MIDDLETOWN—“I’m principally a portrait painter,” said artist Joseph Sundwall, “but other animate creatures interest me immensely as well.” Sundwall stood quietly near a wall of his paintings as visitors browsed his works on exhibit at Orange Hall Gallery on Sept. 16 at SUNY Orange-Middletown.
Just as every person has their own look and personality, Sundwall says birds have their differences. “I can do a very small bird like these finches over here,” he says as he points to a small painting, “and right next to it is a blue heron. One foot [of the heron’s] is bigger than that finch.”
Sundwall works from drawings onsite and photographs. He researches his subject. “The way I work generally is to get an idea for a painting, then I'll go looking for reference material so I can put it together.”
Some of the painting was done from life along the Wallkill River and some was done using photographs. He said the heron was an actual New York heron.
He said, “When you paint birds you need to be thinking about the gesture the bird is making.” He discovered this during a class he was teaching. Students were painting trees. He asked a student which tree she was painting, and she pointed one out.
Sundwall said her painting did not look like the one she pointed toward. “I asked her, ‘What is the gesture that the tree is making to you?’ She really didn’t know what I was talking about,” he said, “so I made a gesture suggesting what the tree looked like and she sort of got it.”
