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Can you be a visual Poet? - part 1 of 1 2

Published 01/02/2006

Arthur Levi Rainville has been called, "...one of our industry's premier creative minds." Known for enticing photographers to be more innovative in their imagery and their business. Art continues to travel the country speaking with groups hungry for his inspirational message.

Working out of his studio in historic Whitinsville, Massachusetts for almost 40 years, he is known for his soft, granular colour work. Refinements of this life's passion lead to his lyrical Mansuesco style of today. Defying a definable formula, Mansuesco, much like Impressionism, is a plurality of looks. An innate quality of light coupled with a compositional choreography is akin to his signature style. In a recent one-man show at the French Cultural Center, his work was astutely referred to as "...a synthesis of observation and imagination blended with a palette of gauzy colours." Returning photographic portraiture to an art form is his muse.

Art has taught professionally for 24 years and currently serves as Director of the prestigious New England School of Photography, in Boston. He is an author, a noted touring lecturer and has work being shown throughout the United States, South America and Europe. His current fine art project is a book on the Venetian Burano School of Art and he is completing a non-photographic book, Lessons from a Mockingbird.

Art is due to tour the UK and Ireland (Dublin) between 10 and 19 September 2006.

An ever-changing world requires us, as visual artists, to constantly evolve, to tease an audience eager for the next great NEW. Our quest as creative souls must be to forever Deepen the Mystery. What better place to begin our quest than to haunt true inspiration - galleries and art museums?

Having spent most of my career as a photographer studying art in many great museums around the world, I have evolved in my quest for a personal, visual-signature style to mixing technique and medium, creating portraits that are both individual and captivating. One of the innovations is my Caresser style. Caresser means to caress and I try to caress each image in one of several techniques.

Much like Impressionism that was a plurality of styles, I will sometimes enhance a portrait with elements from multiple images, united with the original via the Clone Tool in Photoshop. While there are at least 10 different ways to achieve any desired effect in Photoshop, I utilise the Rubber Stamp Tool because it allows me to 'paint' into the portrait in an "intuitive manner".

Blending backgrounds and design with subject iconography, each portrait becomes a unique piece of art, private and personal. I believe that the future of photography lies in creating exceptional work that satisfies the artistic soul and, at the same time, the needs of a more discriminating client; it is an image that speaks of the subject, which speaks of the artist.

In my case, it is an image that blurs the worlds of photographic realism with the enchantments of art, an image that is caressed to life, a 'Caresser' - a Digital Dream Tableau.

"We cannot see our unborn creation, we cannot know it, but we know it is there and we love it; and that love drives us to realise it."

S. Nachmanovitch

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1st Published 01/02/2006
last update 09/12/2022 15:00:07

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