Todd Carpenter

"Still Imagined" Oil painting

2020

Todd Carpenter's (US based) "Truth as a Poetic Lie" is an oil painting that depicts a black and white landscape full of dense trees and foliage, blotted out by something reminiscent ...

Todd Carpenter's (US based) "Post Progress" is an oil painting that depicts a black and white vast landscape with telephone poles overrun with brush and dense foliage, and mountains in the distance Bio/artist statement: Todd Carpenter is a Los Angeles based artist who uses black and white paint to explore the perception of space and beauty. Carpenter's formal education is in science - he holds a MS in Neuroscience from UCSD and a BS in Psychobiology from UCLA - and he brings this background into service when making art. His paintings explore the mechanisms of perception and aesthetics, examining among other things how the depiction of light can impart realism and convey emotion. Like his paintings bridging art and science, Carpenter's career has similarly straddled the two fields, and he has taught subjects ranging from neuroscience and environmental science to photography and painting. Artist Statement As a painter, I am particularly interested in how the depiction of light contributes to our experience of paintings. Painting, as with any visual art, is obviously dependent on light. But painting can also have a more specific connection in that the accurate depiction of light is crucial for achieving realism. Realism in paintings largely arises from the portrayal of depth - perceiving a painting as being realistic is equivalent to seeing its subject as existing in more than just the two dimensions of the picture plane - and one of the mechanisms by which humans perceive depth is through lighting cues. Light creates features such as shading, shadow, and contrast that tell us about the three-dimensional arrangement of our surroundings, and artists often use these features to impart realism to paintings. Light also factors in to the emotional impact of paintings. The differential illumination of our surroundings can evoke different moods, as evidenced by the influence sunsets, candlelight, and darkness can have on us. Such effectssuggest that our perception of light could be tied to primitive instincts, with light signaling factors such as shelter, nightfall, and warmth, which were once crucial for survival. The depiction of light in...

Todd Carpenter's (US based) "Where no one Hears" is an oil painting that depicts a black and white landscape full of dense trees and foliage, with glittering sunlight peeking through...

Todd Carpenter's (US based) "Shores of Next Year" is an oil painting that depicts a black and white landscape of vast plains with a small river winding into the distance and swirling...

"Descending Towards Now," oil on wood painting by artist Todd Carpenter depicts a remote landscape of leafless trees being nourished by a running stream. Imagine this is a past route...

When a calm comes over you and things become clearer. 'When Our Soul Speaks' is that moment that we quiet our inner self and begin to see with clarity what we need and want in life....

A man made waterway winds it's way through a grouping of trees and brings with it all the fresh scents of October's fallen leaves and evergreens. This painting is painted around the ...