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"Staccato"
28 x 28"
Gallery Wraped Giclee Canvas, 2014
Red-Winged Blackbirds
Artist Proofs $595- available directly from the artist.
How to buy
A very limited edition of thirty signed and numbered giclee canvases are available from The Greenwich Workshop for $595 each. Follow the link below to view or purchase.
Denman Reproductions from GW
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Staccato began with an uncharacteristic stroke of spontaneity. Of course, there is always an element of the unexpected in every art piece, but I typically begin every painting, especially one of this size, with a thorough, full scale study long before I ever touch brush to board. In this case, frustrated with the slow pace of several other projects and uncertain what to do with a 36 x 36” cradled board I’d miss-ordered, I resolved to create a composition with as little self-editing as possible. I’d given myself a similar challenge several years earlier with the so-called “Easy and Fun” series (small pieces in which I began abstract paintings and then chose subjects after the fact to work into them), so this was not entirely unfamiliar territory. I’d recently taken some good reference photos of red-winged blackbirds at a local nature area in Antioch, the Contra Loma Reservoir, and inspiration struck. Of course I did a fairly complex pre-drawing of the bird in the lower right to work out any anatomical issues, but otherwise the composition developed in a fluid and organic matter that was at once extremely pleasurable and far more challenging than my usual mode of working. The large, repeated silhouette of the foreground bird speaks to my current interest in both pattern and repetition. The improvisational treatment of the birds in flight and the Jackson Pollock-like splatters create a sense of movement, a difficult task within a square format that usually would lend itself more to a static image than a narrative. The deliberately awkward (dare I say “Degas-esque”?) cropping of the female bird in flight contributes to this sense of sudden motion. The careful balance of positive and negative space, much like the actual birds’ song in flight, takes on a musical quality that gives the painting its title, “Staccato.”
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Welcome to the online home for artwork by Andrew Denman, a California –based, internationally recognized, award-winning contemporary wildlife artist. Denman primarily paints wildlife and animal subjects in a unique, hallmark style combining hyper-realism with stylization and abstraction. His dynamic and original acrylic paintings can be found in museum collections on two continents and in numerous private collections in the USA and abroad. His clear voice, unique vision, and commitment to constant artistic experimentation have positioned him on the forefront of an artistic vanguard of the best contemporary wildlife and animal painters working today.
All artwork and text featured on this page and throughout this website is protected by international copyright laws. Use of these images or text is prohibited without the express written permission of Andrew Denman.
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