Uncategorized Archives - Page 9 of 33

January 7, 2020March 25, 2025

Hallie Plays Bach

Hallie Plays Bach
2019
Acrylic on Canvas
48″ w x 72” h

This portrait of cellist Hallie Marshall-Pridham was created from life as she performed J. S. Bach’s Cello Suites at my Fall 2019 Open Studios Exhibition.

January 7, 2020March 25, 2025

Marcus Shelby

Marcus Shelby
2009
Acrylic on Canvas
48″ w x 72” h

This portrait of bandleader, composer, arranger, bassist, educator, and activist, Marcus Shelby, was created working from life in my studio while Marcus practiced.

January 7, 2020March 25, 2025

Title: Jazz Ambassadors
Year: 2009
Medium: Pigment ink digital print with acrylic paint on canvas bonded to board
Height x Width (Inches): 29.5 x 38
Exhibited at the Jazz Heritage Center and the Embarcadero Conference Center, San Francisco

This painting honors the Jazz Ambassadors, jazz musicians sent around the world by the State Department to represent America in the ’50s and ’60s. The musicians featured in this artwork, clockwise from the upper left, are: Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughn, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong.

December 11, 2019December 11, 2019

Holiday Party Portraits, Connecticut

The portraits shown here were created at a private holiday party in Stamford, Connecticut. Each couple received digital files of their portraits and the cool replay video, plus an 8×10 framed print to take home.

Happy Holidays to the host and guests! Many thanks to Meagan for her help with set up, printing and tech:-)

December 10, 2019March 25, 2025

Book Sketch at Commonwealth Club
Brad Smith & Carol Ann Browne

This portrait was drawn as Microsoft President Brad Smith was in conversation on stage at the Commonwealth Club with journalist Molly Wood, Host and Senior Editor, “Marketplace Tech”, about the new book he co-wrote with Carol Ann Browne titled “Tools and Weapons: The Promise and Peril of the Digital Age”. As you can see I combine my book sketches with notes about what I am hearing. It was a fascinating and thought provoking conversation.

Addendum: A few days later, on December 8th, 2019, I left the signed book in the magazine pocket at seat 6B on the Alaska Airlines flight 627 from JFK to SFO (Alaska Airlines Lost Item Report Number 1473175). I followed up two days after losing it by visiting the Alaska Airlines Baggage Office in SFO, showing them a picture of the book cover. One of the Alaska agents, Theresa, disappeared for a minute and then, hey presto, reappeared with the book!!!:-)) Thank you Alaska staff!!

November 30, 2019March 25, 2025

Dipo

Portrait of Dipo created from life, acrylic and paper on canvas, 24″ x 30″, 2019

Dipo and I got chatting at Club Deluxe. As fellow North Londoners we had lots to share, though Dipo knows a London I never knew, me having left many years before him! As I painted Dipo I realized this portrait was about identity…Dipo had a strong identification with his family roots in Nigeria (hence the Nigerian flag represented in the painting), though was also a born Londoner (hence the Union Jack flag), and yet was now established in San Francisco (hence the Stars and Stripes US flag)! The piece of paper is some coding he wrote (touching up on an algorithm which was traversing a “tree”, which is a popular way in which data can be stored) created during a lunchtime engineering challenge which he did with his coding coworkers. Since this coding is related to “trees”, the parallel struck me in the wider context that trees also relate to family trees, branching from continent to continent, a tree searching for identity…

Dipo introduced me to “Afrobeat” music and dance.. a whole different world from swing music and swing dancing! We listened to the “This is Burna Boy” Spotify playlist as he sat and I painted.

Here are two detailed views of the acrylic painting:

Here is the iPad portrait, and the time-lapse replay video, of Dipo created from life using iPad Pro 12.9, Apple Pencil 2 and Procreate app:

This iPad portrait, which took about 30 minutes, was created in parallel with the acrylic on canvas portrait of Dipo I created, also from life, that was painted in two five hour sessions and shown at the top of this page.

November 29, 2019December 2, 2019

Painting in Bahrain

I created a series of live event digital paintings using the iPad Pro, Apple Pencil and Procreate app at the 18th Arab Businessmen and Investors Conference (ABIC 2019) in Manama, Kingdom of Bahrain, 12 – 13 November, 2019. The conference theme was 4th Industrial Revolution: Shaping The Future Digital Disruptions for a Better Tomorrow.

The first three paintings were created live at the Gala Reception in the Arcapita building on Bahrain Bay, projected on the ceiling of the foyer as I painted.

Bahrain Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI) Celebrates 80 Years
This painting depicts all the former chairmen and the current chairman of the Bahrain Chamber of Commerce and Industry since its foundation 80 years ago. The original and current location of the Chamber is also depicted.



Tribute to the Pearling History of Bahrain
You can learn more about the 4,000 year history of pearling in the Bahrain area at this link.


18th Arab Businessmen and Investors Conference


The final painting was created live on stage during the final conference session in the Ritz-Carlton, Bahrain, Conference Centre.




Bahrain – Past and Future
This painting includes the famous Tree of Life, ancient coins, modern architecture and skyline and the hope of the youth, the next generation.

Big thanks to the team at Pico Bahrain for their wonderful work and warm hospitality!

November 28, 2019March 25, 2025

Dipo – iPad Portrait

Dipo, 2019
Created from life using iPad Pro, Apple Pencil and the Procreate app.

Dipo and I got chatting at Club Deluxe. As fellow North Londoners we had lots to share, though Dipo knows a London I never knew, me having left many years before him! Dipo introduced me to “Afrobeat” music and dance.. a whole different world from swing music and swing dancing! We listened to the “This is Burna Boy” Spotify playlist as he sat and I painted. Click here to see the acrylic painting I made of him.

November 22, 2019December 19, 2019

Palo Alto Tree Lighting 2019

This is the painting I created at the 2019 City of Palo Alto Tree Lighting on Lytton Plaza in downtown Palo Alto, California. I used an iPad Pro 12.9 (3rd Gen), Apple Pencil 2 and the Procreate app. My iPad screen was displayed on a large 80″ LED screen that everyone could enjoy watching. The painting took about one and a half hours and was created from scratch at the event, based on direct observation. Several onlookers commented that this was one of the coolest things they’d seen!

Big thanks to Erin and the City of Palo Alto and everyone who worked behind the scenes at the event!

November 15, 2019March 25, 2025

Figure Drawings with Traditional Media

Behind all my art is observation and gesture – the expression of what I see in rapid, loose marks that flow directly from direct intense observation of a subject. My love of gesture was honed in the short warm-up poses of the figure drawing sessions that I attended at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford University, from 1979 to 1982 (whilst studying for my degree at Pembroke College). Life drawing (drawing the figure from life) has been a part of my art practice ever since. The short gestural “warm-up” poses are frequently the most dynamic and I always loved the challenge of capturing the essence of what I saw in a few quick marks on the paper. It is many years of gestural drawing from life that have enabled me to do what I do as a live event painter. Here are a few examples of my life drawings.

Carla, 33″ x 23″, 2017