Classically Influenced: Art by Greg MacNair
Artist Greg MacNair specializes in portraiture and still-life painting. Working in a very classically influenced style, the artist creates oil paintings and charcoal sketches that capture the energy and vitality of every subject.
While our previous feature of Greg’s modern subjects with classical style focused mostly on his portraits, I’m also really impressed by his still life paintings. The arrangements and assemblages of objects are rendered in beautiful detail, with just enough soft blending and evident brush marks to remind the viewer of the painting process, and the artist’s presence in turn. I also appreciate the somewhat novel subjects that Greg chooses for these works – a head of garlic placed adjacent to a seashell, and a paint roller propping up a cut rose, suggest more contemporary painting styles, lending Greg’s blended oils an almost anachronistic touch.
These interesting combinations of objects also give the artist the opportunity (likely a very deliberate opportunity) to explore vastly different textures on the same canvas. To see Greg’s renderings of smooth, transparent glass contrasted with the rough, earthy skin of an onion is a fascinating study.
