Joseph Sheppard was born in Owings Mills, Md., in 1930. From 1948 to 1952, he attended the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), where he studied with Jacques Maroger, the former technical director of the Louvre. Throughout his career, Sheppard has received many awards and honors, including a Guggenheim Traveling Fellowship to Europe. He was Artist-in-Residence at Dickinson College from 1955 to 1957 and taught drawing, anatomy and painting at MICA until 1975.
Focusing on the human form, Joseph Sheppard has created paintings and sculptures in the figurative realist tradition. He has studios in Baltimore, Maryland, and Pietrasanta, Italy. He studied with Jacques Moroger and Reginald Marsh and closely read the anatomical writings of Leonardo DaVinci and 14th-century physician, Andreas Vesalius.
In Sheppard's genre and figure works, many of the figures seem off balance and twisted in their poses, giving his paintings a sense of motion as though the figures are interacting with each other. His canvases are filled with "an endless parade of dancers, acrobats, and athletes" (43).
Sheppard works guickly, painting both in thin transparent glazes and in impasto.
Regarded as a "role model for figurative realists", Sheppard stated: "I believe that technical skill is an important element in art and that the figure is not only a subject but the most elevated form of art" (43).
Source:
Peggy Grant, "Understanding Anatomy", AMERICAN ARTIST, July 2001
Orchard Street, Lower East Side
Summertime in Baltimore
Click on an image to learn more about about the piece.
