The Fisherman. Leonard Koscianski, 42″x26″, oil on canvas, 2016.
The Fisherman is a medium size painting in oils on canvas. It is an imaginary reconstruction of my favorite fishing spot, near my house, on Spa Creek, in Annapolis. The best time for fishing here is early in the morning, when the night is turning into day. In the painting, it is morning in the foreground, and still night in the blue background. It is Postmodern in that it appropriates different styles and recombines them into an eclectic whole.
The surreal space is curved. The viewer is looking straight down at the foreground, with the fisherman, and straight out at the distance, with silhouettes of prominent Annapolis churches. The road connects the foreground to the background. The fisherman is realistic, but the severely simplified houses are not. They are surreal houses, dream houses that are symbolic rather than real. Some aspects of the highly detailed water, grass, and trees are real, some are not. This painting was done from the imagination. It is influenced by Grant Wood, though the ultra simple houses are more like Italian Surrealist Giorgio de Chirico, and the fisherman is akin to the style of American realist Martin Johnson Heade. The primary color scheme is dominated by red, yellow, green and blue. The fisherman is red, white, and blue.