Talked Portraiture With Chuck Close at the White House

As you know, I was invited to White House for SXSL.  I have many good pictures of what was a real fun day. But I wanted to share this one in particular 'cause I am still processing how awesome meeting Chuck Close was.

So when I saw Chuck Close on the South Lawn, I realized that I had to introduce myself. As an artist he has always been a favorite, if not the favorite, though its sort of impossible to rank something like that.  I have long imitated many of his concepts in my own art.  I even designed my fourth robot to fit large canvases so it could paint portraits on the scale of his work.

While I wasn't expecting to be starstruck when I went up to introduce myself, I was. I didn't know what to say so I just told him I was a portrait artist to which he replied that he was sorry to hear that as it was a horrible line of work to be in. Then we chatted about portraiture briefly where he made a couple of other jokes before asking to see some of my work.  I wasn't expecting that, either his interest in my work, or his compassionate humor.  I showed him some portraits of my family on my phone, said my thanks for taking the time to talk with me, then went on my way.

I wanted to talk to him longer but at same time didn't want to be a harasser.

Doug Marx and Luke Kelly's Vangobot

The painting robot called Vangobot is simply awesome. It is the rare breed of art creating robot that actually leaves behind an aesthetically pleasing piece of art. Most robots make abstract art or are performance pieces.

This is of course a self serving statement as I have made a similar robot, but just take a look at this one compared to mine. What I found most interesting is that while both myself and the artist/programming team made this with the same sort of approach, our robots are different in a number of ways, least of which stylistically. Their robot paints with multiple brushes and smoothly mixes colors with one another. Even though we share a basic approach our robots have their own style.

Vangobot makes what look to be impressionistic paintings. Smooth flowing strokes compared to my harsh and rigid straight lines. While I can do curves, I like the cross-hatching effect of mine. Similarly while Vangobot can probably do straight lines, it prefers algorithms that swirl paints onto the canvas.

What will be interesting as more and more artists realize how cool painting robots can be is to see all the styles that pop out of them. Unlike what I expect the public would think is going to happen, I bet each robot is as unique and different from one another as Vangobot is from my painting robot.

Almost like a personality.

If you have purchased one of mine, I highly suggest you get something from these guys and start a modern painting robot art collection. I guarantee you there will be many more entries into this genre in the coming years…