Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown

[Cindy Procious]

Wow, Alex! This is outstanding! I love the high key colors and your wonderful brushwork.

Thanks for sharing your process for composing your work, too. It's very inspiring.

[Alexandra Tyng]

Thank you all! Your comments are very much appreciated and respected, as you are all wonderful artists.

Terri--I'm glad the painting somehow makes you feel you know them. I wanted to portray them as very approachable and informal, but at the same time as professionals, and that can be a tricky thing.

Debra--I had such a time getting his mouth just right! But in the end it is really his, so I'm glad its idiocyncracies reminded you of your grandfather.

Chris--thank you. I knew I had to include the busy stuff on the table or it wouldn't look like their office. The books I added later (including the title Complexity and Contradiction on top of the pile) because the papers everywhere began to have too much sameness, and I felt there needed to be something with greater weight and darker value in the right bottom corner. The compositions come to me as a whole in my mind, and I'm very flattered that you think I do a decent job with this type of thing because it always feels like such a gamble.

Tom--I really appreciate that you feel the "air." There was so much color and pattern, I was very worried about nailing the subltety of the difference between the values in the foreground compared to those in the background. And thanks, I'm glad their character comes across.

Cindy--It's good to know you like the colors. It was the first time I felt that I succeeded reasonably well at such a high-key busy composition. The clothing was a combination of outfits from two different days. Actually I got a kick out of the pink/blue theme because it's the feminine/masculine theme.

[Ilaria Rosselli Del Turco]

Oh Alex, what an orchestra of colours you have so masterfully played here, and a really well thought out composition.
I love the invitation into the painting, that sheet of paper on the table, but there are a lot of interesting shapes and diagonals, and...
there's so much in here!
Ilaria

[Alexandra Tyng]

Oh, hi, Ilaria, I almost missed your post! Thank you so much. The papers and folders on the table were a lot of fun. They even use a color-coded system of post-it notes that fit right in with the color scheme. Diagonals are one of my favorite things to play with, maybe one of those things that carries over from early childhood. My mother has always been interested in geometry, and I used to listen to her talking about how triangulation strengthened things, so I guess it got into my painting somehow.

[Allan Rahbek]

Alex,
this is such a sweet painting, everything is color. Look how all colors are reflected in the table, wonderful.

Allan

[Carol Norton]

Awesomely inspiring! Everything about the painting gives the feeling of such competence...both of the artist and the subjects!

[Linda Brandon]

This is beautiful, Alex! I love the subtle directionals in the composition and the way you have placed all these wonderful fresh colors. It makes the viewer feel as if this were a table which welcomes him/her. I often find portraits of couples to be difficult to manage and your idea of being engaged in work on a common table is an excellent device.

[Kimberly Dow]

This is a stunner! I am so impressed.

[Garth Herrick]

Bravo, dear Alex!

Well for the architecture and exquisite urban design of a great canvas, you're the best! As others have said, this is a chromatic and spacial tour-de-force. You really captured the Venturi-Scott-Brown's to a real sense of their gentle and yet intensively creative nature.

I can say this because I "met" them at that last annual juried show opening at Woodmere (Art Museum, where they are engaged to design the new wing expansion). I saw them there in the crowd, and actually said hi, in passing. I "knew" them through your portrait in progress at the time. How's that! Then I immediately hunted you down at the opening so excited to tell you that your acclaimed subjects were in the house (Alex gets into all the good art shows)! Like any other celebrities, you can "know" them while they have no clue who you are.

Again, Bravo. You captured them perfectly, based on my momentary encounter.

Garth

[Alexandra Tyng]

Garth, thank you for the over-the-top compliments! It's really nice to know I captured their likenesses well enough that you recognized them at the Woodmere opening. (By the way, speaking of art shows, I seem to recall that you get into them, too!) That was a fun evening at the Woodmere, and I was so surprised to see the Venturi-Scott Browns there after just seeing them in a totally different context.