Description
Photo-Realist painter Thomas Blackwell, born in 1938, started out as an abstract painter influenced by the Pop Art movement. He moved on to a primary interest in painting large-scale works featuring the gleaming surfaces of machinery, metal and glass, mainly in airplanes and motorcycles, but later in urban store fronts and windows. He used photographs from magazines as the source of his subject matter, as well as taking his own photos.
Blackwell is best known for his depictions of the urban scape and the various reflections of windows.
Photorealism is a movement which began in the late 1960’s, in which scenes are painted in a style closely resembling photographs. Photo-Realism has its origins in pop art, which brought the attention of modern paintings back to the commonplace object as subject matter. The subject matter is usually mundane and without particular interest; the true subject of a photorealist work is the way we unconsciously interpret photographs and paintings in order to create a mental image of the object represented.
