Athletes Paintings by Joe Wilder MD
The painting of athletes is especially important to me.
I am sensitive to how difficult it is to be a truly great one. I strive in my paintings to reflect the grace, tension, energy, and power that mark great athletes into action, to record with paint the athletes fears, anxieties, insecurities, and the pains, along with their exhilaration.
Willy Mays
The Essence of My Paintings
In painting my sports figures, I must first feel a chemistry, excitement, and sense of identity with a particular athlete. I watched the athlete like a hawk, over and over and over, until I know his or her every move then I do my painting, confident that would comes out from deep inside me will dominate and take over.
Mohammad Ali
Willis Reed
The Seer
The whole secret of painting is eyes it\’s all about learning to use your eyes. Once you know how to use them, you realize how blind you\’ve been all your life and how blind the rest of the world is. Above all things, an artist is a seer.
Essence of Painting Athletes
When I paint a hand it\’s not just another image it is still a wonderment to me hands are one of the greatest miracles of human evolution and remain the most difficult part of the body to paint.
The Nucleus of My Sport Paintings
Painting the muscles of athletes always takes me back to the hours spent in the anatomy laboratory as a medical student when I patiently dissected every muscle in the body, trace their origins insertions and relationship to each other.
The decision was simple.
I knew sports inside out. I was fascinated in thrilled a new each day at the Miracles of the body.
I love both Sports and painting. It seemed the only natural path to take. I felt a sense of enormous freedom as I embarked on what proved to be 20 years of painting Sports images, starting with race cars and drivers.
