PORT LUDLOW — Gary Faigin, co-founder and artistic director of Gage Academy of Art in Seattle, will discuss a “bad boy” of art at the the Port Ludlow Artists’ League’s general membership meeting Wednesday.
Faigin will present “Caravaggio: The Bad Boy who Rewrote Art History” at the meeting at 1 p.m. at the Bay Club, 120 Spinnaker Place in Port Ludlow.
Guests are welcome; a guest fee of $5 can be paid for an individual meeting or dues of $30 will provide a year of programs.
Faigin has worked as a studio art instructor, educator, accomplished realist painter, author and Western art historian, according to the League.
Caravaggio, an Italian painter who lived from 1571 to 1610, was famous in his time for his dramatic use of lighting, but he was all but forgotten after his death.
Nevertheless, he had a formative influence on such great masters as Rubens and Rembrandt, the League said in a press release.
Master and delinquent
Faigin will tell the story of this “bad boy” of art history, who was a master of realism inside the studio and an incorrigible delinquent on the outside.
The Baroque painter’s work changed art history, but his violent personal life brought his life to an untimely end, the League said.
Faigin will discuss the impact of Caravaggio’s art and how his familiarity with the life of the streets made his canvases dramatic.
Faigin studied at the Art Students League of New York, the National Academy of Design, School of Visual Arts, Parsons School of Design, and the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
Since the publication of his book, The Artist’s Complete Guide to Facial Expression, in 1991, Faigin has taught expression workshops to plastic surgeons, cosmetic dentists, forensic artists and portrait artists, as well as to professionals in the animation, modeling and gaming industries.
Faigin currently lectures in the Animation Department at the University of Washington. He also collaborates on research at UW.
He has exhibited widely with solo exhibitions in Seattle and Santa Fe, including a retrospective of his work at Seattle’s Frye Art Museum and the Coos Museum of Art in Oregon.
For more information, contact Patricia Webber, Art League program chair, at 2pw@gmx.com.
