Bruce Cody
Since the early 1980’s Bruce Cody has been famous in the Southwestern United States for his paintings of large urban and small town architectural motifs. His interest and skill of painting came from his early years working in his father's neon sign shop painting, printing, and building signs. Over the years, he became quite fascinated with the rich light and shadows of the Western landscape, large public retro signs, and contemporary images of public buildings such as movie theaters, restaurants, motels, and gas stations which his paintings reflect. He ended up graduating from the University of Wyoming and earned a Master of Fine Arts Degree at Washington State University. After that, Bruce spent the next 17 years of his life as a professor at Colorado State University perfecting his work. In 1983, he resigned from his job to be a full time painter and moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico with his wife. There they owned a highly regarded gallery called Charlene Cody Gallery from 1994 to 2005. Since 1984, he has had 25 personal art shows and his paintings are in over 50 corporate art collections and in over 500 private collections.
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Why Does He Inspire Me ?
Bruce’s retro style and how he includes vintage signs in his paintings inspires me. I have always enjoyed the use of bold colors in my artwork and vintage and retro style signs. I even have a few hanging in my room! Not only do I enjoy his style, but Bruce also shows the importance of following and making a career out of what you love to do. He quit his job as a professor and made a full time job of painting, even opening a gallery at one point of his life. Finally, he is quite similar to I am. Not only do we enjoy the same style and have similar pieces of artwork, but he also has grown up in the same part of the U.S as I have and we have a similar childhood where we would help our father’s with fixing or building things.
George SeuratGeorge Seurat was born December 2, 1859 in Paris, France to a wealthy military family. During his adolescences, he attended many art schools where he mastered his artistic skills. He even attend military school and joined the French military for a year. In 1883, he began working on his first major painting called Bathers at Asnieres. Then, in 1884, he began working on his most famous painting called A Sunday Afternoonon the Island of La Grande Jatte. Both of these famous paintings were oainted using a technique Seurat invented called pointilism. In this painting style, the artist paints tiny dots of distinct colors in a certain pattern to for an image. Up close, it just appears like a bunch of dots, but as you stand farther away, your eyes blend the colors for you. George continued painting until he died on March 29, 1891 at the age of 31 in Paris, France.
Why Does He Inspire Me ?George Seurat was innovative, creative, and original. He not only invented a new style of painting called pointillism, but incorporated it into successful paintings. When I first learned about him and his artwork, I loved the science behind pointillism. Particularly about how it allows your eye to do the blending of colors instead of the paintbrush. I also became fascinated with the dedication and patience he had with each of his pieces. He made thousands of tiny dots on a ginormous canvas without ever quitting or rethinking his new style. On top of all this, his artwork actually had an important meaning behind it, especially A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte and Bathers at Asnieres. In these two paintings, he displayed the great difference between the wealthy class and the working class of Paris and made a clear comparison between the two using his new technique.
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