21 Artists Under 31

I am happy to announce that my work can be seen in the current September issue of Southwest Art Magazine's annual emerging artists issue! You can find an image of my work along with a profile about me on page 93, in the section titled "21 Artists Under 31".

21 Under 31

Bonnie Gangelhoff

" This year marks the tenth anniversary of our popular annual spotlight on emerging artists. In celebration, we conducted our biggest search for talent to date, inviting all artists under 31 across the country to enter the contest. The entries we received were truly impressive, and our editors spent many days narrowing them down to just 21 winners—first, second, and third places, and 18 honorable mentions. Some of the artists you’ll meet on the following pages have already won awards and have gallery representation; others are just starting out. All of them are talented artists who, we believe, are on track for promising careers in the art world."

It's such an honor to be included in this list. I hope you all enjoy the article. Check it out -- here's the link:

http://www.southwestart.com/article/1725

Primed and Ready

Craft plays an important role in the conception of my work. Paintings are made to be appreciated in the third dimension. They are objects, so the I have to build them - and they have to last.

Pictured here is the twill weave Belgian linen I'm using to make two new fairly large paintings. (special thanks to Eric Silver, at Blue Ridge Artist Materials, who procured this high grade linen for me. He's wonderful to work with and a great paint-maker). The twill weave is especially resistant to humidity due to to its weave. Because the twill is woven in different directions it doesn't pull in any one direction causing warping (of course you have to stretch it properly to preserve this trait). The size and nature of the weave play an important visual role in the final piece. As such, I've found linen to have far more charisma than the mechanical and monotonous alternative, cotton duck. Linen is a tough fabric made from the very the flax plant that linseed oil comes from. Maybe a bit odd, but I think it also smells delicious... a treat for the senses.

I built these stretcher bars from scratch... one of the benefits of little knowhow and a good wood shop. When making panels I'll usually work with a baltic birch ply, and add pine cross-pieces to the back. The size of these particular pieces demanded a thicker wood stock, which made for a handsome final product. Their weight and their presence are quite substantial - denoting the quality and care that went into them.

The canvas awaits the first coat of rabbit skin glue (RSG). I usually use Doak's RSG to size the canvas, but lately I've been working with a neutral pH, PVA (polyvinyl acetate) size by Linenco. It's not as as hygroscopic as rabbit skin glue but is fully reversible with water, making it a good conservational product. It's easier to completely isolate the canvas with the PVA, however it's not as elegant a material as rabbit skin glue. Doak, described PVA to my wife and I as being "a craft glue for lazy art teachers." ; D It does resemble Elmer's Glue, but I still think Linenco's PVA size is a good product. The RSG will glide on more smoothly, but you must be diligent about covering every in inch. When using RSG I use two coats (sometimes three) and lightly sand in between layers, making sure to keep each layer thin.

After the size has dried, it's time for the lead ground. A good lead ground is tough to find, particularly with the limited options most large paint companies offer. Certain characteristics I look for in a ground; good adhesion, and just the right absorbency. After trying many different oil primers that were either too chalky and dry, or disturbingly slick, I have found something that works well for me. I use Natural Pigment's Lead Oil Ground #1. To my surprise this ground had excellent leveling properties making it a pleasure to apply over the large canvases. I didn't need to 'chase' after or modulate unwanted texture - I simply watched as it melted away. Of course, this effect is subtle, and every precaution should first be observed to achieved your desired surface. I used a large window wiper to apply the ground, being absolutely sure to keep the layers as thin as possible. My final surface was smooth, yet retained some of the weave of the linen. What texture there was, from the oil ground itself, was delicate and desired.

Aside from making it yourself, there are only a handful of experienced color men out there who provide exceedingly exceptional materials - George O'Hanlon, and his line of artists products (Natural Pigments, Rublev Artist Colors) is for sure one of them. He is one of many great craftsman I've had the pleasure of knowing, and has helped me towards a deeper understanding of the craft.

Touching up the sides of the canvas with a small brush. 2-3 thin coats did the trick. The surface needed no sanding. There are ways to sand oil lead primer on unsupported canvas ( that is canvas on stretcher bars, not supported by panel) but they are difficult and very involved - especially for pieces this size.

Due to some hot weather, the last layer of primer cured quickly (3 days). The canvas on the left is 4'x6' and one on the right is 5'x5'.

Making art involves both thinking and doing. The size, weight, and character of the final art object - the materials themselves - contribute in communicating the overall idea. How you say something is a part of what you are saying; one informs the other and ultimately effects the final piece. The materials I choose to work with are as important to me as ingredients and spices might be to a chef. Or the way a composer benefits from knowing the capabilities of an instrument, and further benefits from knowing abilities of the musicians who will play the instrument.

The absorbency of the ground determines the way a brushstroke might slide, or chatter. The weave of the canvas might add or detract from the spacial qualities of the surface. Even the level of gloss in the paint is effected by my choice of substrate. I don't try to re-construct historical methods for their own sake; I do, however, strive to be sensitive to my materials. When building anything, there are principals at work that should be acknowledged and exploited. There really is no clean separation between the craft of painting and the 'art' of it. From the very first nail, to the very last brushstroke, I try to consider the overall concept of my paintings. The smells and textures of so many rich art materials is lovely in and of itself; however, their real value for me lies what they ultimately become in a painting.

I hope to finish these paintings in time the Fairhaven Mausoleum show this November, and the upcoming 2009 California Art Club Gold Medal Exhibition.

Interview Part 3 of 3 -- Competition feature in The Artist's Magazine Julio Reyes - 2008

This is a copy of an interview conducted by The Artist’s Magazine in 2008 for their December issue in the section titled, The Best Art of 2008. My response to each question pertained specifically to my drawing, The Northern Girl, but also sheds light on some of my other works in this series.

Part 3 of 3

Empire (crop)

Question 7: Were there any surprises or difficulties along the way as you painted this work? What was your favorite part?

“A work grows as it will and sometimes confronts its author as an independent, even alien, creation.” -Sigmund Freud

There’s something thrilling about sensing that initial spark of life in a painting or a sculpture. It's not guaranteed to happen with every piece. Here I’m not speaking of ‘trompe l’oeil’ or even a convincing 3-dimensional effect; but something more dynamic and elemental. In ‘Northern Girl’ I could feel that silver light on those wires. I began to see color in those rosy cheeks; and I could hear the dry rustling of that white corduroy jacket. Thinking like this prevents me from getting too hung up on literal details. It allows me the flexibility to draw more freely and intuitively. The more I understand the intrinsic nature, the less I fuss over non-essentials. This contributed to the overall 'freshness' of "Northern Girl" despite the amount of detail in it. No passage is overworked. It was exciting to see this much life in it. Much of what I hope to accomplish in my future work can be found in this piece.Particularly in the portrait and that marvelous jacket!

Question 8: How has your art evolved over the years?

I’m wasting less time now trying to be things I’m not. I have found the most meaningful source of inspiration in the people, places, and things I know best. In my old work I can see myself playing with different themes and ideas; not really knowing how to fit all the pieces together. It takes time to learn how to build and compose images that can speak.

A visual language is emerging now. One rooted in the very hills and deserts of my childhood. My recent works speak with more authority because they tell the story of my life. There’s this great feeling of anticipation, as though everything I’ve ever been and known will at some point play a role in my work. It’s the hidden secrets in plain sight that I find so rewarding. All those layers of content and history that can’t be faked and cannot be rushed. It's this kind of quality I’m after. The lasting impression, not the quick effect.

What's changed most is the amount of value I get out of the process of art-making. Art has become a means for me to ponder my deepest connections; to measure the value of my experiences; to seek patterns and hidden purposes, and to delight in their fullest expression. As I have said before, this is more like an attitude and/or habit of mind. As a result I'm getting right to heart of things more quickly and without equivocation. "The Northern Girl" is a good example of this. I know what every detail in that picture represents and portends. It is mysterious; not ambiguous. As such I think people can relate to it . There's an almost haunting human warmth, and longing in it - relevant to any soul wary of the modern experience. This is the kind of thing you'll come across in my newer work. Pictures that have much more of the peculiar twists and unexpected turns that life itself takes.

Empire 42" x 60"

Question 9: What’s the most important artistic dream/achievement you’d like to accomplish in your lifetime?

Very simply, I want to create art for the rest of my life according to my highest calling and fullest abilities. All else stems from this really. If I can transmit, through my work, even the smallest semblance of the love and awe that I have for life – I will have truly done something. I want to be collected, and for those collectors to treasure my works as I once treasured them. Artist need great patrons, and I am no exception. I want to look back on a life of meaningful and serious works of art. Art that stands against the growing nihilism of our time, and with fixed purpose celebrates the beauty and immensity of life.

Interview Part 2 of 3 -- Competition feature in The Artist's Magazine Julio Reyes

This is a copy of an interview conducted by The Artist’s Magazine in 2008 for their December issue in the section titled, The Best Art of 2008. My response to each question pertained specifically to my drawing, The Northern Girl, but also sheds light on some of my other works in this series.

Part 2 of 3

Far From Home 11" x 22"

Question 4: What was your inspiration for this painting?

I wanted to evoke a sense of vastness and beauty; a kind of isolation and human frailty. The warmth of a single person against an infinite sprawl of technology, tangled power lines and steel towers seemed poetic and dramatic to me. Having been born and raised in LA, the cityscape has served as the backdrop to my entire life. My memories are bound up in those wires. Many of my dreams and musings were confessed on lonely freeways that run along that very landscape. The scene depicted in 'Northern Girl' is of the Edison electric towers off of the 55 west toward the Inland Empire. I pass it every time I visit family in Rancho Cucamonga. It seemed to capture in a very condensed way the look and feel of much of the LA and Inland Empire (excluding the shaggy palm trees). I am as much a part of that landscape as any fence, dry weed, or telephone wire. There’s an arid silvery quality to that air, and it’s woven into every brick on every building, every face and every freeway – I suppose that’s what lead me to use graphite the way I did. The idea of “weaving” silver light into everything was exhilarating!

So Cal was somewhat foreign and inhospitable to my wife Candice. She moved here from the rural mountain towns of Northern California and was more accustomed to things that were green and could grow. To say the least, she is the single most impressive person I've ever met and carries herself with calm dignity and a quiet intelligence. I believe she has always been a little out of place in Southern California. Like a flower that blooms in the desert. But down here is where our relationship flourished - and in many ways 'Northern Girl' is a double-portrait....a love story.

My hope was to somehow encapsulate that moment of clarity and sublimity that one gets while looking out at sea or staring into a vast and starry sky. These moments are usually fleeting and often times I find I'm not looking out; but looking within: memories, dreams, worries, hopes.....or sometimes it's just feelings like nostalgia, longing, or awe. I find great value in thinking this way and try to fill my mind and heart up with those things.

I have always been moved by the human capacity to love, dream, and persevere, with great courage and sincerity, in spite of a vast and un-sympathetic Nature. To a cynical art world this may sound silly; but to me it is one of the miracles, and beautiful mysteries of life.

The Northern Girl ( crop )

Question 5: Describe your process: Do you begin with a drawing? Do you work from life? Photographs? Do you have a typical color palette that you always use? Any particular technique you used for your winning painting?

I begin sketches and/or moquettes usually long after I’ve had time to ponder the image in my imagination. It usually sneaks up on me. Then wham! It takes me by complete surprise, the really good ones do anyway. The art has to well up out of life, so to speak. It is the fruit of powerful experience and deep impressions. Every memory, sound and smell writes itself upon the heart. I’ll get some flash or detail: like the way the wind catches someone’s hair, or the way light falls on a corduroy jacket. Then I’m hooked. I’ll immerse myself completely in the area of focus; producing studies in graphite, watercolor, and sometimes oil - gathering up as many impressions from life as I can. What matters most at this stage is the depth of nature’s impression on me. I want to know the thing in my bones. In the case of ‘Northern Girl,’ my wife Candice and I were always on So Cal freeways, back-alleys, and city streets of both the urban and suburban sprawls. I had only flashes of images at first, along with a lexicon of memories, smells, and sounds of the terrain itself. I secretly entertained the idea for some time before actually having Candice pose.

Sometimes I’ll leave an idea ‘on the shelf’ for a while, this way the idea ferments and has time to germinate. By the time I started ‘Northern Girl’ I was already working on several different compositions along that same vein. I had no expectations for it, other than it was a study which might or might not further congeal the overall idea. Most of the heavy work in the drawing was done with a mechanical pencil, worked up through a process of layering. I remember the whiteness of the jacket, and the terrific rush I got trying to capture a certain dry quality it had when desert light illuminated it. It took everything in me to not just jump into those folds with flashy marks – like the kind you might find in a Zorn or Sargeant drawing. It took an incredible amount of restraint to draw that jacket.

My process is usually not so condensed. It grows in a very unorthodox and hodge-podge fashion. That is why I won’t make a painting unless there’s really enough there to endure the rigors of my process. I have to be inspired. There must exist a fascination rooted in meaningful and abiding content, or I’ll just lose interest. This requires great effort on my part. I'll re-work images, put them away and then pull them out again. In many ways the purpose of the repetition is not just to know a thing, but to see if it can last. The final painting or drawing is a reconciliation of a lot drawings/paintings, but also a lot of thinking and composing. I work very hard at trying to find the right way to say things. It's easy to get dogmatic and approach every picture the same way. I just can’t do that – everything has it’s own hidden life and if I’m perceptive enough, it will teach me what to say and how to say it. Collecting these impression is like prayer, and the painting, a revelation.

I’m most satisfied with my work when it functions as a kind of poem about many stories. It should be a vessel large enough and expansive enough to receive and deliver all that I feel towards my subject. I would like for a viewer to ponder and delight in my image, without being slammed over the head with conclusions. The goal for me is to illuminate the greater hand at work; not to practice narcissism.

Question 6: How long do you spend on a typical painting? What about this one in particular?

I spent somewhere close to a month on this drawing. I am not opposed to a piece coming together quickly, and sometimes it does. It just so happens that I get the most satisfaction from the gradual welling up of an idea. It’s the anticipation that I love…that unbearably slow layering that gives lasting form to something that was once hidden. Nature gains depth and complexity with time, and so does a solid work of art.
It’s not rare for me to spend 3- 4 months on a 18”x24” or a 36”x48” painting…I spend just as much, if not more, time thinking as I do painting. It is hard to tell, but anything around 18” x 24” in graphite usually takes me anywhere from 2 weeks to 1 month to complete.

Interview Part 1 of 3 -- Competition feature in The Artist’s Magazine Julio Reyes - 2008

This is a copy of an interview conducted by The Artist’s Magazine in 2008 for their December issue in the section titled, The Best Art of 2008. My response to each question pertained specifically to my drawing, The Northern Girl, but also sheds light on some of the other works in this series. Only a portion of this interview was actually published. It has been provided here in its entirety so that you might gain new insight to my working methods. This is part 1 of 3. I hope you find this useful.

Question 1: How and when did you get started creating art? (Describe any art education.)

As far back as I can remember I have been drawing. Doodling was something I did for myself. I drew mostly comic book characters and animals from national geographic wild-life books until my grandmother gave me my first two art books – one on Rembrandt, and the other on Michelangelo. I could not explain my attraction, but I would spend hours just looking at the pictures. Soon, I was drawing and copying the images from the books, and found that I had an extraordinary talent for it. From that moment on, I think I sensed something of art's potential to communicate meaningfully. I found I could speak powerfully without words, and the mystery of that drew me in. In 2005, I, received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Laguna College of Art and Design. There I learned a good deal about art history and aesthetics, as well as the materials and techniques of painting and sculpture.

Question 2: Who are your mentors/artists you admire?

Rembrandt van Rijn, Andrew Wyeth, Vincent van Gogh, Kathy Kallowitz , Albrecht Durer, Van Eyck brothers, Pieter Bruegel, Hieronymus Bosch, Rodin, Michelangelo,

Some others: Paul Cezanne, Matisse, and Georges Broque, and Kandinsky, Antonio Lopez Garcia, Some of Sally Mann's work.

These artists mean a great deal to me. There aren't many contemporaries listed here, as I’m not the biggest fan of the Post-Modernism's entropic nature. However, I'm sure there are some great artists out there I haven't mentioned.

The Northern Girl 18" x 24"

Question 3: What media and genres (e.g., still life, portrait, etc.) do you work in?

I have worked mostly with oil paint, and graphite. When the situation demands (more and more, lately) I’ll work with charcoal or watercolor. Finding which media best suites my goals in the work is an important part of the painting’s development. Sometimes I know right away, but most often it’s a process of elimination. I’ll find I’m having trouble capturing a particular spindly quality of pine branches or power-lines with oil paint -- so I’ll transition to watercolor, finding that the medium itself actually behaves in a way similar to the character of those branches/wires. Rather than dominate the medium, I’ll facilitate it’s inherent personality to achieve a more lively representation (a concept very much a kin to Japanese calligraphy).

I suppose I’m not really beholden to any particular genre, although lately I find myself gravitating towards expansive landscapes with figure(s) in them. If in my body of work there seems to be an emphasis on, let’s say, portraits over landscapes; this is purely incidental. You see, I don’t think I approach genres as many artists might. Genres can oftentimes be associated with particular affectations or limitations, which can restrict the content and spontaneity of a picture. These days I’m trying less and less to will or force a composition into existence. I would rather let the picture reveal itself to me as my understanding of a location or sitter grows.

I might start an idea for a painting inspired by a location, and find I end up painting a portrait instead. It is the same in reverse. I might be trying to capture a certain texture of a persons character, and find that the landscape embodies it more completely. My process is more like an attitude in this respect - an attitude flexible and receptive enough to go where the value and content take me. In the ‘Northern Girl,’ the landscape is every bit as important as the portrait, and the portrait no more important than the jacket. Even the dry silvery quality of the air in the emptiness surrounding her is inseparable from the gestalt of the piece. I’ll paint a sprawl of power lines with the same care and sensitivity I would a study of an old friend; a familiar face as I would the surface of some craggy tree bark. Every object, texture and pattern is a kind of totem, portending to so much beyond itself. The subject matter doesn’t end with the actual objects in my pictures – the objects are just the beginning. So, I suppose I work in every genre - but hopefully someone viewing my pictures can sense there's more than meets the eye. .

Julio Reyes portrait artist for Medici Portraits

Julio Reyes is proud to announce that he has accepted an invitation to become an artist for Medici Portraits, a museum quality fine art portrait commissioning service based out of Southern California.

Look for Reyes' painting "Cosette" featured in a Medici Portraits ad in the August issue of Fine Art Connoisseur. For more information about Medici Portraits go to:

http://mediciportraits.com

Coming Soon!

Hello everyone,

Due to requests from fans, family, and loved ones, I'm happy to finally get going on this. Thank you for your patience. This is where you'll find the most up to date news about me. I will post at least once a week any up and coming shows, thoughts, awards, and current projects.

- Julio