Rainer Andreesen Studio Visit with Visual Language Magazine

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Visual Language

December 2014 Volume 3 No. 12

Rainer Andreesen

contemporary fine art

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http://www.obra-de-gonzalez.com/

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Rainer Andreesen In the Studio - Photo by John Balsom

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Any Colour You Like

The Haunting, and the Happiness, of Rainer Andreesen as told to Dave Justus Prince Rupert is, quite literally, the end of the road for a coastal island on the northwestern coast of British Columbia, 500 miles north of Vancouver, Canada. I was born there in 1963, and spent an interesting childhood in this remote, unique, relatively wealthy town. Prince Rupert was basically a fishing village at a time where there was a great deal of money to be had in that industry. I found myself attending high school with friends that made $250,000 in a summer fishing. Instinctively, though, I knew at a young age that theirs was not the life I wanted, and so I tried to find what interested me in a path to my own happiness.

Art was my salvation. I felt truly at home in my heart while drawing or painting. I had no idea of where it would lead me, yet somehow I knew that it was my ticket to see the world beyond the small island on which I grew up on.

After graduating from high school in Prince Rupert, I went to art school in Vancouver. I remember being terrified at the challenge of not really knowing how I was going to turn my love of art into a stable career. I ended up taking a three-year intense graphic design program at Capilano University in Vancouver, which honed my skills in illustration and design before directing me into a career in advertising. I worked for an advertising agency for two years and then moved to a design studio for two more, while maintaining my own clients for corporate design and illustration. Eventually, I ended up opening my own design studio while spending what little free time I had painting portraits on the side. I found myself bogged down with the design work; although I loved it, I also felt pressured by the changing, computerdriven design world. When I’d graduated from art school in 1986, computer design had not been part of the curriculum. I have since incorporated computers as a helpful tool for drafting compositions before they reach the canvas, but back then, they seemed more of an obstacle than a boon.

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At that time, one of my clients was a fashion photographer who asked me to model for a project she was working on. The notion came out of left field; I had never once considered modeling as a career.

That job led to a department store campaign that featured me on billboards all over Vancouver. A scout from Italy saw the billboards and asked me to come to Milan with a modeling contract. I thought it was the perfect opportunity to travel abroad and left for Italy on what I thought would be a two-month adventure. Two years later, I was a successful model traveling the world and eventually found myself living in New York. My time there—and all the travels that had led to that point—had provided me with a life far afield from where I’d started and full of inspiration and adventure. My modeling career was going very well; I was working for top designers such as Armani, Valentino, Zegna, and Gucci. I ended up with a contract for Saks Fifth Avenue in New York while at the same time working for J.Crew, L.L.Bean, and Eddie Bauer, among many other catalog companies. Even today, I am as surprised at my continued success in the field as I was at that very first job offer.

Right Page: La Gitana

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Rainer Andreesen

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Any Colour You Like

Ken Olin 48 X 60 Oil on Canvas RainerArt.com

The Haunting, and the Happiness, of Rainer Andreesen After a while, though, I found myself missing the actual painting of portraits. I have been obsessed with portraiture as far back as I can remember (which may not be saying much, as my memory seems to be fading fast), and although I kept a sketchbook throughout my travels, nothing for me was as satisfying as painting. After six years in New York, I took a break from modeling and moved to Los Angeles with my partner, actor Victor Garber, to concentrate on my paintings of portraiture. With all my adventures and inspiration from my travels, the brush became my guide to paint what I had built up inside me. I had started with watercolors, but made the switch to oils and never looked back, feeling they were the best medium to express what I needed to get onto the canvas. I painted constantly for the next eight years, doing commissions and working on my first solo show.

During this time, I brought forth a series of paintings that I felt had always been deep in my soul, of portraits in black and white. This Gray Matter series explored the humanity of a portrait and its perception by the viewer. I listened to, and meditated on, Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon album every morning and while I painted each portrait.

It was one of the best and deepest experiences I have ever had while painting. The show was a success beyond my wildest expectations. The turnout of people—including Ben Affleck, Martin Short, Steve Martin, Sean Hayes, Alec Baldwin, and Tom Hanks—was amazing, and the show sold half of its inventory in the first night. To say that I was humbled is an understatement. I am not someone who looks for acclaim in the art world; I don’t enter portrait compositions or artist workshops to gain a name or reputation. My goal is to paint what I see in the world and how I see it according to my own eyes, and hope that someone can respond to it.

The fact that so many did, and continue to, is enormously gratifying to me as an artist.

I am still working on commissions from that show, although I have moved back to New York. In 2009, Victor and I bought a house in upstate New York as a getaway from the city, and I converted the carriage house into a studio. Half of my time is now spent modeling again after my eight-year hiatus, and the other half with painting in my upstate studio. I find it to be a great balance to live in Manhattan, with all its attendant energy, and to travel to the unique locales where I model, allowing all of those experiences to flow into my paintings.

Ken 48 X 60 Oil on Canvas

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The Haunting, and the Happiness, of Rainer Andreesen

Victor Reading Oil on Canvas

Inspiration for my art comes from so many sources—from other artists, to musicians, to encounters I can scarcely explain. By far, my most constant inspiration is famous portraitist John Singer Sargent, but I am also sparked by his contemporaries George Bellows and Anders Zorn, as well as the recently departed Lucian Freud.

I often make a musical playlist for each particular painting I am working on. Depending on the moods and themes I’m trying to achieve, the song selection can range from classical to singer-songwriter, from haunting melodies to straight-up rock ’n’ roll, or may be centered around a single recording artist. For the Gray Matter series, Pink Floyd was the perfect companion to the haunted mood I was striving to create with each portrait.

The album spoke to me, and complemented the underlying theme of the show, with its commentary on society and how we see it. With the painting of my partner Victor, I listened to classical music from start to finish.

His portrait demanded long hours of concentration for me, reflected in lengthy symphonic movements… and classical music also reflects his personality, as he listens to it constantly in his free time. I also threw in a few of his own Broadway recordings from time to time, such as “Johanna” from Sweeney Todd and “The Ballad of Booth” from Assassins. It helped me break up the process a bit and get inspired by the voice of the talented man I was painting.

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Andrew 48 X 60 Oil on Canvas RainerArt.com

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Rainer Andreesen

Victor Reading Oil on Canvas

Whoopi RainerArt.com 20 X 24 Oil on Canvas

Clive Davis 18 X 24 Oil on Board

The painting of music producer Clive Davis was done while listening to the wide variety of artists whose careers he is responsible for cultivating, such as Simon and Garfunkel, Santana, Janis Joplin, Aretha Franklin, and Whitney Houston, to name but a few. Whoopi Goldberg was painted while I listened to the soundtrack of The Color Purple. The photo I used for that piece had been taken at the time when she had filmed the movie, and the music provided a great way to hold onto her spirit while painting it. Unless a certain portrait requires a specific genre of music, I enjoy painting mostly to a haunting playlist of such artists as Radiohead, Ray LaMontagne, James Vincent McMorrow, Gustavo Santaolalla, and of course Pink Floyd. The landscape paintings and still lifes are usually started with classical music, but can slip into singer-songwriters if the mood reflects it.

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Any Colour You Like

Top Left: Robin Wright 20 x 24 Oil on Board Top Right: John Glover Study Bottom Left: JBH “The Waiting” 24 x 30 Oil on Linen

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The Haunting, and the Happiness, of Rainer Andreesen

Diana 24 x 30 Oil on Linen RainerArt.com

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Any Colour You Like

Perhaps there is a reason I keep returning to music that gives me a haunted feeling. The upstate house that Victor and I bought once belonged to legendary burlesque entertainer Gypsy Rose Lee in the late 1930s. In the first few months of our residency, I painted the interior of the house, along with doing a few other repairs that needed attention. During this time, I felt that there was a nonthreatening presence in the house, occupying the third floor. I was uncomfortable with the thought, but I always felt welcomed in the home by the presence. One night, while in a restless sleep, I awoke to see a ghostly, ashen figure floating at the foot of my bed.

I felt conflicting emotions of shock and comfort… but at the same time, I did not like that the presence had found its way to my bedroom, as I had locked the door to the third floor every night. That image was to haunt me for some time.

As an epilogue of sorts to this ghost story, a year or so later I approached a girl at my New York gym, something I never do, and asked if I could paint her.

She agreed, but after many attempts in my New York City studio, I did not feel that I captured her. I finally did a large painting in my studio upstate and found that suddenly the portrait worked. I hung the painting in my bedroom upstate, because the background seemed to match the wall color there. One night I awoke to see the same pale, ashen-dressed figure I had glimpsed two years previously… but this time, thankfully, it was only my painting.

Through a neighbor and our landscaper, I later learned that the ghost was not on the third floor, but in our bedroom on the second story. Intrigued but hesitant, I began to investigate the ghost’s existence. My neighbor told me of three deaths in the house; the ghost was the first of these. Ginny Augustin—herself an artist—had died there, though reports vary as to whether it was by murder or suicide.

After three months of our fixing the property up and almost finishing the interior painting, a fire struck the house. Three quarters of the outside walls remained, and the top floor was gone. Investigators attributed it to old wiring, but I felt sure it was Ginny.

Though I hoped her ghost was gone after the fire, I still felt a chill in my spine every time I approached the property. I worked in the studio while the house was being rebuilt, but continued to feel apprehensive until the old plumbing and wiring were hauled away. I remember that moment clearly: After a day of painting, I headed to the house without a shiver in my spine. I knew, at last, that Ginny was gone.

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The Ghost Paintings Series 1

The Haunting, and the Happiness, of Rainer Andreesen

The Ghost Paintings Series 2

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Rainer Andreesen

Brooks back stage 20 X 24 Oil on Board Right: Giaunluca 24 X 30 Oil on Linen RainerArt.com

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Any Colour You Like

Morning light 24 X 24 Oil on Canvas

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The Haunting, and the Happiness, of Rainer Andreesen

Nathan Lane 30 X 40 Oil on Linen RainerArt.com

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Rainer Andreesen

My partner of 15 years, Victor Garber, influences much of my work. He is like a second pair of eyes to me, often coming into the studio and commenting on the paintings I am working on. His fresh eyes are able to tell me what is wrong or right with each painting in progress, and he is usually able to pinpoint something that I can’t see after living with a painting for a long period of time. I sometimes use a mirror to reflect the image I’ve painted—a helpful method of seeing a change I need to make if I can’t figure it out otherwise—but Victor is the mirror I trust the most. His influence also inspires me in many different ways. His Broadway background leads us to see many shows together, which give me a rush of influence that seems to filter into my paintings. Most recently, we saw Tom Stoppard’s Indian Ink, a drama—featuring, incidentally, a portrait painter—which dove into my soul, pushing me to rush to my studio to paint more of what I feel, rather than what I know. Victor and I also visit museums, both in New York and on our travels, with hours of discussion afterward. His views and insightfulness always seem to come into my head while I am painting. He helps me mentally when I get overwhelmed with a painting or with our busy schedules by calming me down and getting me to look at what is most important at the time.

I am inspired by my blessed and wonderful life in every moment that passes, and I use that as a deep well from which to draw. I often find myself looking at my everyday experiences through a brush and a canvas, with the hope that this shows in every painting I create. The experience and life in a subject I paint has to come across in the final piece. This is what I always strive to produce. To not only capture the likeness of the person, but to capture the soul and spirit, is the most fulfilling feeling I could ever want and need when I paint a portrait.

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Self Portrait 20 X 24 Oil on Canvas Board

Right: Victor 24 X 30 Oil on Canvas

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