Robert McCurdy
Robert McCurdy (born 1952) is an American artiste known for his photorealistic oil paintings and photographs of notable figures in contemporary history. Among works held in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. are paintings of Toni Morrison, Neil Armstrong, the Dalai Lama, Muhammad Ali, Nelson Mandela, and others. In 2002, McCurdy was commissioned to paint a portrait of US Representative Martin Sabo for the US Capitol.
Robert McCurdy begins his painted portraits gone a photograph, asking his sitters to residence the unseen viewer directly and to make no gestures. He seeks an image that has no implied gone or well along but exists in the everlasting present. McCurdy's take aim is to allow a neutral setting in order to maximize the very personal birds of the encounter between subject and viewer.
McCurdy's skillfully executed paintings focus the viewer's customary response to the image of a human being: the coda of his paintings is the gaze, not the sitter's mood and story, compelling and recognizable even though that bill may be. Among those who have stood for McCurdy are the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, Jane Goodall, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Toni Morrison, Neil Armstrong, Muhammad Ali, Carlos Fuentes, Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos, Mario Vargas Llosa, Isabel Allende and James Hansen, among others. His methodology includes taking hundreds of photos in an effort to reach at the one that will best submit what he is striving to achieve: a moment suspended, when the viewer catches the gaze of the rendered image – and holds it, without the veil of distracting thought or judgement. That brief and elemental moment amongst the viewer and the image subconscious viewed is what the performer hopes to achieve.
His minimalist edit in the presentation of a figure is one the artiste has positive is the sustainable moment captured during the sitting, the image whose cues as to melody and time have been most successfully set aside.
The artiste removes any clue or comment as to time, place, history or judgement, leaving the viewer's initial and whole incorporation in the exchange of a gaze.
Robert McCurdy has been exhibiting his photography and paintings for the next forty years. Select showings and collections affix the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.; Frye Museum, Seattle; Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida; Le Tresors des Arts, Gstaad, Switzerland; Jack Shainman Gallery, New York; Nancy Solomon Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia; Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington; Venetia Kapernikas Gallery, New York, Berry-Hill Galleries, New York, among others. McCurdy attained his BFA at the Maryland Institute College of Art, and traditional an Arts Fellowship from Yale University.