Today we’d like to introduce you to Raymond Logan.
Hi Raymond, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
Thank you for having me back! I continue to be a representational oil painter of people, places, and things. A painter who still uses way too much paint. What many of my friends consider to be a year’s worth of paint, wouldn’t last me a month (maybe not even a couple of weeks). Due to a recent gallery show, I had been concentrating on my cityscapes. The exhibit was at the George Billis Gallery/LA in Culver City (yes, that is a shameless plug for my gallery). Since then, I have been shifting my focus to my portraits, with a solo portraiture show happening, hopefully, in the near future. It could be sooner or it could be a little later, that is just the nature of trying to schedule things during these uncertain times. No matter what I have going on, I will always continue to paint my object (things) paintings. Painting different subject matter helps keep me sane and it just seems like the natural thing for me to do. Even though a majority of the intervening time was the notorious Year of the COVID, my existence has changed little. We were warned to stay in as much as possible and limit our contact with other humans. Well, quite frankly, I was already staying in (the studio) as much as possible, which naturally had me limiting contact with my fellow humans. That is my normal existence. I paint as much as I possibly can without having any true grasp of time; at any given moment, you may ask me what day of the week it is and I would have to take a guess at it. I consider myself lucky to be doing the thing I want to do, so I do it as much as I possibly can. Considering that it may pop up in the middle of the week for me, the weekend is only a vague concept in my life’s rearview mirror.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Considering that after about 20 years of working in one field, I chose to completely change vocations, I am not sure I would call it a smooth road. The wonderful thing for me is that my support system is great and is key to me being able to pursue my art. Without that intimate and unflagging support from those close to me, I am not sure I would have made it this far. As struggles go, I guess the main one was just getting down to it; forcing the change and learning how to make my way down a new and unfamiliar path. My current aesthetic came about as a natural result of my openness to color experimentation and my willingness to push-pull-smoosh-schmear-spackle my chosen medium. It feels as if I did not seek my current style, rather, it sought me. To help put my struggles in perspective, I always look around me and remind myself that somebody always has it better and somebody always has it worse. After doing that, focusing on my struggles seems almost silly. The best thing to do is just shut up, take the ball and run (and eat cookies… cookies make everything okay).
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
Whether my subject matter is distinct or mundane, my approach is to present them to you as revered icons. (Maybe lesser saints, but icons nonetheless.) To use an example: My recent exhibit at the George Billis Gallery/LA focused on my cityscapes—one of my favorite subjects—and Southern California’s cities have come through for this native son, supplying me with an abundance of what I consider to be natural icons. While broad cityscapes have their allure, I tend to eschew grand schemes and focus rather on unique individual places. The singularity of these locales heightens the iconographic sense of my work. Again, they may be distinct or mundane, but that is not what matters to me. What matters is that something about them caught my eye strongly enough to stop me and make me take a closer look at them. I study them, sometimes for years, and when the time is right, I apply my personal aesthetic to them. This iconographic sense is also how I approach my portraits and my object paintings.
We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
There are different ways to define success. Here is my shortlist that is not necessarily in order of importance.
1) Being asked to do another interview by VoyageLA is pretty darn nice.
2) As with so many of my fellow artists, I am just happy to be able to wake up every morning and go into my studio and work. That is a monumental success for me and it makes me feel very lucky and not just a bit spoiled.
3) The fact that my lovely wife has not left me is probably the most important success of mine and—dang—I should have listed it first. Whenever a friend that I have not seen for a while shows up, they all usually say the same thing: “Wow, she’s still here? Man, you are one lucky so and so!” By the way, I wholeheartedly agree with them.
4) Hopefully, whether I am painting a person, place or a thing, I am successful in expressing my aesthetic so that when somebody views my work, they will know it is mine—they will be able to see me in it. I may have said this in my previous interview, but it bears repeating. A while back, I received a great compliment that made me feel I may have achieved or am at least close to achieving that goal. After viewing a new piece of mine, a fellow artist commented, “It is great, as is the rest of your work, I like your work because you can walk into a room of a thousand works and go right to yours and know who did it!” I don’t know about you, but I think that is pretty cool.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.raymondlogan.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/raymond_logan_artist
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/raymondlogan.artist
- Youtube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCHV3u1-w2qreoigGpQLLxiA
- Other: 1stDibs: www.1stdibs.com/creators/raymond-logan/art
Gallery representation: George Billis Gallery LA / www.georgebillis.com
ARTSY: www.artsy.net/artist/raymond-logan
Image Credits:
Artist Portrait: The Spousal Unit
