Pop Artist; Wayne Thiebaud

Let them eat cake


One of my favorite pop artists has always been Wayne Thiebaud (born 1920). I think it's because of his thick use of impasto, so that you KNOW you're looking at a painting, not a print, poster, or photo. He certainly has bright, fun colors- probably because he started his career as a Disney animator. Maybe I like him because he's originally from Arizona, like me. He's taught at Cal State L.A. and ended up at the University of California, Davis, in Northern California. He is generally thought of as a "photorealist," though like Chuck Close, he uses abstraction to achieve his realism. Oneof the things that I think make his work stand out are how blue his shadows are. His earlier work is mostly deserts, things like cake and pie and ice cream.

His more recent work are cityscapes and landscapes. In a way he charicaturizes San Francisco's hils by exagerating them to the point where the image seems flattened ~ once again, making dnag sure that you know you're looking at a painting and not reality, while at the same time, making a "photo-realistic" image.

Click on Wayne's name at the top of this post for Wikipedia's entry on him, or look for his link in the menu on the right side for his site.