ABOUT THE PAINTING!...

Artist Comment...
     In this age of digital art, computer-generated images, and photoshopped pictures, I wanted to revisit the challenges of history's master painters.
     As a student of the works of Da Vinci, I was always fascinated by the "Mona Lisa."  I have rendered my version of the world's most famous painting in everything from cartooning to "etch-a-sketching."  But, it was one day on a walk at Louisville's Great Lawn by the Ohio River that the basic idea for my painting was born.  The city of Louisville, Kentucky, USA has emerged into a beautiful town on the edge of becoming a world-class city.  The city skyline would make a great painting.  There was really nothing major nor original about artistically capturing the cityscape.  Photographers by the dozen set up in Indiana and produce beautiful images of Louisville across the Ohio River, so I figured I would "get to it" when I "got to it."
     I had recently finished an oil painting of the "Mona Lisa" which was the exact size of the real one in the Louvre.  It was hanging above my stairway still drying when I awoke one night with the name "Louisa Villea" in my head.  I wrote the name down and went back to sleep.  When I awoke the next day, I realized that the name was simply L-O-U-I-S-V-I-L-L-E split in half with an "A" stuck at the end of both halves.  Being a portrait painter, I now realized that my not-so-original idea of painting the city had suddenly become an exciting portrait challenge.
     So, I began the project of creating my own Mona Lisa.
     Upon first viewing of the painting, one sees a young lady sitting with buildings in the background.  The painting stands alone as such.  However, the more I painted, the more ideas came to me.  Eventually, the "Louisa Villea" became not only a tribute to Louisvillians, but a history of the city.  Also, a history of art and the techniques and styles of master artists are incorporated within the painting.

     The entire project took over 1,750 hours, not including the 15 hours to build the five-foot by six-foot frame and to stretch and prime the canvas in the manner of the master painters of old.                                
                                                  Rich Thompson

http://www.richthompson-art.com/

    

Dressed in a red formal gown and exhibiting simple southern elegance, Louisa Villea pensively sits on the Great Lawn in the shadow of Louisville's growing cityscape.

To symbolize the "melting-pot" diversity of the Louisville citizenship, Rich combined a mixture of techniques and styles in rendering this original oil painting.

The painting itself is a large five-foot by six-foot canvas featuring Louisa Villea, aptly named for the city she represents.

While Louisa's portrait is presented in Renaissance realism, her raiment makes a departure toward American realism, depicting her similarly to the subjects of a John Singer Sargent painting.

If you are using a tiltable LCD monitor, try this to see how Louisa represents all of the Louisville citizenry.  You can actually change her ethnicity by tilting the monitor forward and back.

In the background is the hub of Metropolitan Louisville, painted in the style of the French Impressionists with their rapid brushwork and loose definition.

Tying foreground and background together are the swirling, indistinct lines and shapes that mix whimsical "Van Gogh-like" brushstrokes with the offerings of a modern Abstract Expressionist.

The softness of color around Louisa's head places her in a "Disney-like" dream moment, perhaps prompting the viewer to ponder what she is thinking or what she is feeling.

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