The Big Squeak Toy in North Beach

This is a painting I did in 2011 when I was began doing still life's.  It was in Aria a wonderful antique store in North Beach.  Aria is no longer there, a victim of rents in the new San Francisco.  The toy is 8" tall and the painting is 65" x 35".  This piece made me feel like a Painter for the first time.  I could  change what is there into something else.......

Berkeley Art Center Featured Artist - June 2014

"Richard Whitlock's oil paintings of toys are at once humorous and nostalgic, while empathetic in their almost human gaze - lovingly painted with accomplished realism.  His treatment of the subject, set in dreamy atmospheres lacking a background, lends a warmth that leads one to see these objects as entities, turning still lifes into portraits.  At the same time, one may find their set gazes unsettling. In an age where the ambiguity between object-hood and personhood are at an all time high, Whitlock reminds us of our time-honored affection for, and distrust of, facsimiles."

Amanda Kilmek
Program Coordinator

Big Big Boy

 

 

 

 

Oil on canvas 36 x 48"

 

Thank you Amanda Klimek

for your introduction of my work as Featured Artist on the Berkeley Art Center web site.  Your insights are helping to direct and inform my painting.  One of the reasons I show my work is to get thoughtful feedback like yours.  It motivates me to paint and challenges me to develop my ideas. 

Here is a link to the Berkeley Art Center web site.http://www.berkeleyartcenter.org/

 My show at Ohmega Salvage was in every way a success plus a good party!  Now I've got a clean studio and empty canvases ready for paint!