Quietly Exuberant: A Drawing Portfolio by Tony Ziegler
Tony Ziegler is a traditional artist and illustrator who has exhibited mainly in New York and Massachusetts. In his practice, the artist uses a variety of two-dimensional drawing materials -- such as graphite, pencil crayon, and acrylic paint-- to produce thoughtful, quietly exuberant slice-of-life scenes and portraits.
I really enjoy the way Tony uses colour in his works -- the artist goes beyond simply capturing the realistic colours of his subjects and instead expresses a knowledge of colour theory through bright abstract patterns and backgrounds behind his portrait subjects. The artist’s skill with colour also comes into play in his drawings and paintings of city streets and shopfronts, where the artist draws the viewer’s eye with brightly coloured and text-adorned awnings.
The illustrative style that Tony employs throughout his portfolio walks a line between realistic and stylized. The compositions often look simple at first, but as the viewer examines each work they are treated to layers upon layers of fine detail that give a complete sense of the location in real life.
