Cliff Wassmann
About the
Artist
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"The work, captures something that the mind perceives but the camera doesn't. A man adds his superstition, lonlieness and love to that which he views with his eyes. A camera usually only captures what is there. (The early coastal town footage in the film version of East of Eden - the buildings, the windblown grass, the light, are the exceptions that prove the rule. These cuts reek with the magic of artistic realism, and are so beautiful they hurt) Non-realists attempt to utilize symbolism to extract just the emotional reactions, like a soap opera They dissasemble the Ferrari and show you the parts. Realists at their best perform the miracle of transferring the available library of spiritual experiences inherent to the scene to the men who just view the painting". -Oregon Magazine A photographer as well as a painter, Wassmann has roamed the west searching for landscapes to photograph. "I like to go after a specific moment in time, usually when something extraordinary is happening to the lighting in a scene. Because of this, I spend most of my time on the trail taking photographs that capture the mood I'm after. While most people would consider Wassmann a Photorealist, he is uncomfortable with that classification. " I don't take offense at being called a Photorealist, says Wassmann, I do work from my photography most of the time, but I don't think when most people use that term they understand what they're saying. Would you call Frederic Church or the other realists of the 1800's photorealists? Their paintings are every bit as photorealist but since they're 150 years old we just call them realists. And that's what I'd like to be known as. Simply a Realist. I just like painting landscapes as they are, without adding or subtracting. One thing I hear over and over again is the tired statement that highly realist paintings lack creativity. The Hudson River School was accused of that and so have I. My counter to that argument is: What could be more creative than turning a blank canvas into an image that looks like the real thing? I think in takes a lot more creativity to represent a scene realistically than to splash paint on a canvas. I'll get in trouble for saying this but a lot of the so called impressionist artists today are nothing but failed realists. Lets face it, you can hide a lot of mistakes in an so called impressionist painting. Its no coincidence that there is an abundance of impressionist these days. With the pathetic state of public knowledge of art these days its easy to do lousy work and disguise it as impressionism. Don't get me wrong - I love good impressionistic work, I just don't see much today that qualifies." The Pacific coast and the desert southwest are the central motifs in virtually all of his eloquent work. The dramatic scenes are often captured at dusk or sunset, providing the intense coloration's that frequent the still untouched landscapes. Wassmann has developed a keen, distinctive eye for balancing his rhythmic compositions depicted through color and light. He is an artist who feels deeply for his subjects and expresses his passions eloquently through his work. His paintings could be described as "visual anthropologies for the generations of the future", because many of these areas are doomed to development in the near future. His desire is to preserve these areas on film and canvas forever and to express his concern for the growing lack of open space throughout the Southwest. Most recently he has focused his concerns on the struggles of the local community of Dana Point, CA and its Headlands, which is one of the last open parcels of private coastal land in Southern California as well as the Crystal Cove area in North Laguna Beach. Although seemingly a losing battle, Wassmann creates lasting memories of these and other soon forgotten places.
Cliff
Wassmann Fine Art |
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