"Under the Influence of Tamayo" Painting

With this painting I finally solved a problem that I have been trying to figure out since 2010 when I first encountered the work of modern Mexican master, Rufino Tamayo. I am a late comer to the work of Tamayo. Like many artists I am at times unconsciously enmeshed in the bias that tends to view modern art generally within the confines of European and American modernism. This limits one's exposure to artists outside of these paradigms. Additionally, and more importantly I think, is the fact that Tamayo’s use of subtle color in his later works was so sophisticated that, prior to encountering his work in 2010, I was not ready to appreciate its complexity or integrate its potential influence. As I was sitting one morning in my usual ”coffee meditation” pondering this hard won Tamayo inspired success with paint, I thought it was worth creating a blogpost about because it’s an important topic in painting. The topic is tonal painting. Tonal painting, as I practice it, is the predominant use of one color throughout an entire work using only black, white and yellow to create multiple and varied tonal variations of a singular color. Great tonal painting requires the creation of many difficult to achieve contrasting tones in order to create the eye popping visual interest and complexity that is generally created with a broad color palette. Vibrant, varied color generally characterized much my work prior to 2010. Tamayo’s paintings awakened in me a desire to paint in more subtle, tonal color palettes that are less ”sugary” than I was accustomed to. It ultimately inspired me to transcend my reliance on what I had begun to think of as visual ”eye candy”. I had no idea how difficult this would be to achieve or how many years it would take…

Painting:Acrylic on Canvas

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:48 W x 48 H x 2 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.