Jeremy Sutton

Expressive Contemporary Portraiture

 

“I am inspired by the masterful use of color of Claude Monet, Henri Matisse and André Derian; by the fearless intensity of experimentation and the simplicity of line of of Pablo Picasso; by the expressive brush work of Vincent van Gogh, John Singer Sargent and Joaquin Sorolla; the strong tonal values of Rembrandt; and by the colorful joie de vivre of LeRoy Neiman.” ~ Jeremy Sutton

My journey of making art started with drawing from imagination as a child which developed into a passion for drawing portraits and figures from life. I have experimented with many media along the way, including oil, acrylic, gouache, ink, pastel, charcoal, pencil, etching, engraving, lithography, photography, screen-printing, wood carving, clay modeling, and digital painting. I now cross between these media, mixing one with another: painting on sculptures, collaging on digital prints, drawing on paintings, and so forth.

The beginning of my art journey was monochromatic. I loved line. My lines broadened into shading.

Color was the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that excited and yet scared me. Eventually, in my mid-twenties, I dove in head first, and started a dance of color, pushing and prodding, seeing how far I could push my colors in a way that enhanced, energized and magnified the emotional expressiveness, visual impact and clarity of my art. This experiment with color is ongoing to this day. It is part of what attracts me so much to the Impressionists and, even more so, to the Fauvists.

I love people! This reflects itself in my choice of subjects and in the way I manifest my need to make art. Besides making art in my studio, I love to draw from life wherever I go and to perform live painting and share my raw creative process in action in real time with an audience. I like to share the vulnerability and risk entailed with making a portrait in front of others. You can see this in the way I do my conference and seminar presentations and tableau vivant performances. This is also part and parcel of my teaching, something else I love to do. Over the last twenty five years I taught in a wide range of locations and establishments, from the Academy Art art school to the American Film Institute.

I love to dance! This reflects itself in my approach to painting. My dance is inspired by the music and my dance partner, my painting by my subject and my media. I respond to both, spontaneously improvising in the moment to what unfolds. As with dance, there is an underlying structure, intentionality and goal in my painting: portraying the essence of my subjects in a simple, powerful, beautiful way.

I've drawn since I was three and drawing still informs my art to this day. Whilst earning a degree in Physics from Pembroke College, Oxford University, I studied life drawing, sculpture and etching at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. I then studied lithography and life drawing at the Vrije Academie, The Hague, The Netherlands, before moving to the heart of Silicon Valley, California, in 1988. My first major one-man show was in 1989. It was a series of colorful pastel portraits at the newly opened Gordon Biersch Restaurant in Palo Alto, California. The portraits were drawn from life of people I met in the neighborhood. I was first introduced to using the computer as a fine art tool in 1991, and have been exploring the digital medium ever since. In 1994 I transitioned from selling superconducting magnets as a career to becoming a full time artist. I work across multiple media, blending the beauty, quality and texture of traditional media with the spontaneity, power and versatility of digital art tools in creating expressive contemporary portraiture.

For more biographical details please see my curriculum vitae.

All artwork shown is copyright © Jeremy Sutton
No reproduction or usage of artwork allowed without written permission of the artist.
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http://www.jeremysutton.com
jeremy@jeremysutton.com
415.641.1221