Fabric Still-life Paintings

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....

Oil on canvas Doug Newton’s hyper-real 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. Mr. Newton resides in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, NY. 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. But Newton adds something new to the genre. His paintings revel in the effortlessness of their illusionistic effect, celebrating the tension between the abstract quality of a brushstroke and the precise representational image it renders in the viewer’s eye. The reflections we often see on Newton’s canvases heighten this unapologetic presence of multiple materialities—real, perceived, and imagined. Unlike shadows that extend across surfaces, the reflections of Newton’s depicted chocolates and ribbons sink into something resembling a mirror. This murky reflective surface is at odds with the angle and the opacity of the main surface, i.e. the painted canvas itself. The doubling of the depicted objects through these spectral, distorted reflections draws attention to the fact that painting, too, is a (subjective) reflection of some form of reality, be it everyday...

Oil on canvas Doug Newton’s hyper-real paintings observe reality, explore translucency, reflections and luminosity, and dazzle the viewer with all the ways light can transform our pe...

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....