a motif a single object typically becomes the focus, and our peripheral vision becomes fuzzy and soft. This characteristic is the touchstone of most representational painting that preceded the 20th century.

In my recent painting of the flute seen above, I’m striving to represent not only the innate beauty of this icon of music, but also how we experience “time in flux as humans.”

-Hall Groat II, October 18, 2006