Red Step Gallery--Don Haggerty Figurative Painting Gallery I

Don Haggerty Figurative Painting Gallery I

I've found figurative work, with all its subtleties of gesture, variations of expression, drapery, light, shadow and mood, to offer endless challenges in the creation process...and endless pleasures in living with the finished work.

In any painting, whether it be my own or that of another artist, my greatest pleasure is in the re-living of a brush stroke. A stroke is absolutely priceless whose life and vital energy continues on, long after the artist's hand has stopped its work. The rise and fall of the brush, with its twists and turns, sometimes dry, sometimes loaded with moist paint, sometimes moving slowly and sometimes darting across the canvas...all these become part of the perpetual dance performed within such a painting at each viewing.

When visiting an art museum, gallery or a fellow artist's studio, I'll often find myself falling in love with a painting. But when I leave having fallen in love with a brush stroke...it is then that I leave truly satisfied.

-- Don Haggerty