Jim Rosenthal, Fine Artist
Works in Stone, Glass, Metal
Travel Photography and Painting
Paintings - oils, mixed media, aquarelles/watercolors
Oil Paintings:
Many of my painting ideas come from my travels, deep sea scuba diving, European cultural sites, exotic destinations. I always pack a watercolor sketchbook and aquarelles with me during may travels. Each evening I will sketch some of the notable scenes from the day, which I can paint with watercolors/aquarelles. On each trip I will compile a number of sketches and quick paintings. I can later develop these into larger pieces.
The first painting, a school jacks, was inspired by an encounter in the Galapagos islands when I swam right through a large ball of these silvery fish. I was completely surrounded and I could feel the undulating fish as they brushed past me. The experience reminded me of a painting by the Dutch painter M. C. Escher of a flock of birds that flips into a school of fish depending on how you look at it. Although the fish were actually silver in color, I decided to give them a fuller spectrum of colors.
This second painting of two nurse sharks is actually a composite of different reef corals and sponges that I’ve seen on different dive sites around the globe, and a small land crab from Tobago scurrying among the plate corals on the left. One aspect of perspective underwater is that things farther away appear bluer as the longer wavelength colors - red, orange, and yellow - are filtered out by the water.
The third painting is of an open-air market on the island of Domenica, sometimes referred to as the Hawaii of the Caribbean because of its many mountains, numerous rivers and waterfalls. You can see that the asphalt of the market appears shiny, due to frequent short rain showers which occur as the air cools in the mountains, dropping brief bursts of rain onto the verdant landscape below.
The fourth painting shows Luxembourg Garden in Paris, France. Built at the request of Marie de Medici in the early 1600’s, the Palace Luxembourg served as her home. Today, it is used by the French senate. Adjacent to the palace is the Grand Bassin, which is used in summer months for children to sail wooden boats which can be rented by the hour from a boat vender on site. Within the 65 acres of the park are both formal English and French gardens.In this painting, my wife and sons can be seen at the far side of the boat pond. Various people are seen walking through the near side, as well as a painter with an easel.
The final oil painting here shows an iceberg off the coast of Newfoundland. I have been very fortunate to have traveled on the polar waters of Newfoundland, Greenland, Svalbard, Antarctica, and South Georgia Island. I have seen many icebergs and one of the truly fascinating - and unexpected -things is that they are not pure white. Due to tremendous pressure on the ice during their formation, icebergs are optically quite dense and often have an aqua color, or even light violet. They are a striking sight against the dark ocean and typically cloudy skies of the high latitudes.