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Re: Another question.
I love and most respect the work of Steve Hawley. A current working artist.
He combines realism and abstract, crossing schools as he pleases.
He mixes more traditional symbolism with his own to great effect.
Spends up to a year on master works, going down to a one hair brush for
detailing.
Which is also why he is largely unknown in an age where quick output is
everything.
One of my fave's is a nude of his wife called *Barbara Near the Window*. She
stands, with back to us, in a small room, looking out a window. Her hands
are positioned, one somewhat clenched on the windowsill, the other open
palmed against the inner wall. The clenched hand signifies she is
interested, curious and wanting to meet the outside world yet tentative, not
fully open and free there like within her room. The open palm on the inner
wall signifies the comfort she finds within her inner sanctuary. G. K.
Chesterton comes to mind with his idea of our need for the familiar to ground
us when stepping into the unfamiliar. On the windowsill is a pomegranate and
a sea shell symbolizing fertility (one can tell she is in the early stages of
pregnancy) and our need of a home for protection.
On the wall in the room is a large canvas with only a couple very rough
etchings on it. Minimal though they are everything there relates more of his
wife's story. A bit of a cross not quite finished represents her faith still
forming. On the board are two snapshots (a common signature of his) randomly
placed, complete with lifelike tabs of tape holding them in place. One of
her son, another of her and a friend. (1)
Anyway, there's a lot more to the painting but I figure 2 paragraphs on one
painting is more than anyone probably wants to read so I'll stop there.
Unfortunately there isn't much representation of his work on the web that
I've found. The Sherry French Galleries has a few of his paintings but none
of them are even close a representation of his best work:
http://www.sherryfrenchgallery.com/hawley.html
There is a nice one of his wife Barbara at:
http://www.treesplace.com/01HumanFigure.html
kevin
and now I'll shed my usual humor quote for an appropriate artsy one:
The primal artistic act was God's creation of the universe out of chaos,
shaping the formless into form; and every artist since, on a lesser scale,
has sought to imitate him.
-- Lawrence Perrine
(1) some of these observations come from Image Journal where I first found
out about Steve. Hell, I'm not that observant!
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