Pastel Nude by Byron Randall

About the Item

Playful nude created with pastels on paper. This sketch-like drawing shows a woman wearing dramatic blue eyeshadow and full red lipstick while lying naked in a meadow. Byron Randall (October 23, 1918 – August 11, 1999) was an American West Coast artist, well known for his expressionist paintings and printmaking. He explored different techniques and styles, including a vivid use of color and line. Born in Tacoma, Washington, in 1918, Byron Randall was raised in Salem, Oregon, where he worked as a waiter, harvest hand, boxer, and cook for the Marion County jail to finance his art career. Byron Randall died in August 1999 at the age of 80. Randall was an expressionist whose art was strongly responsive to the physical environment. Of his paintings, he wrote: "the look of them might have been different if I'd grown up anywhere but in Oregon. Brilliant sunlight nursing the green valleys after a long rainy winter . . . there's a powerful bit of environment that would show in a man's work all his life. I've seen that creative communication has a vitality all its own. It's not a refuge from life, but an intensification. It's the practice of humanity. In painting, I think the approach that best affirms life is expressionism, and that's why I became and am now an expressionist." A figurative artist, Randall experimented with abstraction in the 1940s, and again in the 1980s. Throughout his career, he produced still-life, portraits, nudes, and landscapes, in oil, watercolor, gouache, pastel, and print.

Dimensions:

Height: 19 in (48.26 cm)Width: 22 in (55.88 cm)Depth: 1.5 in (3.81 cm)

Style:

Mid-Century Modern (Of the Period)

Materials and Techniques:

Paper,Wood

Place of Origin:

United States

Period:

1980-1989

Date of Manufacture:

1987