Museum on My Mind Painting

Master portrait, fashion, lifestyle and corporate photographer for 50 years, now painting, often combining photos and paint, to create unique images expressing love of color and an innate sense of design that emerges in a stream of consciousness process where each shape and decision evolves organically. Photography website: www.steveladner.com. Steve was one of the top fashion photographers and studio owners in NYC in the 70's, 80's. He photographed fashion and beauty for magazines such as Harper's Bazaar, GQ, Town & Country, Esquire, French Vogue, and The New York Times, and cosmetic ad campaigns for Revlon, Almay and Avon, and many others. Recently Steve began painting, combining photography and paint in a personal and unique way. In his own words: "It is an organic out-growth of what inspired and informed my photography: beauty, color, geometry, imagination, and the unknown. As I paint, the images and shapes that arise are a manifestation in the moment of a stream of consciousness. And as I add more color, a world starts to appear. A world that I recognize; that is very familiar to me. It feels like what I am painting is an integral and profound expression of something deep inside that I have always known, and only recognize as I release it from my unconscious. The paintings and drawings are like a visual jazz to me, inspired by music. I feel the same excitement I felt when I began the wonderful adventure of photography many years ago. Like improvisational jazz, I start a design with a few shapes or lines, and the whole thing grows out of it like melodic musical "riffs" in unpredictable and inspired ways. The colors and shapes seem to explode and tumble through space in a sensual and playful manner. I love the way it feels as it unfolds. It is a love affair that has been in waiting for this time to manifest. I have been using a photo as a starting point of inspiration, a form around which I hang my imaginary world. Sometimes the paint is rough and the lines freehand and other times it is careful and controlled, but it always looks raw and unfettered to me. My inspirations are surrealists like Dali and Max Ernst, the impressionists, Edward Hopper, Lucien Freud, Escher, Jasper Johns, Balthus, so many others, and Guitar Music, Dance, and Movies."