Michael Zakian says of Lipking's Art, "Realism has been misunderstood through most of the twentieth century as an art of imitation. In truth, when practiced by a painter like Jeremy Lipking, realist painting is a powerful creative force. Many viewers are drawn to his art thinking that it looks just like a photograph. Actually Lipking's vision is the opposite of what a camera does. A photograph tends to flatten an image, reducing all relationships of color and shade to a stiff mechanical pattern. Lipking's skill lies in his ability to probe in and around his subject. With a highly sensitive eye, he sees nuances of value and hue that the camera and most people can never see. More incredibly, he is able to translate his highly nuanced vision into a painted image. Lipking's true subject is his pictorial fluency. Seeing one of his paintings involves entering into the pictorial world he has created. Like all great realists, he has the ability to generate powerful fictions."
I think that's a brilliant way to put it. Jeremy Lipking's Art is more than a picture, it's more than slavish copying of a photograph. His Art shows subtleties that a camera could never capture. His Art shows emotion, character, a mood, a second in time.
I really like his confident brushstrokes and excellent understanding of composition and anatomy. In particular, the last painting here is really interesting composition wise, with a very high horizon and a lot of negative space. It's a landscape, but doesn't fit into what you're used to seeing in landscapes. It reads as water very well even though there's very little detail, and shows a magical moment when the sun is just about to rise from the horizon. Magical.
Visit his website at: http://www.lipking.com/gallery.htm
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