Paying Homage

Australian artist Lance Ross honors the techniques of the past masters with compositions featuring their likeness

With so much art around these days that I describe as smudges, splodges and smears taking up a lot of the art sales market, it is now a greater challenge to create appealing traditional works of art for patrons to hang on their walls. It is a great pleasure to work with long-proven art values, ideas and developing skills. Going back some years, all one had to do was paint a landscape competently and it would sell. That would be plein air or from photographs. Edgar Degas said, “Painting is easy when you don’t know how, but very difficult when you do.” The more challenging, the greater the satisfaction upon completion.

During an opening night of an art show where I sold my entry, which was a large sailing yacht plunging through rough water and the crew receiving a good shower, a director said, “But you did it from a photograph.” I refrained from answering with, “Yes, I was not able to have them pose for me,” nor did I point out that nearly every other entry was also painted from a photograph. Having spent a major part of my past life illustrating for advertisements combined with my natural bent, I just cannot stop myself aiming at realism. So, how do I achieve that by showing appreciation for more creative techniques and prove my work was not just slavish copying of photographs?