The Tears of Things

ACKNOWLEDGING CHRIS SANTA MARIA [UPDATED]

by Catherine King

I'm categorizing this posting with "The Black Theatre Group Changed Me". That's because I need to give credit to a local artist who is incredibly talented, and I would feel negligent and unappreciative if I didn't say anything.

No, Jerome and I are not totally negative, but I wouldn't expect anybody to understand. This is for the record. Witnessing, I call it, though art blogger and spiritual master Franklin Einspruch does not accept my definition.

Truth be told, when Chris Santa Maria first sent The Tears of Things JPEGs of his work, many months ago, I raved on and on to Jerome about what a great painter he is, in my humble opinion. Honest. And when we first saw JPEGs of his new portrait series, now at eyelounge, I almost wanted to e-mail him, just to say that I thought he was wonderfull, in spite of all the negativity that swirls around our blog's reputation.

But I didn't and here's why: I read on and saw that he's hooked up with all the meaningfull and important local art people, so my endorsement was unnecessary, maybe even unwelcome. He sure doesn't need it.

Still, I have to say, for what it's worth, that he's very talented. This is a case where the student, Chris Santa Maria, clearly surpasses his teacher, Beverly McIver. I've written about her before. I wouldn't even say anything, except that I, too, could paint portraits if I wanted. Here's a self-portrait, that was part of a larger collage. It's about fifteen years old, and it looks pretty much exactly as I did then, for the morbidly curious. Alkyds on canvas paper. But portraits do not interest me. People are not my favorite subject. So slay me.

In my opinion, a painter needs to bring something more to a portrait than photography provides. Many people can work from photographs, myself included, but why bother to translate media exactly? That self-portrait of mine? Painted from life, THE ONLY WAY I WOULD EVER PAINT A PORTRAIT. That way something living is imparted to the art.

I don't know for sure if Santa Maria is working from photographs, but in spite of his talent, he brought nothing more to the portraits than a camera would, except maybe texture. I know people are dazzled by hyper-realism, which he has achieved. But it's the SOUL, I suppose, that is missing from his work. Paint from life, and if you can achieve nothing more than photorealism, then just stick with a photograph. That's what I'd advise him, if I were his art teacher. And I do have a Masters in Secondary Art Education.

[UPDATE May 4th]:

This is Jerome. After Catherine posted this piece we received an email from Chris Santa Maria, and after a couple of exchanges we found ourselves at eyelounge at noon today, Sunday, meeting the guy and examining his seven portraits.

In the interim we found out about his blog, and did some catch-up reading. He does some strong exploratory writing, and doesn't post frivolity. We recommend it, and we're going to put him on our blogroll as Catherine's first addition to it.

Chris Santa Maria is a pleasant young man who seems comfortable in his skin, quietly intense and serious about his art. And the portraits are, in my opinion, completely successful. I think he achieves soulfulness, despite the photographic sourcing, because he knows and cares about his subjects. They go beyond mere formulaic mechanism. My favorite was Uncle Bunky. Even before Chris shared a little about this man, I could see by the subtly wry slant of his mouth that he was well aware of how often life could blindside a person.

Posted by Jerome at May 1, 2008 12:05 PM | TrackBack