
A few more book paintings recently available through the Elliott Fouts Gallery in Sacramento, California.

Christopher Stott is a contemporary realist painter.
Climbing Higher – 30 x 30, oil on canvas. New work featuring vintage primary readers. Available through the Elliott Fouts Gallery in Sacramento, California.
A few more layers and details on these vintage primary readers, then this one is on the way to the Elliott Fouts Gallery.
These two new paintings are at the Elliott Fouts Gallery in Sacramento, California.
Oh, summer. You make it so hard to stay focussed in the studio. The lure of the sunny beaches and trails to explore. Please grant me a few overcast or rainy days so I can lock myself in the studio for a few hours to finish these paintings.
Once these two paintings are complete, they’ll be heading to the Elliott Fouts Gallery in Sacramento, California.
Here’s a peek at me working on a recent commission – a Bolex Paillard 18-5 8MM film projector form the early 1960s.
The blades are like flower pedals, the body color is a crisp electric blue. This painting of a vintage Electrohome fan is one of a dozen new paintings showing at the George Billis Gallery LA from May 21 – July 2, 2016.
Last year I started painting film projectors after years of seeing them in vintage and antique stores. They have all the trappings of a subject I like to paint.
The reels all have these unique designs. The repeating pie shapes, the circular repetition, the repeating lines on the lamp housing.
The dials, knobs, levers, switches, gears, springs and buttons give the paintings a tactile sensation.
This will sound sentimental, but who cares. I like the thought of how exciting these cameras would have been to a kid who received it as a gift. Back when photography took time, it would have seemed magic. I like the thought that these lenses were the eyes on so many events.
And then there is the fact I can present these objects in such an orderly way. The four cameras are all 3/4 turned, facing to the right. These black cubes, such simple shapes, with the circular flash from the unique Spartus camera. The stack of ten cameras makes a small architectural structure, each with a different facade. The box cameras with their shining brass art deco designs, the different materials used. Composing the cameras this way adds a structure and order.
The materials, their designs, the history and story, their utility as image making tools, cameras are deserving of a portrait.
I have been painting cameras for well over a decade. You can see 40 paintings of cameras I’ve done on good old Flickr.
As with many of my recent paintings, the subjects were found at Everything Old in Brentwood Bay on Vancouver Island.