One of the categories, actually more correctly a subcategory of the New Realism of the ’70s and ’80s, is "Sharp Focus" or "Meticulous Realism," and one of its champions is Kent Bellows. Bellows’s technique is noteworthy; he is among the most skilled masters in the medium of graphite on paper, and he has recently translated his meticulous approach into the oil medium. His images in graphite on paper challenge the viewer’s belief that they are not 'art' photography. They also beg reflection on the term drawing, especially since it is commonly associated with the medium of graphite on paper and in common usage signals sketches or preparatory images for finished work. (Drawing by definition is the formation of a representation in which delineation plays a determining part.)

Bellows is a master of the human figure as well. Wherever he casts his penetrating artist’s eye, his subject is scrutinized with the same intensity as he applies to the craftsmanship of his works.

It may seem an understatement to note that the image of the female nude is ubiquitous in the visual arts, and, Kent Bellows, whose work is quite comprehensively represented in the Seavest Collection, has seemingly run a gamut of interpretation in his Ïuvre to date. His early images, such as November, Composition with Roses (1990), focus on physical beauty, vulnerability, tender emotion, and romantic love. The seminude subject, her face turned from the viewer, is yet one more "bud" in the universe of real and imaginary flowers that both dominates the picture and confounds our notion of identifiable space. Like the ‘wallpaper’ roses ready to bloom and the clusters of dried roses hanging above her head, she, too, seems to be caught between yearning and sleep, between love and death. Through technique and a most clever memento mori Bellows tips his hat to the 15th century Flemish Masters.

In Madolin (1992, Seavest Collection), Bellows explores the provocative. The flawless face of a young girl with a stirring glance is seen through branches of a thorny cactus. In No Heat (1995, Seavest Collection), a headless, body-pierced nubile female dominates both the picture plane and the artist, who cowers in a corner seeking warmth (in the full sense of the term) from an old electric heater. The star- and planet-filled firmament that surrounds them hosts a new constellation, a veritable late-twentieth-century apocalyptic woman - "tough" rival for the ancient Ariadne, Virgo, et al. Even though Bellows has shifted to oil paint as a medium, his work remains insistently monochromatic; but in oil he is able to create the more ominous mood of the moment. Sarah in Winter is equally tough. The season is suggested in the deep, dark red background against which the pitch of the nude figure is set. The title is surely a conceit referencing the frigidity of the atmosphere as well as the season.

©by Virginia Anne Bonito, revised "Get Real" Bellows essay, April 23, 2000.

 

For a more detailed printed view of the collection order the book:
	Get Real: Contemporary American Realism from the Seavest Collection Virginia Anne Bonito. Foreword by Michael Philip Mezzatesta, pp. 138, 68 colorplates, 2 b/w photographs Exhibition at DUMA April 4-July 6, 1997. Hard cover $40.00 Soft cover $25.00 To order contact: Duke University Museum of Art Click on Publications