The Haunted Studio: Titian

" .. Magically, Connor whisks away the artifice of art history to forge some deeper connections, and makes us smile all the while." - Eric P. Nash - The New York Times (read complete review )

The Haunted Studio series is an homage to the extraordinary artists in whose intimidating shadow I work and play. Beginning with self-portraits of Rembrandt, Van Gogh and Cezanne, and others, it now expands to include familiar faces from famous paintings, saints, cardinals, popes, kings and just ordinary people.

For me, to copy is more than to study, or to piggy-back on the glory of the past -- it’s a kind of time-travel, fantasy encounters with heroes, letting me tread some halting steps along the path they walked. It deepens a sense of empathy with both the artists and their subjects, who, in the long history of time, were here just yesterday.

I’m present in these pictures through the way they are designed and through the limitations of my technique.  If I wanted to, or could, make exact replicas, I would disappear from the meeting.

Sometimes I feel like a folk artist who has cluttered up the house collecting favorite images and finally decides to stitch them together into patchwork quilts.

When I was a child I collected baseball cards – eventually, Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams were replaced in my hall of fame by the major artists. Now their faces and their subjects are staring at me from my studio walls, it’s easier than ever to imagine them saying, “What do you think you’re doing, boy?”

Peter Hoving’s new 13 minute video essay about my work, The Haunted Studio of Russell Connor, has been selected for the 26th Festival of Films on Art, Montreal, March 6-16, 2008. View a web version here (broadband required)