Paint Fidelity: Alan Jardine

 

Cornelius “Neil” Drafton – “The Contrarian”

New Jersey Review of Applied Kitsch
Specialty: Brutally dismissive, but in a way that’s unintentionally hilarious.

“Paint Fidelity Series: Alan Jardine, Rumpeltized”

I am told the image on the right is the original photograph and the image on the left is the artistic interpretation. This is fortunate, because otherwise I would have assumed the photograph was the artist's failed attempt at realism.

Mr. Rumpelton has once again demonstrated his unique ability to take a perfectly serviceable human likeness and subject it to the visual equivalent of a long, confusing conversation with a malfunctioning photocopier. The result is undeniably Alan Jardine, provided one is willing to accept the concept of Alan Jardine as interpreted by someone who has only heard him described over the telephone.

And yet—and this is where I reluctantly find myself in disagreement with my own considerable skepticism—there is something strangely successful here. The expression survives. The posture survives. Even the general atmosphere survives. The painting has not reproduced the photograph so much as remembered it incorrectly.

This, apparently, is Paint Fidelity: fidelity not to the image itself, but to the vague and increasingly unreliable memory of having once looked at it.

I hate to admit it, but I may be beginning to understand what Rumpelton is doing.

I shall try not to let this happen again.

                               Long Live Ralph...........Be Dead or Alive