Paul G. Oxborough – (b. 1965) American, began his studies at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design before entering a four-year apprenticeship at the Atelier Lessuer; a rigorous program that adheres to a stringent French academic tradition. Since his first New York exhibition in 2000, Mr. Oxborough has been the subject of numerous articles and reviews in such publications as ArtNews, Art & Antiques, Southwest Art, and CNN. His awards include First Place in the Artist's Magazine Portrait Competition, several Awards of Excellence from Communication Arts magazine and the President's Award from the American Society of Portrait Artists.
He frequently travels with his family throughout Europe and the United States for inspiration. The range of Mr. Oxborough's subject matter seems unlimited and varies from intimate interiors illuminated by flickering candles to laconic landscapes drenched in the noonday sun to a child's face touched by the first rays of morning light. Paul G. Oxborough's portrait of Chuck Close, the master of a coolly conceptualized brand of super-realism, is as powerful as it is improbable. Close's monumental paintings and prints of the human head, rendered in a deliberately mechanical fashion, have become internationally famous over the last 30 years. And yet Oxborough paints Close in the most traditional of styles, with the deft brush-marks and sensitive touches of a master with undeniably different ambitions.
Oxborough learned his craft at Atelier LeSueur, in Minneapolis, a school that sought to emulate the learning experience of a 19th-century academy. The atelier's regimen of two years of black-and-white drawing from plaster casts and the model, followed by two years of color work, allowed Oxborough to master all the older conventions of rendering and paint structure that an artist such as Chuck Close might seem to sweep away. Equipped by this rigorous training with a powerful set of tools that allow him to render form, space, and light with a delicate and lively consistency, Oxborough was able to intimate valuable insights into the persona of his famous subject.
