Note: I'm in the process of updating this site, so titles of some artworks are temporarily missing.
Jude Pittman
ARTIST’S STATEMENT 2021
I feel fortunate to be an artist with an inner dialogue, an inner life, who draws a lot. My artworks come from emotional responses to world events, to technology, to artwork I see, to personal experiences, to friends, to trees, to weather. The subject is always an individual person. I make art from a personal and emotional place. The ongoing digital series, IMAGINED AND REMEMBERED PORTRAITS, is my response to not being able to draw people from life due to the pandemic. I paint spontaneously with a finger on a small iPad, often while listening to news and movies. These images are then printed on metal or paper.
Oil paintings from 2020-21 include images of a woman and her dog, hopeful of a returning normality with friends gathering.
Also, 2019-2020 oil paintings began with images of "Burn Days" when we, in the Sierras, are allowed to burn the dead branches of trees that have succumbed to the brutal California drought.
Making a painting is a search for the unifying thread or flow through paint of the three dimensional image on a flat surface. In normal times I use images of people who I draw from life. So the "life force" of the painting is that of the individual who is the model. The physical “pose” of the figure generates the composition. An angle of an arm, a turning of a head, begins the rhythmic application of color. Once begun, the painting has a life of its own and can change quite a bit. The process of painting reveals the unified rhythm or flow of the piece and it is always new to me at its completion.
I also make mosaic murals as public art. When designing for a public piece, I most feel a connection to the community.
My view is looking out rather than in. Subjects are influenced by my investigation of the site, the location. I see and learn new
things and meet new people. It is an expansive experience.