Abstract Basketball Painting with Hoop and Basketball
Basketball Painting In Abstract Style
A few years ago I was approached by a sports art agent to do
some paintings for the (at the time) a new Amway sports arena in Orlando , Florida
This abstract painting of the basketball hoop is good size:
sixty inches by seventy-two inches (five
feet by six feet) acrylic on unstretched canvas. What I was asked to paint was something
bright and colorful and represented basketball in an abstract way. A couple of the other paintings I did for
them were basketball paintings of Venice
Beach street players I had photograph at Venice , Ca. This is where the great basketball movie "White Men Can't Jump" was
filmed and in our neighborhood. (These
paintings are posted somewhere on this blog)
Basketball Idea from Alley
At the time I had not done many non-figurative paintings so
it was a bit of a challenge for me. I
wasn't really sure where to start. But
one evening my wife and I were walking the alleys of Venice .
We always liked seeing the backs of the rundown properties and the
deterioration of the neighborhood. There
is something very human seeing old garages and backs of old cottages. My wife actually owned a small cottage that
was held up by the wings of termites.
As we walked in the alleys I kept seeing old, rusted and unused basketball
hoops attached to dilapidated garages.
And growing over some of the garages were vines and flowers. One in particular captured my imagination - a
garage with Nasturtiums (yellow orange flowers on long green vines) draped
through the hoop and over the garage doors.
Perfect.
I took a bunch of photographs from a variety of angles for
reference material. Back in my studio I
painted the scene in a realistic manner, recreating the alley and garages and
trash cans and the hoop and the flowers.
And then I took a big brush and slashed paint all over the canvas. And what you see is the result of my effort -
a contemporary, modern sort of basketball hoop abstract painting.