SR: You say your painting style is “Photorealism”.
Where did it come from? What exactly is that?

Artist:  The man who named it is an NYC gallery owner and art agent Louis Meisel.  He’s published books about Photorealism as a valid modern art genre’.  Photo-realism is a name given to the art of making a painting look like a picture taken with a camera.  In other words, the sparkles on the cars I paint pictures of will show prisms and glares very much like those created by light through a camera lens.

SR: So you just copy a picture?

Artist: It should be that easy, Lea. Sometimes I take as many as a hundred plus photos of a car and what it’s reflecting.  Then, there’s the tedious job of sorting through all the photos to find the best of everything to put into the painting.  One photo is selected for composition and the rest for all the details.  Just that takes hours. Then I paint it and the whole thing has to look like a single photo when the painting is finished.  That takes a few hundred hours.

SR: Bob when I look into the reflections I see all kinds of things, even abstract and surrealistic images.

Artist:  ... And impressionism and deco-design and expressionism and the whole 9 yards. How cool is that!  So I paint like a maniac.

SR: Are you obsessive about it?

Artist:  Well, yeah but that’s cool.  I mean, no more or less than any guy restoring his car. It’s a total labor of love, patience and perfection.

SR: That’s how you identify with the car owners?

Artist: To me, they’re fellow artists and craftsmen.