Often the message of a commercial advertisement contains a fundamental truth — people wouldn’t be tempted to consume advertised products if it wasn’t so. We may feel uneasy about the intermarriage of commercialism with our lives, with being tagged as “target audience” and so on but then, our lifestyle depends on it. Deprecation of consumerism in prosperous nations has long ago turned into righteous blathering lacking any real plan in dealing with the phenomenon. What we need, I believe, is a proactive reflection and actions that interpret and study the trend, not words. Alvin Richard does his part by examining how that basic human urge to seek pleasure and enjoyment, mixed with the secret Coca-Cola ingredients, stands the test of his brush.
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These contemplative pieces conjoin portraits with detailed scenery into felicitous combinations. Compositional harmony transcends into an atmospheric psychic quality, where calm and confidence interlock and create tight and streamlined mental images of peace, and faith into what the future portends. We directly witness the artist’s interest in subtle psychological exploration, covert in still life due to the absence of human subjects. In some ways, people from the audience were the “models” for the florals, literally subjected to strong light effects; here the artist abandons drastic contrasts to make room for the children, and draw some general conclusions from the way they blend with their surroundings.
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Alvin Richard (visit his website and blog) is a Canadian self taught artist who paints still life, urban and outdoor scenes with exuberant optimism and such an unflinching energy and directness as to unveil before the viewer a bonanza of life’s sparkling possibilities. As a skillful photorealist, he renders transparent and metallic objects with meticulous accuracy — but they are rarely the focus of his paintings. To produce multi-layered, sometimes labyrinth compositions he assembles areas of color, arranging them in geometrically complex structures, not without a hint of the abstract. Light shines through these transformations as the unifying force that binds all elements together into pulsating and vibrant works of art, such as these florals
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