About This Project

I’ve always liked photorealist and hyperrealist artworks. I remember, fairly early on in my creative career, being impressed by the work of American painters Richard Estes, Charles Bell and Ralph Goings. 
Today we’ve got Eloy Morales, Roberto Bernadi, Franco Clun and a host of others who paintand draw with such attention to detail their works are like photographs in paint, pencil or even ballpoint pen! It comes as no surprise that they use photographs as their reference.So is their work, art or skill?
And now for something completely different! 
California and the Copro Gallery, Santa Monica. They specialise in exhibiting ‘Dark Art’ which, in very general terms, are paintings, drawings or mixed media works which deal with surreal, macabre and confrontational subject matter.
Many of these artists are highly accomplished (though not photorealists) and the works they create are figurative, graphic and imaginative (although it has to be said – there are a lot of skulls!).
Their work also seems to sell!
Which is essentially the reason and motivation behind ‘Beguiled, Bedazzled, Betrayed.’
Although my work is, by and large, unconventional I thought I should adopt an even more unorthodox approach and create my own ‘dark art’ in the vague hope that it might sell.
I found an environment, a rather ‘impressionistic’ forest, and then set about creating the characters who might inhabit it.
The couple embracing in each others arms are the beguiled and bedazzled and the jilted and cheated interloper is the betrayed.
A three-way triangle of emotional turmoil played out against a tree-lined background with only one way out!
Sounds a bit like the storyline from an episode of ‘The Bold and The Beautiful.’ But, then again, none of their characters had lizard-like eyes and a totally out-of-control, off-the-radar anger management issue!