Daughter of Midas
From the Mind's Eye
Contemporary realist painter is inspired by his spirituality
A Westerville painter is having his biggest show to date now that his work is being featured at the Columbus Museum of Art.
Awarded a 2014 Visual Arts Fellowship from the Greater Columbus Arts Council and the Columbus Museum of Art, Brian Port will show his paintings along with Felipe Castelblanco, Kaname Takada and Ryland Wharton. Port won a grant along with the opportunity to exhibit his work, which is on display at the museum through Sept. 6.
Port, whose work is shown regularly at Brandt-Roberts Galleries in the Short North—one piece is in the gallery’s Summer Show, running through July 30—paints in a style he describes as contemporary realism.
“I’m looking at nature and trying to capture what I see, for the most part,” he says.
While he appreciates classical notions of beauty established by the artists of the past, he doesn’t necessarily emulate their styles. Though many might review his work and think of it as photorealism, Port says he lets his image filter through his mind rather than directly copying an image. This means that he might tweak tone or color value to achieve a certain mood or feeling he’s after when he paints from life or from photos.
Drawing has always come naturally to Port.
“It’s just something that I’ve always done,” he says.
As a child, Port always carried around a sketchbook, in which he copied comic book characters and drew war and fighting scenes. As a young student, in fourth or fifth grade, Port was kicked out of class for drawing instead of paying attention. Ostensibly as punishment, he was told to go out into the hall and draw. So he did.
Reaching
From the Mind's Eye
While Port had some opportunity to paint in high school, it wasn’t until he started attending the Columbus College of Art and Design that he really began to gain more experience with the medium.
Port says he has many fond memories of his time at CCAD, where he graduated with a bachelor of fine arts degree in 2000. His experience provided him a foundation in color, composition, drawing and anatomy. Each of his teachers had a unique perspective. Two teachers, Lowell Tolstedt and Dennis Drummond, played substantial roles in his artistic development, he says.
Other artists’ work also helps Port learn.
“I’ll go into a museum and just soak it all up,” he says.
Port still appreciates older paintings, even if they have props and people in them from 500 years ago.
“A good painting is kind of timeless,” he says.
While Andrew Wyeth and John Singer Sargent are different from each other stylistically, Port likes them both. He appreciates Sargent’s portraits and respects Wyeth’s technical abilities and his work’s surreal feel.
He also appreciates Daniel Sprick and Scott Frasier, two other contemporary realists.
“I’m always looking at them and trying to learn from going to their shows,” Port says.
Port got the opportunity to meet Sprick, who he admires for his portraits and figurative paintings, once in New York at one of the artist’s shows.
Port used to go back and forth between figurative (those featuring a person) and still life paintings. Now, he’s found a way to combine those two elements. In his work, Daughter of Midas, he was able to feature a sculpture of a person. And in his collection Series 1, he uses small statues.
“I finally feel like I’m making the paintings I want now,” he says.
All of Port’s paintings are done in oil on panel or oil on linen. He begins by drawing with a soft graphite pencil. Sometimes he will use a brown India ink to fix the drawing, so it won’t get erased by the first layer of paint, which is mixed with turpentine. He will start painting by blocking the scene with halftones of paint in one color.
Brian Port
From the Mind's Eye
Following that, he uses thicker paint on subsequent layers to do wet into wet painting. Port favors this process because the paint blends easily. After he finishes this, he paints using a walnut alkyd medium to play with the paint’s transparency.
Finally, Port takes a dry brush and scrapes it over the existing paint, creating texture. This process, called scumbling, can be used to modulate value transitions and tone.
A smaller, six-by-six-inch painting might take Port about 25 hours to complete. A 30-by-30-inch work would take him about 175 hours. The longest he’s worked on a painting was 225 hours, on a 16-by-20-inch painting.
Port’s work is very much influenced by God and Biblical truths. Religious symbolism such as rebirth, redemption and resurrection are featured in his work.
“All of my paintings are very spiritual and personal to me,” he says.
Sarah Sole is an editor. Feedback welcome at gbishop@cityscenemediagroup.com.
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