Ken Orton

Ken Orton, "Patent Image", 40x60 Photorealist Glass Jar Still Life Oil Painting

2023

Ken Orton's "Mandrake" is a 54x36 original oil painting on canvas. This painting depicts a still life setting featuring multiple antique bottles and jars. The bottles range in size, color and shape, the most prominent of is Presto jar. Light from the background adds depth and interest to the composition, and the warm orange tones shining through the foreground glass compliments the subtle soft blues and greens within the clear glass. The artist chooses to paint larger than life still lives, cropping in closely and creating a fish-eye lens effect for more impact. Every detail from the reflections on the table, to the illusion of the raised letters on the bottles, is painted masterfully. About the artist: Ken Orton has dedicated his life to painting. His childhood was spent drawing the urban, industrial surroundings of Birmingham, England. At the Birmingham and then Manchester Colleges of Art he studied Art Education and after six years teaching in England accepted an offer to head the arts program at the Joan Miro Centro de Arte of the Baleares International School in Mallorca, Spain. For the next twenty years he would introduce the concepts of pictorial composition, color theory and draftsmanship to his students. Many of these students would go on to achieve great success in the many branches of the arts, architecture and music and remain close friends with their teacher to this day. An integral part of Orton’s perspective training for his students was the study of the ellipse. He often used glass cylinders to demonstrate how the perceived ellipses generated by variations in the circle's relationship to the eye-line could be used as a powerful tool in creating the appearance of a third dimension on a two dimensional surface. Later, after he had moved to America in 1999, he discovered a treasure trove of antique mason jars...

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Doug Newton’s hyper-real oil paintings observe reality, explore translucency, reflections and luminosity, and dazzle the viewer with all the ways light can transform our perceptions. His subject matter concentrates on still lives of food, toys, candy and household objects. In addition to many group shows across the country, Mr. Newton’s show, “HARD CANDY and other confections” represents his fifth solo exhibition. His paintings have been collected in numerous private collections. Dr. Sonia Coman writes in her essay, Doug Newton’s hard candy: the confection of painting Doug Newton’s paintings are about… painting. The hyperrealist technique of trompe l’oeil or “trick the eye” is knowingly playful. It simultaneously calls attention to the illusion of a different material—for example, translucent candy wrappers—and the reality of the layers of paint, masterfully applied to the canvas. In that, Newton’s paintings pay homage to an esteemed series of trompe l’oeil masters, from Inquisition-era Spanish painter Francisco de Zurbarán to Gilded-Age American painter William Michael Harnett...