The art of perspective
Charles Newman, Sunny Day Mill, oil, 24 x 36.
This story was featured in the December 2019/January 2020 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art December 2019/January 2020 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.
PLEIN-AIR ARTIST Charles Newman has worn many hats in life: mural restoration specialist, custom framer and furniture maker, art instructor, father. These days the award-winning artist continues to stay busy as a full-time carpenter, fitting in his passion for painting whenever and wherever he can. In the quiet evening hours, after his kids have gone to bed, Newman likes to set up his oil paints at his dining-room table and dash off a still life or interior scene in the alla prima style.
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- Charles Newman, Skid Jack, oil, 12 x 12.
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- Charles Newman, All Wet Under the Train, oil, 12 x 16.
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- Charles Newman, BFF, oil, 18 x 24.
Much more frequently, however, Newman paints outside the walls of his home. The artist lives in Haddon Township, NJ, a suburb located just across the Delaware River from downtown Philadelphia. Philly’s urban and industrial locales especially appeal to Newman, and he also gravitates toward old towns with history and character, like Gloucester City in South Jersey. When it comes to inspiration, “it’s just something that speaks to you,” he says. “You know right away what you want to capture.”
Sometimes it takes a while for Newman to find just the right subject. At the Plein Air Easton event in Maryland this past July, he spent a few hours searching for the perfect scene to paint on the waterfront campus of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels. The venue is popular with plein-air painters, says the artist, but nothing there piqued his own interest. So he returned to an old gristmill nearby that he had noticed earlier. “I drove by it a couple of times, and the industrial buildings there caught my eye,” says Newman, who spent the next few days capturing the scene en plein air. SUNNY DAY MILL, which garnered second place overall in the prestigious competition, reveals Newman’s penchant for subtly bending some of his compositions into curvilinear, fisheye perspectives.
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- Charles Newman, Copper and Steel, oil, 16 x 12.
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- Charles Newman, Cutts & Case & Press, oil, 20 x 16.
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- Charles Newman, Gloucester City True Grit, oil, 24 x 32.
Capturing unique views, in fact, is one of the artist’s specialties. Just a few months after Plein Air Easton, Newman scooped up another second-place award at Cape Ann Plein Air for an impressionistic harbor scene he painted while standing on a ladder he totes in his car on plein-air excursions. When a scene requires a view from higher ground, “I’ll take it out,” says the artist, who built a special platform for his easel that locks onto the ladder rungs. “It gives me more options for vantage points.” —Kim Agricola
representation
F.A.N. Gallery, Philadelphia, PA; McBride Gallery, Annapolis, MD;
www.charlesnewmanarts.com.
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- Charles Newman, Just a Matter of Time, oil, 16 x 20.
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- Charles Newman, Pallets and Pilings, oil, 18 x 24.
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- Charles Newman, Train Towers, oil, 18 x 24.
This story was featured in the December 2019/January 2020 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art December 2019/January 2020 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.
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