Paintings by Ralph Della-Volpe - Fine art paintings for sale, direct from the artist.

MY APPROACH

      The process of making a work of art varies from artist to artist. Below is how I develop a painting from beginning to a finished work of art.

      All my paintings are started with observations from nature. The paintings are meant to be expressions of a mood that I feel at the time of that observation and are not meant to be literal detailed descriptions of nature. The emphasis is on color, light, and especially composition; for it is the composition that makes the expression in a work of
art, not the subject matter.

      The process of combining different pictorial elements will bring the work of art to another level of comprehension. To begin that process, I make many drawings in black and white as well as color that allow me to familiarize and saturate myself with the subject at hand. This is essential because there will be many pictorial problems to solve as the painting progresses. The series of sketches fully evolve into a “viewpoint” I should take to create a composition that best expresses the mood.

      The painting will go through many changes and adjustments in order to arrive at the correct expression. Large simplified areas are used to build up the composition. The shapes of these large areas unite the composition and create massive movement to keep the eye moving. I use color in an arbitrary manner. This gives me more freedom and greater creative selectivity. Aesthetics plays an underlying important part in all my decisions.

      I have been influenced by many artists but especially Edwin Dickinson, for his sensitive tones that he found in nature, Picasso for his courage to pursue new daring ideas and Albert Pinkham Rider for his insistence on pushing a painting as far as you can—“there is no compromise”.

                  -Ralph Della-Volpe