The year I turned eight years old, on Christmas day, I found a small easel, an 8" x 12" canvas board, and a box of oil paints and brushes waiting for me under the tree. It was the best gift I had ever gotten, or ever would get. My father, a gifted artist himself, taught me the basics of color and technique, and over the next few years I experimented and learned the fundamentals of drawing, perspective and color mixing. I painted in oils mostly, through high school and college, trying to copy and learn from the masters in still life, figurative and abstract form, taking as many art classes as my schedule allowed. I visited museums and galleries as much as possible and in that sense I was lucky to be living in New York. Soon though, a career in medicine and surgery, and the engagements of life in general, came between me and my art. I still turned out the occasional painting or drawing, but I simply didn't have the same time to devote to it, and many years went by before I returned to art in any serious way. I will say, though, that the reason I chose plastic surgery as a career specialty was because it so thoroughly incorporated art and science, and allowed me for the thirty years I worked at it, to use my hands and eye as I would have on a canvas. I was, and am, eternally grateful for that opportunity, and for the many great teachers I had along the way.
Two things brought me back to the canvas. A serendipitous meeting and then friendship, in the late 1980's, with the great American artist Jack Levine, who graciously invited me to his studio on the top floor of his Greenwich Village townhouse and allowed me to sit there for hours while he worked. Jack was an incredible painter, an expert technician, with a savvy, witty and socially left-leaning bent, a student of the masters and a master who didn't suffer fools easily. All of this of course, came out in his work. I urge anyone interested in art, especially American art, to take a second and third look at the works of this genius, who unfortunately is no longer with us. His work hangs in the National Gallery, the Whitney Museum, the Fogg Museum at Harvard, MOMA and countless other important institutions. He remains a great inspiration to me.
Second, I was winding down at work and suddenly had more time to get back to the studio (my basement at the time), clean the brushes and get back to work. Now, in addition to painting, and inspired by my brother-in-law, the collage artist Glenn Freedman, I began to incorporate paper and mixed media into the work. A few years before, I had been introduced to the Japanese art of Chigiri-e by a colleague in the hospital. This form of collage, relatively recent by Japanese standards (a hundred years or so) uses torn rice and hand-painted washi papers, along with the "energy" transferred to the paper during the process of tearing, to create simple, elegant works, paintings that appear to be watercolors at first glance. These simple Japanese collages commonly depict sea and mountain landscapes, flowers and animals, and are quite beautiful.
During this same time, I had been collecting newsprint photos, hundreds of them, mostly from the New York Times (ever since they started printing in color, in 1993), along with the Japanese hand-made papers. Soon, I began to experiment with both types of paper, first individually and then together, and soon enough my current technique had evolved. Today, my "torn paper collages" use a combination of hand-shredded newsprint photo, Japanese rice paper for transparency and hand-painted washi paper for its brilliance of color and for highlighting. Some collages are glazed during the process with a raw sienna or umber/paint medium combination (I learned this from Jack Levine), or have fabric, cork board or a dash of paint added to them. But mostly, they are pure paper creations.
After fifty years of playing the guitar, I have a real appreciation for musicians, and a proclivity for painting them and their instruments. Some paintings are abstract, some figurative. Many incorporate social commentary. I am particularly intrigued by the anatomy and structure of the human face. After thirty years of rearranging the minutiae of facial anatomy at the office, I feel I have earned the right to do with it as I please now. And so I love making my faces slightly deformed, or using distortions of the anatomy with ill-defined facial structure or no structure at all, to suggest features rather than represent them. There is definitely a cubist influence, and many times the shreds of newspaper guide me with their own structure and content, as the work progresses. I do hope that you will enjoy searching the site, and get back to me with any comments or suggestions.
Best regards,
Steve Palumbo
Two things brought me back to the canvas. A serendipitous meeting and then friendship, in the late 1980's, with the great American artist Jack Levine, who graciously invited me to his studio on the top floor of his Greenwich Village townhouse and allowed me to sit there for hours while he worked. Jack was an incredible painter, an expert technician, with a savvy, witty and socially left-leaning bent, a student of the masters and a master who didn't suffer fools easily. All of this of course, came out in his work. I urge anyone interested in art, especially American art, to take a second and third look at the works of this genius, who unfortunately is no longer with us. His work hangs in the National Gallery, the Whitney Museum, the Fogg Museum at Harvard, MOMA and countless other important institutions. He remains a great inspiration to me.
Second, I was winding down at work and suddenly had more time to get back to the studio (my basement at the time), clean the brushes and get back to work. Now, in addition to painting, and inspired by my brother-in-law, the collage artist Glenn Freedman, I began to incorporate paper and mixed media into the work. A few years before, I had been introduced to the Japanese art of Chigiri-e by a colleague in the hospital. This form of collage, relatively recent by Japanese standards (a hundred years or so) uses torn rice and hand-painted washi papers, along with the "energy" transferred to the paper during the process of tearing, to create simple, elegant works, paintings that appear to be watercolors at first glance. These simple Japanese collages commonly depict sea and mountain landscapes, flowers and animals, and are quite beautiful.
During this same time, I had been collecting newsprint photos, hundreds of them, mostly from the New York Times (ever since they started printing in color, in 1993), along with the Japanese hand-made papers. Soon, I began to experiment with both types of paper, first individually and then together, and soon enough my current technique had evolved. Today, my "torn paper collages" use a combination of hand-shredded newsprint photo, Japanese rice paper for transparency and hand-painted washi paper for its brilliance of color and for highlighting. Some collages are glazed during the process with a raw sienna or umber/paint medium combination (I learned this from Jack Levine), or have fabric, cork board or a dash of paint added to them. But mostly, they are pure paper creations.
After fifty years of playing the guitar, I have a real appreciation for musicians, and a proclivity for painting them and their instruments. Some paintings are abstract, some figurative. Many incorporate social commentary. I am particularly intrigued by the anatomy and structure of the human face. After thirty years of rearranging the minutiae of facial anatomy at the office, I feel I have earned the right to do with it as I please now. And so I love making my faces slightly deformed, or using distortions of the anatomy with ill-defined facial structure or no structure at all, to suggest features rather than represent them. There is definitely a cubist influence, and many times the shreds of newspaper guide me with their own structure and content, as the work progresses. I do hope that you will enjoy searching the site, and get back to me with any comments or suggestions.
Best regards,
Steve Palumbo