I don’t remember when I first came across the works of Tamara de Lempicka but a visit to the Lempicka cafe in Beverley, North of Hull, made me decide to give one a go.
Her works are very decorative but that, along with her struggle to evolve as an artist, has meant that she is not highly respected by the art establishment, though she has a slew of celebrity fans – Madonna among them.
If one was being critical, one might even consider her work to be a little kitsch – so, given that I have done pastiches of Jack Vetriano and Margaret Keane (who have also been thus accused), I decided to try something in her style.
The fact that this time I didn’t include a joke perhaps betrays how much I do like Lempicka’s paintings though her style was not subtle.
Her figures are solid, geometric, colours restrained and her use of oil paints merely takes advantage of their blendability and ignores their other benefits, such as varied opacity. She used soft, rounded brushes on either canvas or board, giving her paintings a silky finish and eschewed any variation in the expressiveness of her strokes.
So here is my take on a Tamara de Lempicka.
Cafe Life by Erica Madelin
Erica Madelin 