Artist of the month - August - Herb Eaton

I have a largish collection of paintings, somewhere around 2,000 paintings, so thought I would try highlighting one artist from my existing collection each month, explaining why I like their work. I will also alternate between living, active artists and deceased artists whose work is still relatively easy to find and affordable.

For August, I picked Herb Eaton. He is a local, Central Illinois, full time artist, a painter and metal sculptor. I know him and have been an occasional speaker at his gallery meetings. There are several things that I like about his work. The textures of his canvases (he primarily works in oils on canvas) are very complex and deep. He applies several layers of paint, periodically scraping away and applying layers of paint to obtain the colors and textures he wants to achieve. I know of very few artists who work this way. His style is both realism and fantasy. I am a fan of is realism work. He paints real places to which he feels an emotional connection, sometimes starting his works there and completing them in his studio. The result is deeply complex and emotional with subtle, but rich, color combinations. It is easy to be deeply drawn into his paintings. Something else which I really like is that he makes his own frames, typically from oak, so you see his work exactly the way that he intended it to be seen. His frames are also a work of art, and I sometimes find myself just looking at the detail of the frame, which I would normally not do with a frame not created by the artist. In a nutshell, I like the complexity, colors, textures, emotional content and presentation of his work.

A brief biography from my web site:

Herb Eaton was born in 1949 in Peoria, Illinois. He received an MFA in sculpture and drawing from Illinois State University in 1974. Herb was a student of Harold Gregor and he and his wife operate a gallery around the corner from the Gregor Gallery in Bloomington, IL. See Herb's web site for more of his work. He is listed in Davenport's Art Reference and Price Guide for his work as a sculptor. To date he has preferred to not exhibit his work in other galleries outside of Bloomington.

http://www.eatonstudiogallery.com/