Patrick Deshaye
(Hillsboro, OR)
patrickdeshaye.com

Laura Semireclined on Blue, Oil on Masonite Panel, 14" x 11" x 0.25"
Laura modeling at Hipbone Art Studio in Portland, OR, April 2023 sessions.

Drawing and painting figures in group studio environments has been a passion of mine for nearly four decades. My approach has always been somewhat "artless" insofar as, though I have been well informed on the "correct" ways to draw and paint (as indicated by numerous books and demonstrations from better people than myself) I persist in pushing my media around in naive and brutally inadvisable ways. Indeed, any accomplished or expert oil painter observing my practices would likely say that I make every mistake a painter can make! Regardless, I am often so energized by the inspiring experience of the figure studio that in response I become thoroughly crude and disorganized in the handling of my materials… and loving it! Though my process often deteriorates into painting with my fingers, or using dirty rags and broken toothpicks (and sometimes even paintbrushes), that misbegotten process is mine alone (and I do not recommend it to anyone). I temperamentally resist correction and have become very comfortable with the natural clumsiness of my own creative efforts. In keeping with my generally contrarian attitudes, I recently began to deliberately position myself in studio locations where awkward perspective and radical foreshortening effects would be the most dire, and found striking compositions emerging as a result. It is an irony that some of the least desirable vantages may provide some of the most compelling views and images.