REStevensArt - Newsletter #137! - 05/05/15 www.yesitsapainting.com

First of all I want to welcome all the new folks to the community! Thanks for checking out my artwork in Oklahoma City and Brookside (Kansas City, Mo.) these past couple-o-weeks where I exhibited with two completely different bodies of work!! :-D

Horse In Motion

To help alleviate some potential confusion, I've included images from both my reknown photo-realism work shown at Brookside in Kansas City (right) and from my new award winning Drizzlescapes on display in Oklahoma City (below).

(above) - "Horse In Motion" is a 55" long by 15" tall, three layered Drizzlescape mixed-media piece that explores Muybridge's photographic experiment from 1878. The horse's owner wanted to prove that at certain points in a horse's gallop, all four legs were off the ground, a claim widely disputed at the time. Muybridge set up a series of cameras to capture the horse as it ran by and this 'technology' parallelled the birth of motion picture film. Coincidentally, a similar arrangement of equipment would be employed 120 years later to create the "bullet time" effect seen in The Matrix starring Keanu Reeves.

Brookside
Oklahoma City

The original inspiration for the whole Drizzlescape concept came to me when I saw a ginormous, very loose but graphical image of a ship under construction in a shipyard in a gallery in Palm Springs 10 years ago. As I began dipping my toe in the process of drizzling paint, I kept finding myself wandering through various landscapes and then later the typewriter/raven series and so on. But I always kept thinking about that ship and the whole industrial aesthetic.

(below) "Oil Field" - 12"x36" three layered Drizzlescape.

Then right before hitting the road this spring it occurred to me that I was headed for Texas and Oklahoma and I thought of the oil fields I see during my travels. Per usual, the aspect of this that you can only see in person is the fact that the pumps and derricks are separated onto three different layers.

Oil Field

Ghosts of Civil War

(above) "Ghosts of the Civil War" - Many of you saw my Lincoln series I revealed last month in Newsletter #134 where I first explored the American Civil War theme and the use of the translucent enamel to create the grey ghost-like images on the middle layer. I anxiously applied those elements to their own piece here - a personal favorite!

Upcoming Shows

Click HERE to see the 2015 show schedule

For those of you in Kansas City, take note that I'll be showing these Drizzlescapes at the Prairie Village show in just a few weeks! :-D

(below) "Green Apple Splash" - 16"X24" acrylic on canvas! I've been building on this series since 2006 when I dropped an apple into an aquarium 220 times, photographing it at 1/4000th of a second to try and capture the right moment, which I've rendered in various ways since then.

green apple splash

For now, I am off to St Louis for the Laumeier show and to visit my family as I do every year. Thanks for your time and for your interest in my art and let me know what feedback or questions you have!

Roderick E. Stevens II

Artist/Filmmaker

roderick@restevensart.com

May 2015

Laumeier

Prairie Village

Kansas City, Ks.
May 29, 30, 31