Charles Warren (C.W.) Mundy is one of the country’s most well-known realist oil painters. Nearing 80, he remains a strongly focused and hard-working artist who puts almost all of his time into his work.
Mundy was born and raised in Indianapolis, where he still lives and paints. His paternal grandfather was a cartoonist for the Denver Post, so art’s in his blood. He worked as an illustrator for some years, combining a love for sports with his passion for the illustrator’s pen.
C.W. Mundy, Boats at Megavissey, Cornwall, oil on linen, 12″ x 12″
He’s long been a working musician as well; he still plays bluegrass with members of a popular Indianapolis bluegrass band, and in 2021 he released a solo banjo CD aptly called The Impressionist.
It all started with Impressionism. After experiencing a large-scale Monet exhibition in Chicago in the mid 1990s, he became smitten with plein air painting. He and his wife Rebecca spent the next 15 years after seeing that show traveling around the U.S. and Europe visiting artists and museums and absorbing art history. Rebecca has been a huge part of Mundy’s fast-track career.
C.W.Mundy, Fallen Warrior, oil on linen, 12″ x 12″
For Mundy, art is a kind of miracle, in every sense of the word. It’s all about that initial, astonishing act of creation, the charge of seeing something meaningful take shape and form beneath your brush. “As I learned as a child in kindergarten,” he says, “Making something out of nothing is really cool!”
What Mundy makes, of course, is more than cool. He quit painting from photographs a decade ago or more because, he says, “To be poetic and expressionistic, you can’t paint things.”
“The more literal you are, the less opportunity there is for interpretation,” the painter has said. “I’m not wired that way — I need to be entertained. I don’t want to make a painting look too close to reality. We see reality every day.” Instead, Mundy wants to imply what a scene looks like. “The power of the suggestive is much greater than the statement of reality,” he says. “I adhere to that philosophy for the most part, but sometimes I don’t. Formula painting is the death of a painter.”
Mundy’s very popular still lifes of 10-15 years ago were marked by an instantly recognizable mix of old master classicism and contemporary flair. (For a step-by-step window into his still life process, from sketch to mixing, to finish, download his best-selling video, Mastering the Dramatic Still Life.)
C.W. Mundy, Brass With Oranges, 2010, oil on linen 16×20
He’s since painted everything from Impressionist and Tonalist landscapes to Sargent-esque portraits at nearly life size. How art happens is something of a mystery, and he respects that. For Mundy, as an artist you pay homage to the Prime Creator by bringing into being something that wasn’t there before, something that you the artist, miraculously, call into existence.
“Scripture tells us in the book of Genesis that God spoke things into existence, ‘Let there be Light…. And it was good!’ How appropriate that painting is all about capturing light,” Munday says. “Creativity is a total gift of God.”
C. W. Mundy, William Creek, oil on linen, 20″x 16″
Mundy has one of the strongest groundings in technical and art-historical experience of today’s popular realists and plein air painters. After 40 years of painting, he has developed the trust in oneself that empowers endless experimentation.
C.W. Mundy, Identity Theft, oil on linen, 16×20
A restless soul, he is always testing new theories and trying new methods. Essential to finding success as an artist, Mundy says, is a strong grounding not just in the techniques but in other less tangible forces that make for striking, original work.
“To build a career,” he says, “you have to start with the ‘foundational truths’ of the science of painting. There is honest integrity in being true to yourself and painting what moves you.”
“Let me put it this way,” he told Outdoor Painter in a 2013 interview, “When you are a painter, you must be able to copy everything. What the subject looks like, the color that you’re looking at, and the value relationships — those are the training wheels that you need to have before you graduate to an artist. The painter is a caterpillar. When you morph into a butterfly, that is when things should really start happening. You become an artist. Now you have license and should take liberties with value to make the painting.”
C.W. Mundy, Rocky Mountains #5, oil on linen, 16×16 inches
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
