Chazz Collage

I am inspired by the masterful use of color of Claude Monet, Henri Matisse and André Derain; by the fearless intensity of experimentation and the simplicity of line of of Pablo Picasso; by the expressive brush work of Vincent van Gogh, John Singer Sargent and Joaquin Sorolla; the strong tonal values of Rembrandt; and by the colorful joie de vivre of LeRoy Neiman. I work across multiple media, blending the beauty, quality and texture of analog media with the spontaneity, power and versatility of digital art tools in creating expressive contemporary portraiture. I’m originally from London and have now made San Francisco my home. My journey of making art started with drawing from imagination as a child which developed into a passion for drawing portraits and figures from life. I studied life drawing, sculpture and etching at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford, U.K., while earning a degree in Physics from Pembroke College, Oxford University. I then studied lithography and life drawing at the Vrije Academie, The Hague, The Netherlands, before moving to the heart of Silicon Valley, California, in 1988. I was first introduced to using the computer as a fine art tool in 1991, and have been exploring the digital art medium ever since, using, teaching, demonstrating and performing with every version of Painter from version 1 onwards. After a career selling superconducting magnets for Physics research, I became a full time professional artist in 1994. Recent projects have included being commissioned to paint a large Heart, purchased by Visa Corporation and placed on Union Square in the center of San Francisco, as part of San Francisco General Hospital’s Hearts in San Francisco program, performing live action painting as a tableau vivant at the de Young and Legion of Honor Museums (creating studio tableaus and portraying the historical artists Edgar Degas, Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse) and performing live digital painting for clients ranging from Cirque du Soleil (at the TOTEM show in their Tapis Rouge tent in San Francisco) to Oracle (at Oracle World) and the largest custom car show on earth, SEMA in las Vegas.