Les Caison III, painter and illustrator of Greensboro
www.lesiii.com or www.lescaisoniii.blogspot.com
His artwork
My style is dynamic, expressive, representational portraiture. I like to keep it as loose as possible. I like to show the evidence of the brush strokes and the artist’s hand. I do portraits from life. You get to know the person better and see their real personality that way.
There are stories to go with all of the paintings. I feel it’s a responsibility of the visual artist, if you’re doing representational work, to document something. The stories go with that documentation. I am an entertainer. I’m trying to get people to pay attention to me visually.
Most of my work that I show in galleries is layered with oil and graphite illustration; the layers are intertwined. Decisions are made on the canvas. Ideas are reworked. The pieces are of my own volition, things that I’m going through that I want the public to consider. There’s always some form of inspiration to enact a series of work. I always have lots of paintings going on at once. Sometimes, I have to tell a story. Other times, there’s a technical point of departure.
Conveying a message
The element of time is significant to me. I like to leave evidence of the decision process through the layers. It’s good if the oil is actually wet because it traps the graphite. Composing on the canvas allows for a loose process conveying a message, making the decisions as they happen. “This painting is about happiness or the relationship between these two people or the awesome windows on a fifth-story building I saw.” I figure out how to portray these things as I’m working. I love narrative stories, the moment right before or after something happens. It’s an organic process.
Art and the community
I’m the part-time program director for the Randolph Arts Guild. It’s fun. I get to invite artists to come and share their creativity with the Randolph County community. I am making connections with the public. I am knowledgeable about the arts and in my comfort zone talking to the artists. I am personally and sincerely interested in the subject matter, what they are doing.
Before I got my job, I was an artist in residence in Asheboro. My show was on the people and the places of Asheboro. I asked for volunteers from the community to come in for a portrait and bring their personal affections. It was informal and relaxed. I got all of these great stories, and it shows in the paintings. You can see the people who were comfortable and opened up. Their characters were revealed. Capturing the image of a person is only a part of it; I’m interpreting their essence, as well.
A deep thinker
People call me deep. I come across as a nice guy, kind of silly and jovial, but I love to go deep. I like to think about juxtapositions, hypocrisies, concepts with multiple meanings, trying to convey those things through my work is what I like to do. Growing up, I would ask my parents questions, and sometimes their answer would be, “Why do you have to go so deep?”
Born to hand jive
I like to social dance. I don’t mean go to the clubs, but in Greensboro, I like to go to College Hill or the jazz club (Boston’s House of Jazz) over by the stadium. I like to go somewhere you can dance with a partner, swing dance or jitterbug, cut a rug. If we are having a house party or friends to dinner, we’ll move the table and the rug out of the way and dance. I love a beat, to feel music. It’s kind of old-fashioned, but it’s fun and healthy.
What he’s currently working on
I’ve always enjoyed the urban narrative — buildings and windows, where the sky meets the buildings. I’ve never had the patience to capture bricks, and now I do because it’s the appropriate technique to be challenged by. I’m doing a series where the bricks are a major component of the work. They can add color in small increments. You can control them, and they are a way to break up the visual plane. It’s fun to use bricks as a layer, and I’m looking forward to learning more about the history of bricks and what may come out of the paintings because of that. It sounds boring, but bricks are building blocks. It’s an old form of architecture, and I want to explore how I can use them to tell a story. I don’t have the answer yet because I’m in the middle of it.
As told to Erin McClanahan Rainwater. Contact her at eringrey718@yahoo.com.
