BY PAT SUMMERS
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
N.J. ARTISTS
Llamas from a New Jersey farm are pictured high in the Andes of South America. Two women singing their hearts out under a full moon had actually performed impromptu at a band concert in Maine. And a couple people conversing on the street never existed at all.
The subjects shown in Tom Chesar’s paintings are often space and time travelers. And yet they look so realistic – which is exactly what the artist intends.
“It starts with something real,” he explains, “then I distill it through my own psyche” for what eventually becomes his image. That accounts for the llamas’ relocation to a place where they’re free and contentedly being hand-fed. And there were no people near the Lambertville storefronts till Chesar decided they were needed.
He cites “trusting his inner consciousness as a source of subject matter” in his artist’s statement about the three concepts underlying most of his paintings.
Because what he paints is recognizable – farm buildings, a train, a country landscape -- Chesar’s work might be described as figurative, even though his images are often amalgams of things he’s seen and elements he has imagined. So, then, “figurative-plus?”
