"Respect Your Elders"
by Tennessee Loveless
Serigraph on Canvas
Signed by the Artist
Limited Edition of 195
Size: 30" x 30"
Unframed
Tennessee Loveless is
a Los Angeles based contemporary pop artist whose bold use of color and
pattern evokes an immediate visual impact to the viewer, but also
creates a poetic irony when one considers the fact that Loveless has
limited achromatopsia colorblindness (almost complete colorblindness).
Despite many obstacles throughout his life and career he has persevered
in pursuing his career as an artist. He is driven by his passion for
painting people and iconic fictional characters in a way that strikes an
emotional and nostalgic connection through the power of the one thing
he is blind to.
His new collection from Disney Fine Art
explores his interest in high color and pattern saturated concepts. His
primary focus at the moment is classic characters from the era of 1928 -
1945, Disney Villains, and Alice in Wonderland. Outside of his
collaboration with Disney, Tennessee paints portraits of West Coast
drag, cabaret, and celebrity personalities.
As a child growing up in Marietta,
Georgia, Tennessee watched his peers identify and collect information
based on this “invisible force” that people called color. He began to
work within two worlds, one that operated within his own vision and
perception and the other which he created in his attempts to relate to
the rest of the world. This disconnect later ruptured a fascination with
the unknown and he began to feverishly occupy his mind with the
fundamental understanding of a chromatic world.
Tennessee's inability to distinguish
most hues has never swayed him from creating art. If any thing, his
disconnect from this in his early years made him obsessed with the
forming of patterns, objects and shapes. He became attracted to the
destruction of white space and became captivated with the idea of
filling anything lacking in form with pattern. Later in life, he began
attaching color to his subjects as he learned in color theory books
which hues complimented or contrasted each other appropriately.
He also communicates hue choices
through an objective and synesthetic nature. The essence of his work is
largely dedicated to the emotional pull and story telling element of
color, expression, and pattern, and mostly importantly, the crossing of
the senses.
Brief Q & A with Artist Tennessee Loveless
Q: How did you first learn of your colorblindness?
A: “They initially discovered that I
was colorblind around preschool/kindergarten in where we were doing
color exercises. The room was split into 4 colors by the carpet, and in
each sector of the room that was governed by the color held a different
activity. When the teacher asked the students to run to that particular
area, I watched as all my peers ran to this invisible presence that I
had no idea about. As far as I had known, a color was just another
adjective to describe an object, but as a child, these descriptors were
just components of early speech and not held as something relatable (as
in a 'metal stop sign' and a 'red stop sign' were just components of the
word itself, and not a fact). When I was told to run to a certain area,
I began to panic as I realized that people could see something that was
not there to me. I ended up just sitting in the middle of the room
hoping to get it right and that no one would notice.”
Q: How has colorblindness helped or hindered your life as an artist?
A: “Colorblindness never really
hindered me throughout my life until I decided to study studio painting
in college. I don't think I took into account that I would actually have
to really understand color to receive an acceptable grade for painting
something to its exact representation. My choices of color were always
based on 1. the colors I could see and 2. the colors that I felt were
most appropriate. My compositions would come out in bright neon colors
that were considered too blinding to be realistic, when in all actuality
through my eyes were quite normal. In the end I was told that I had a
decent form, but that my color choices were obnoxious and loud, and that
I my art couldn’t be commercially successful based on the judgment that
my colors were 'eye searing'. I took up fashion sketching instead and
graduated in fashion design with a double major in business/marketing.”
Q: There was a period during your education when you took a break from art. How did your life as a painter re-emerge for you?
A: “In 2003, I eventually started
painting again when I lived in San Francisco and a cabaret performer
asked me to paint them. I had mentioned my previous critique in college
that I couldn't represent people accurately, to which they replied "so
what". I took that phrase 'so what' very seriously and began to start a
collection based on the cabaret performers in my own way.
I also simultaneously started reading
up on color theory books and pigment compositions and began to form a
world based on color codes and how they represented each other. My
education in the fundamentals of pigments became more scientific than
emotional, safe, and/or exploratory, and then my world of color began to
spread and become more complex.”
Q: As a person who sees color in
way much differently than most people, how have you managed to relate to
color in a way that is akin to how your audience sees it?
A: “Because I cannot see color
accurately, and because its form is congenital limited achromatopsia, my
view of how color is seen is transformed into how things taste. I
communicate a feeling based of the taste of things. For example,
"BubbleGum Lemonade Minnie" is based on a feeling on how I think color
tastes. The violet-blues are represented what frozen blackberries taste
like to me, intermixed with a frosting like taste of cake which is
represented by the pink. And it all is contrasted by a sharp shocking
acidic tart like fluorescent yellow/chartreuse which lines against the
canvas. These color choices to me taste like a cold refreshing
Summertime dessert on a hot and humid afternoon.”
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