I have a kind of half-formed theory that despite the fact that so many people like art based on the "wow, it looks so real" factor - it's actually the extent to which it DOESN'T look real, but still references reality that it's impressive.
In this particular work, there's kind of a glowing, excruciating detail that you don't get from photos, or from looking at those kinds of objects normally. Artwork would have to be pretty boring to really "look real."
My college art teacher told me these are done by taking a photo, making a slide out of it, and projecting that slide onto the canvas.
Apparently some of the old master painter used a camera obscura and one might have even nudged his in the middle of a painting thus moving one of the ears way out whack in the final painting.
I can't be bothered to google it right now.
And I'm not accusing this guy of doing it that way, but how would you know?
That, or projecting it next to the canvas and copying. I don't object to this technique (in fact, I'm learning towards doing something similar for an art project I have in mind), but my first reaction to the work of this artist is that it's banal and suggests a refusal or fear of engaging with the subject in any meaningful way.
I'm a shy person myself and can relate to not wanting to snap a photo or sketch overtly, but 'here's what some people look like when they don't know you're staring' isn't revealing very much of anything.
If you like the hyper-realitic painterly technique but (like me) prefer a more provocative application of it, you may share my enjoyment of Istvan Sandorfi: http://www.fosaw.com/ I can't afford any of his art, but I have spent a few hundred bucks on buying the catalogs.
