Sunday, February 3, 2013

Rooting for New Orleans: And Oil Paintings of the City from David Barton



I'm really not following football this season. But having the Super Bowl in New Orleans is a good reason to shine the light on my extremely talented painter friend, David Barton. A specialty of his is architectural oil paintings. He captures building details as though he was taking a photograph, but the pieces have the dimension of emotion and story that is particular to the medium of oils. The combination is very satisfying art.

David starts by photo research, for places he doesn't visit in person, or taking his own pictures of building that he does go to see. He went down to New Orleans in what turned out to be the year before Katrina to take pictures.

He created a series of New Orleans buildings (above), including the great St. Louis Cathedral at Jackson Place (below).

Barton: "It wasn't 'til I cropped the image, radically formatting it to the horizontal, that this painting worked for me."

Me to, since I'm the proud owner.

Here is more of his work from his website.  The jpegs really don't do justice the vibrancy of the art in person. Yay New Orleans! Yay David! And if I had to chose, I'd go with The Ravens because they named themselves after the Poe poem.




Red Door in the French Quarter, New Orleans



Soho, New York





Cooperstown Inn


Savannah Porch


African Series




2 comments:

dorki said...

Fantastic post M.A.! The David Barton pictures of the NOLA buildings are wonderful (always was an architecture geek). I checked out his website and sat bedazzled by his artistry until I hit his "Fat Tuesday" Installation Piece whereupon I cracked up. Candy bars versus Sim Fast and the candy bars win for being more healthy.

It figures, the old-time Snake Oil salesmen just changed the labels a bit.

Mapeel said...

Hi dorki. I'm glad you enjoyed David's work, except for the installation. All artists feel the need to stretch in different directions, which don't always resonate with their "fan base."