‍Photorealism — Experience Realism — Discover Art  ‍

Photorealism has deep roots in the 19th-century Realism movement, when artists began shifting away from idealized scenes toward direct observation of the natural world. In France, painters like Gustave Courbet emphasized truthful representation of what they could see rather than what tradition dictated. At the same time, a group of French landscape painters known as the Barbizon School — including Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot and Theodore Rousseau — worked directly from nature in the forests and fields around Forest of Fontainebleau. Their works, such as Ville-d’Avray and The Avenue in the Forest of Fontainebleau, emphasized natural light, atmosphere, and careful observation. Painting outdoors, or en plein air, allowed them to study subtle shifts in color and light firsthand.

This practice spread to the United States, where artists of the Hudson River School such as Frederic Edwin Church and Albert Bierstadt created highly detailed, observational landscapes. While today photorealism often incorporates reference photos, its foundation remains closely tied to this lineage.

In my dedication to photorealism, I have to say it was not born out of the study of this era of artistic history but out of a desire to save unique moments of the Creator’s artistry of nature. It was not until later, the curiosity of the roots of my style led to the research revealing the artists of the past that captured the essence of natural landscapes. I incorporate the plein air studies as they did to capture those unique moments of light, color, and atmosphere as accurately as possible. This painting method sometimes takes north of 250 to 300 hours of extremely small brush strokes but is still a labor of love that gives me a chance to express my appreciation of the beauty around us and hopefully share a special moment that speaks to you as well.