Painted Paintings: Still Life by David Ligard

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

I wonder if the birds would peck at the fruit depicted in such realistic paintings? Still lifes by David Ligard seem to be suitable for the story of the artistic duel of ancient painters. But our contemporary denies in every possible way from realism (and sometimes hyperrealism: why don't we mind). The artist says that his painting is metaphysical, and the space in the foreground is a kind of sacred place, a kind of altar on which symbolic objects are placed and the light is balanced by a shadow.

A native of Illinois, David Ligare, who has lived almost his entire adult life in California, in his youth was carried away by antiquity, and in particular the work of the ancient Greek sculptor Polyktetus and the ideas of the philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras.

An admirer of ancient masters discerned the features of distant Greece in the familiar Pacific coastline. Far not only geographically, but also historically. California Arcadia - a cross between America and Hellas - is his personal discovery. Columbus discovered America, and David Ligard found Greece in America - is it bad?

Now artist David Ligar is 66 years old, and for almost 30 years he has been preparing solo exhibitions of paintings. The American's still lifes have a special structure, which he somehow happily thought of many years ago.

Firstly, the painter prone to meditation did not like the traditional dark, often gloomy background in most still lifes. Yes, dead nature, but not to arrange a commemoration in the pictures? Still lifes should be lighter, and on a light background and shadows will look good.

Secondly, the artist decided that natural light would be on his canvases. In order to show that the objects are illuminated by the sun, he removed a piece of the light background and revealed a strip of the seascape to the right and above. Behind you can see the horizon line, the sky is painted in different colors depending on the time of day, and the shadows have different lengths and saturations.

In the paintings of the American artist, there is both the distant and the near. But there is no life in the forms of life itself, says the painter. Where have you seen that in reality everything was so designed and thought out, like a composition of a still life, where there is a place for both fruit and the sea? - admonishes critics David Ligard.