David Lenz

David Lenz (born, 1962, Milwaukee, WI) is a noted American portrait painter.

Lenz won the first prize in the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition 2006, widely regarded as the most prestigious portrait competition in the United States. Organized by the National Portrait Gallery (United States), part of the Smithsonian Institution, this inaugural competition attracted more than 4,000 entries from across the country. The resulting exhibition of 51 artists’ works were shown at the National Portrait Gallery from June 23, 2006 to February 19, 2007.[1]

Lenz’s winning entry, an oil painting entitled Sam and the Perfect World depicts his son Sam amidst an idealized rural Wisconsin landscape.

Sam and the Perfect World
David Lenz
44" x 46" Oil on linen, 2005

In the painting, Sam leans forward quizzically. It’s a provocative stance, not unlike the way Sam unintentionally invades people’s personal space sometimes. "He makes people a little uncomfortable, and I sometimes think that is part of his role in life," Lenz says.

Behind Sam, a barbed-wire fence runs low across the frame and separates him from a lush, green valley that opens up with a high sun that is circled by a halo-like ring.

It has that precision Lenz is known for but flirts with surrealism and is gently idealized. It is magical, like something out of a storybook or the "Golden Valley" from C.S. Lewis’ Narnia. The halo intimates the divine overlooking it all.

Deferential to reality for so long, Lenz seems almost apologetic for playing with it, using terms such as "manipulate" and "artificial" when describing the scene.

"It’s a strange kind of Garden of Eden," Lenz says.

On the one hand, Sam stands like a host at the entrance to a mysterious landscape, which seems to belong to him somehow. The fence that bars him, though, adds an unsettling sense of forbidding to the scene. Put it all together and what comes through is a 9-year-old boy with a presence and something to say.

What’s on his mind, however, is profoundly ambiguous. It could be anything.

That we know it’s important and want to know what it is, is what makes "Sam and the Perfect World" an outstanding portrait. "It’s open-ended," says Lenz. "I don’t think that’s how people in the world view people with disabilities . . . that they have something thoughtful to say." Mary Louise Schumacher, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

[2] The first place award also entitled Lenz to paint a portrait of a remarkable American for the National Portrait Gallery’s permanent collection. Eunice Kennedy Shriver, founder of Special Olympics, was chosen to be the subject of the commission.[3] The portrait is expected to be unveiled in the spring of 2009.

In his paintings, Lenz captures the essence of unsung Americans through gritty social realism. His paintings fall into three general areas of interest, children of the central city[4], rural Wisconsin farmers[5] and people with disabilities.[6]

Perhaps the most distinctive feature of Lenz’s portraits is the manner in which he evokes a sense of spirit and emotion from the individuals depicted in unusual, even beautiful, environments. National Portrait Gallery, press release June 2006

Studying Lenz’s portraits up close is a privilege, as they have their roots in a photo- journalistic style, or photorealism. Each painting begins with about twenty pencil drawings to determine the exact subject material and composition. Although photographic, they are not painted from a single photograph. Lenz manipulates each part of his paintings; sky, subject, ground, clothing, buildings and background to communicate his point of view. His audience is drawn into the powerful picture of reality – whether rural Wisconsin or city streets. His audience is there, in the scene.

Why not just use a photograph? Because Lenz has never taken a single photograph that says everything he would choose to say. His paintings are an intellectual statement, a composite of ideas, feelings and opinions expressed on canvas with meticulous strokes of paint. After first applying underpaint in shades of yellow to add richness and depth, they are stories shaped through hours of brush strokes. Peggy Sue Dunigan, Vital Source Magazine

References

1. Hickey, Dave (2006) p. 11. The Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition 2006. Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. ISBN 0-295-98655-7

2. Hayes, Jeffery R. (2004) back cover. David M. Lenz: Urban and Rural Paintings of Wisconsin. Charles Allis Art Museum. ISBN 0-9703613-4-3

External links

• Dr. Bub, Barry (February 2007, Volume 82, Issue 2). Commentary: Sam and the Perfect World. Medicine Academic

• Neary, Lynn (July 13, 2006). Looking History in the Eye at Portrait Gallery. Talk of the Nation, National Public Radio

• Wisconsin Lifetime Achievement Award 2008. Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

• Worland, Gayle (April 22, 2007). Behind the Brush: Realist Painter David Lenz Finds a Rural Wonderland in Sauk County. Wisconsin State Journal