Liz Gembarski - Acrylic Artist

Silver Bowl by: Liz Gembarski

price $1100, can be purchased at Atlantic Artisans

Artists Statement

I have been studying traditional still life painting influenced by the style of photorealism. My approach for this body of work began with several photo shoots from which I chose my subject matter. The subjects are ordinary reflective objects that, when arranged under strong sunlight, cast bold shadows and clear reflections of the atmosphere around them.

These photos are then slightly adjusted digitally in order to enhance the visual characteristics and allow for optimal information for reference.
Each photo is analyzed and studied by breaking the picture up into individual shapes. These shapes are perceived as realistic or photographic when fit together as a whole.

I use the photograph as means for study, to analyze relationships between light and color and how color is used to suggest three dimensionality and realistic form. I am especially interested in the way silver and glass matter distorts, transmits and reflects light and color. This distortion and transmission of light is rendered through complex arrangements of simplified shapes. Painting realistically is less about style and rendering, but the attitude of mind that takes the visual world and reacts to it analytically in paint.

Each painting is a representation of a photograph brought to a large canvas, presenting ordinary subjects on a dramatic scale. The images are not mistakenly real because the original photograph –used prior to digital enhancement– is less rich in color, contrast, and brightness.

Using the computer to make photographic alterations creates images that are dramatically bolder and more colorfully brilliant. This aid of technology helps my painted works to be “ideally” representational rather then “truly real” or photographic. While the photographic reference is real and I depict these subjects realistically, the painting is not photographic but idealized; an illusion of an ideal world.

Much of my study involved research on master contemporary realists. I used this research to examine and explore the possibilities of realistic painting. Photorealist Ralph Goings and contemporary realist Mary Pratt were most influential in my observations. “My paintings are about light, about the way things look in their environment and especially how they look painted. Form color and space are at the whim of reality, their discovery and organization is the assignment of the realist painter” – Ralph Goings.

With the completion of each piece I develop a new approach and attitude for establishing new goals for future work. I understand that each painting brings on new challenges and allows for growth in my painting approach. As one question is answered in one particular work, I am confronted to react to a different problem in the next. It is this constant developmental process that will expand my growth as a painter.

Liz Gembarski