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F OR THESE PAINTERS, color
did not have to be natu-ralistic.
Rather than restrict
their understanding of it
to a component of rep-resentation,
the Fauvists
believed that color could stand alone
on a canvas as an independent element,
indicating mood or creating composi-tional
balance and structure.
Andre Derain, co-founder of the
Fauvist movement, described the paint-ing
style and philosophy as volatile
and explosive: “For us Fauvism was like
an ordeal by fire … our paints became
sticks of dynamite. They were supposed
to explode with light.”
Famous Fauvist works like Matisse’s
“Le Bonheur de Vivre” (The Joy of Life)
and Derain’s “Mountains at Collioure”
do seem to vibrate with an intensity of
color and emotive quality akin to an
explosion.
Inspiration from the Fauves is evident
in all of Schaefer’s works, which feature
vibrant, saturated colors, and manipu-lated
dimensions and space. His series
from Fort Fisher echoes Derain’s under-standing
of color.
In these and several others, Schaefer’s
style takes inspiration from another
painting technique developed around of
the turn of the century called Pointillism.
This technique, made popular by
Georges Seurat, involves the creation of
an image out of several unconnected
dots. It relies on the ability of the eye to
piece together the pattern and read it as
a whole.
The Fauvists often used pointillism, as
it allowed them to give color, rather than
naturalism, a central role in the creation
of the image.
Schaefer works almost exclusively
from black-and-white photographs, one
of many techniques that allows him to
focus on color.
“Ninety-five percent of the time, I
work from black-and-white photos, so
I am almost always creating the entire
color world from the beginning,” he says.
“Since I’m using color to portray texture,
depth, cold, warm, I have an arsenal of
variety to express those things.”
Fort Fisher #1, 24 x 36 inches, oil on canvas.
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