Adam’s Chest
My acrylic painting measuring 36" x 36" on stretched canvas predates the restoration of The Sistine Chapel by two decades.
In 1975, I chose to focus my vision on Adam’s chest. I referenced my collection of professional art slides of Michelangelo’s masterpiece.
Faced with the traditional brown sooty colors that permeated all of Mike's frescoes, I recall enlivening my colors in an ever-so-bold move, adding a modern touch. However, once the restoration of the Chapel frescoes were revealed in 1994, my colors didn’t look so daring!
Maryland Institute Girls In 1915, Art teacher and philosopher Robert Henri instructed his students: “An interest in the subject; something you want to say definitely about the subject; this is the first condition of a portrait.” In 1975, during a figure painting class at Baltimore’s Maryland Institute of Art, the models had been posed and lit carefully by the instructor. All the students had set their easels up with a traditional frontal view of models. But as I surveyed the posing platform, I immediately noticed the black metal chair. It was the same model chair that I had experienced as a very young child in the attic of my parents home. With the back of the chair at eye level again, as if I were 5 years old, I sprang to life and enjoyed my art study immensely!
Study For Camdenpop
This is a plein air oil sketch, oil on canvas board, 16” x 20”. I created it in a single day on location in Camden NJ. It was a cloudless blue sky day.
Apparently my recent history in Costa Rica took hold, and I surprised myself by impulsively adding dramatic cumulous clouds, to contribute a sense of natural power to the technical prowess of the Ben Franklin Bridge crossing the Delaware River.
The shadow of the bridge gliding across the water tower in late afternoon was the pièce de résistance for me, for the entire point of the painting effort was to begin to realize my visionary concept known as “Camdenpop”. I caught the shadow as a signature moment in time. https://youtu.be/hzxWBAHyERQ
Monroeville Tomato Farm This is a small plein air oil painting on stretched canvas 12” x 16”, begun one Saturday morning in a New Jersey farm field which hosted dozens of migrant workers in the distance. Green tomatoes seemed quirky to me, juxtaposed with the black plastic vapor barrier and tossed plastic baskets, both unsustainable by-products of the produce industry. I sketched happily for a few hours, when a sudden rain shower darkened the sky and let loose. I retreated to the car and used the steering wheel as a makeshift easel, signing my name with the back end of the paintbrush in the still-wet oil paint.
Self-Portrait of The Artist as A Remnant Of Valentino Fabric
While still a student at University of Maryland, I happened upon a department store sale of fabric remnants. Immediately drawn to this oversized design by Valentino, I purchased it for a few dollars.
A few years later while at Maryland Institute of Art, a homework assignment required me to challenge myself. I tossed the vibrantly patterned fabric onto a chair and studied the haphazard lines and colors until I could construct a believable PhotoRealist painting. The resulting acrylic on 36” x 36” stretched canvas was hard work, and took 40 hours to complete. But it was sheer pleasure, and thus came about the very expressive title.
Solar Eclipse #2
This is a linoleum block print, achieved with oil color. I most certainly lacked this brand of physical and emotional confidence as a young man at University, but it was apparently my intention to absorb it intuitively by focusing on creative work.
I summoned all of my naive art knowledge at the time to include a ballet dancer in mid-leap, twirling stars, and phases of the moon on parade, anchored by an imaginary cityscape.
Late in life, my Art, Music & Ideas blossomed unexpectedly in Camden New Jersey, whose City Hall spire and Adventure Aquarium's dome bear some resemblance to this early graphic image. My mature work with musical trio CPR Music Invincible and my international multimedia one man show Just For The Record managed to capture me mid-leap!
Christopher Andrew Maier 