Explore the emotional and human connections behind John Rowe’s figurative art, with a bonus painting demonstration showing his process from initial inspiration to finished piece.
Figurative Art Interpretations
Figurative Art By John Rowe
Human perception is the process of interrupting and making sense of the world around us. My current work features people I know well or have recently met who inspire me to create a painting that tells their story. I believe the artist’s own experiences become entangled with the subjects no matter how we try to be objective.
Each person’s story is unique and at the same time, because of our shared humanity, each story can deal with situations and emotions we all share. Love for a child, traumatic events, overcoming adversity, the end of life, or the need to self reflect are but four such stories.
Before a soothing solid background in “Her Gift” (above), the viewer is presented with two subjects: a brown and dark-haired mother tenderly grasping a pale-skinned infant. Albeit simple in subject, the piece bursts with emotional and interpretive potential.
The piece has a very special meaning to me. It’s a painting of my wife and our foster child — who has since been returned to his family. I watched my wife over months give her love, strength, and protection to this child. Tears, joy, fierce devotion, sleepless nights — all while knowing she might never see him again but that he would carry the sense of being loved unconditionally into his future life and it would become a foundation for him.
We had taken classes to learn about how those first relationships can lay a groundwork for who children become. I wanted the differences in hair, skin, and ethnicity to be apparent and for the emotional connection between her and the baby to be strong enough to make that completely irrelevant. I attempted to leave the viewer with the feeling of profound love that only a mother can have for her child.
Painting Stephanie
During my career I created many paintings for Disney Fine Art. One painting was about Ariel in the little mermaid story, painted in my realistic style. Disney allowed me the freedom to interpret Ariel as a real girl and the bad creatures as real animals and much more sinister than in the movie.
When this piece was released I received a message from a young woman who found me on Facebook and who had just had this painting copied as a tattoo onto her leg! I was so flattered and amazed, I asked her to model for me. The day of our photo shoot in my studio she explained how my painting of “a girl dreaming of a better life rising above danger and violence “was her life.” When her parents were killed in gang violence before she was five, she was then raised by relatives and later “bad people,” yet she managed to put herself through college and escape that life even
while friends and family around her were unable to. I felt honored she chose my painting to represent her life story. Stephanie and I have stayed in touch ever since.
Crushed Blossom
A year or more after I finished the first painting of Stephanie we scheduled a model shoot together. Days before our appointment she encountered the bad man who had hurt her as a child at a wedding. Overwhelmed by memories and pain she cut herself on her inner thigh. I asked her if I might include this in a painting and she agreed. I wanted her grace, achievements, and beauty to be the focus of my work. I included the cuts but down-played them, just as I see her achievements in life to be more powerful than her setbacks. This painting was included into an art show called the Human Condition and included in the Codex mission to the moon.
Broken
While traveling in India we saw many incredible South Indian Temples. In front of one temple was this striking man who was asking for alms, or charity, to live. I gave him some money and he agreed to let me photograph him. My six-year-old son asked me why I was talking to him, and then asked, “Daddy why is he broken?” A difficult question without an answer but a title that stuck in my mind. Upon returning to my Los Angeles studio I immediately began this painting of him.
In the Hindu culture there are different stages of life. Childhood is for study and learning. Adulthood is the time to acquire material wealth and raise a family. Old age is the time to release all your worldly possessions rely on the alms of others to survive and as you prepare for your next life.
As artists, we learn many tricks to bring life and sparkle to an eye, but my subject’s eyes were turned inward, not to life outside himself but towards his next life. I kept those thoughts of his life and present circumstances in my mind during the painting of this work.
Searching
My son was taking swimming lessons at one of the local community pools and so several times a week I would wait for him and observe the other parents around the pool doing the same. I was struck by one mom who always sat alone and never talked to the other parents but seemed so calm. When a gallery I work with asked me for a painting with this type of feeling I gathered my courage and asked this complete stranger if she would model for me. She immediately said yes and asked me if I had a theme in mind. I told her it would be of a woman praying or meditating and she said, “Yes, that is me, that is my aspiration. I am going to a temple retreat soon to meditate in silence for a week.” Sometimes things come together in ways you can’t imagine.
Figurative Art Demo
Photography and Composition
I almost always work from my own photos. In any given photoshoot I take 200 or more photos. I also carry a camera with me when I travel. To compose a painting I first make quick thumbnail sketches on paper. I next begin recreating these ideas like a collage in Photoshop, combining digitally painting /drawing using a Wacom tablet, sometimes Lightroom, until I get a composition I like. I may make ten things I like and twenty I throw away. Sometimes I change the reference so much I can’t recognize it. Years ago I would have had piles of tracing paper under my drawing table, and now I have dozens of layered files on my hard drive.
Preparing the Surface
I applied three layers of oil ground to stretched linen, sanding in between coats. Next, I tinted the surface with mineral spirits and mostly transparent red oxide using a rag for texture. I wanted some underlying movement to counter my intention to make this painting very calm.
The Main Focus
I printed the comp on paper in black and white to the size of the painting, rubbed white chalk on the back and transferred it to the linen surface. The chalk dissolves as soon as oil paint touches it, which is great because you don’t have a hard line on the surface to cover up, but tricky because you can easily erase it with the brush of your hand. I like the way oil paint and oil ground go together and don’t want any fixative between them. I am familiar with the image by this time and can drawback whatever parts rub off.
I painted the main figure to 60/80%. Establishing the feel of the painting early and knowing where my focal point is helps me stay focused during the weeks ahead.
I like to go step by step painting the parts I want the viewer to see first, then second etc, etc. Each area is important, but at this point I am understanding the elements in the work. Everything is 60% to 80% finished with no true blacks or whites; mostly middle values and not a lot of contrast.
Finally the surface is covered with paint! Let the fun begin! It is time to make decisions about finishing. She is too warm and orange. The temple light and dark patterns are too uniform and boring. It needs drama. She is not breathing in this environment yet. I have already begun making the figure bluer/cooler to stand out from the background. Ordinarily, warms come forward and blues retreat but in this case I reversed that because I thought cooler colors would quiet her emotions.
By the final stage of this figurative art painting, I’ve glazed over her skin several times, adding more cool tones and often painting into the glaze with non-thinned oil paint. At this point, I also began glazing everywhere with lights and darks to draw out or push back certain areas. Now I finally allow the introduction of black pure white paint in the flame and areas of her drapery. I’m not worried if I cover areas of shadow to almost disappear. I hope years from now my collector finds something hidden in those shadows they didn’t see before. I added a little rainbow to the oil lamp and did all the things I’ve been dying to do since the beginning.
For More Figurative Art Inspiration
To view more works, including contemporary portrait paintings, visit John-Rowe.com.
Browse more articles on figurative art and artists here at RealismToday.com.
