| C.R. Lewis is
a self-taught artist who first felt the pull toward
painting when he took a general art class in the
eighth grade. Then his parents bought him an oil
paint set in high school, and he began to paint
nature. However, it wasn’t until 1990 that he
began to paint in a serious way, this time using
acrylics.
Since then he has developed his own style of painting
which he considers to be a combination of the Hudson
River school, the Barbizon school, and Impressionism.
Bill Havlicek, a writer on art and former curator of the
Riverside Museum, has this to say about his paintings:
“Nature, in all its varied forms, dominates the richly
textured paintings of C.R. Lewis. Strong shadows
play against sun-struck fields of sensuous color
to create a real presence of place and time.
With a sharp eye for detail, Lewis loads his
subjects with extraordinary life and intimacy.
The sun dappled porch or bricked patio are inviting
and reassuring in their personal familiarity.
Atmosphere and its fleeting changes are handled with
the soft brushy quality of the Impressionists, giving
his scenes sparkle and luminosity. Yet, there is also a
strong adherence to the earlier tradition of English
landscape painting, particularly the work of John
Constable. Like Constable, Lewis balances the
free-flowing shapes of nature against the more rigid
forms of architecture to establish formal structure,
weight and dimension.
Lewis’s skill is such that the viewer is transported
into not only seeing nature, but giving the experience
of being in nature. We can feel the gentle currents of
air, gaze on the glossy sheen of reflected water and
inhale the fragrant wildflowers.
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