BEFORE: The donor painting by W.Chapman

AFTER: The Myth of Imagery by BRYAN & KIM CANTLEY

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THE MYTH OF IMAGERY
by BRYAN & KIM CANTLEY

"The image was created in 3 simultaneous studios. The chronologies of the spaces overlapped and fragmented, as did the painting artifact. I conduct a lot of my research in my studio at CSUF. Kim and I share a converted bedroom home studio. It is conducive for this type of collaboration, as I literally jumped back and forth from my computer monitor to her easel, working out the details as we progressed. The third workspace was the arena of swap meets, antique shops and yard sales where we aggressively searched for the appropriate donor painting. One of our dogs, Pippi [ “LP” for short], monitored and critiqued the work as it developed.

Just as the instance of the painting, the timing for this piece is hard to define. We searched for many weeks for the correct landscape. Price, size, technique, style, and surface quality all came into play, as much as the composition/subject matter. We considered a good 20-30 paintings. Positioning the digital model to match the perspective in the painting, and adjusting lighting to match took a week or two of manipulation. Tweaking the image in Photoshop to “match” the style of the donor image took a several weeks. Not being a painter meant I had to spend many hours of conversation with Kim to identify exactly what I was looking for/at during the harmonizing process. The physical painting took between 20-25 hours, spread out over the course of several months- painters cannot simply start and stop their process as easily as architects, since setting up fresh paint palettes, matching paint colors/hues and breakdown/cleanup is a major time commitment. Selection of a enhanced frame took another two weeks of scouring Craigslist, eBay and local shops.

We have since purchased 2 more paintings to continue the experiment[s]. "