The day after Barack Obama won the presidential election, local artist Peter Fowler was excited enough to create a 4′ x 8′ canvas of the president-elect.
The top image is a subsequent painting Fowler did, featuring the entire Obama family. He says it was inspired by this painting of John Singer Sargent’s and a compilation of photos of the first family. “I liked the idea of the Singer painting that had these different family members sort of scattered about the room,” Fowler said.
The original, an oil on canvas, will be on display in the KEPA3 Gallery at the January 30th opening of Fowler’s next exhibition, but he’s also making reprints available to the public. The artist enlisted Buffalo Big Print to make the reproductions including unframed 8″ x 10″ glicee prints on paper for $50, or 22″ x 30″ stretched canvases for $250. “I can quote different sizes,” Fowler explained, “but I would need about a week to fill the order.”
Fowler has created 3 Obama-themed paintings to date and says that he found the subject matter to be exceptionally inspirational. “I don’t know,” he said, “it just never occurred to me to paint the Bush family with the twins.”