ABBREVIATED PO RTRAIT SERIES
The Abbreviated Portrait Series depicts Victory’s new take on abstraction by distilling portraits down to their most minimal forms and associated colors. Although Victory has been abstracting subjects for years on his canvases, his new series does not focus on abstracting the image of a person but, rather, the “hint” of that person in the mind’s eye.
The concept behind the Abbreviated Portrait Series is also found in neuroscience — the idea that everyone has triggers that activate memory, often based on the simplest cues. Victory has long been fascinated with Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, Wassily Kadinsky, and others who explore the power of symbols and colors. Victory continues to be astounded when he asks others what first comes to mind regarding a particular person. Consistently, the answer is exactly the same as his. . . blue eyes for Paul Newman, red hair for Lucille Ball, arched eyebrow for Jack Nicholson.
THROUGH APRIL 2, 2017 Ellen and Richard L. Sandor Gallery
fjjma.ou.edu
This publication is written and produced by the artist at no cost to the taxpayers of the state of Oklahoma.
POTEET VICTO RY
Born and raised in Idabel, Oklahoma, Victory was active in the rodeo circuit riding bulls and wild horses by the age of 15. It was then that Victory was first approached by his mentor, Harold Stevenson, who is famous for the controversial painting, The New Adam, that is now in the Guggenheim’s permanent collection. Stevenson asked Victory to model for his painting Alexander The Great, a modeling venture that lasted the entire summer and ignited Victory’s desire to chase his dream of becoming the accomplished artist he is today.
After graduating high school and attending the University of Oklahoma through his junior year, Victory bought a one-way ticket to Hawaii. There he mastered silk screening, after which he moved to Dallas and established his own company, Divine Designs, which was the first t-shirt printing business of its kind. He began printing t-shirts for major record companies and other large corporations, such as Frito Lay and Coca-Cola.
Once Victory had acquired the resources to pursue his longtime desire to paint, he sold his business in Dallas and moved to New York City. He attended the Art Students League for two years but ultimately refined his unique style of painting on his own through many years of habitude. While in NYC,Victory met Andy Warhol and mingled with those at Warhol’s Factory while consulting with Warhol on silk screening. Victory also was invited to socialize with other eminent artists and socialites and found he had the unique ability to surprise them with his down-toearth insights.
Victory’s passion and unique understanding of his work touches something truer and more compelling than most can articulate. He is intrigued by archetypes of myth and neuroscientific studies on how the brain stores and recalls images and the advantages of meditation. All of these ideas are consistent with his paintings and the concept of his newest creation, The Abbreviated Portrait Series. After more than 30 years of painting, Victory remains as authentic as ever and still has that Southeast Oklahoma charm. Although he prefers to work behind an easel, Victory will always be a cowboy at heart. His studio is located upstairs at McLarry Modern in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he paints every day.
McLarry Modern | 225 Canyon Road | Santa Fe, New Mexico (505) 983-8589 | mclarrymodern.com
M RLN MNRO
J N WAY N
It was one of those serendipitous moments. I already had the backgrounds and the circles and then I got that “A-ha” moment that I could do this. The white was her white dress. The red was her red lipstick. And the black was her beauty mark. Monroe will always be my favorite. She was my first.
I think most people see John Wayne just how I see him: the tan, the saddle, the vest, the holsters. And once I got it painted, they’d see the hat. John Wayne’s all about patriotism, and he’s such a larger-than-life figure. That’s what’s fascinating about this whole series: other people are seeing these people just how I see them. I used to think it was uncanny, now I just think that’s the way it is.
A N D W RH L
RLNG STNS
He and Willie Nelson are the only two I set out to do who I knew personally. Andy’s the one who said we’re surrounded by art all the time, we just don’t know it. Which is why he blew up the Campbell’s soup can and the Brillo boxes and put them in a gallery. Part of that spirit is inherent to these abbreviated paintings. And the fact that they’re square 4’x4’ paintings, that goes back to something Andy said, too. They’re easy to transport, but they’re also big enough to make a statement. And the red in the Andy painting is flat in the same way Andy made the red in his soup cans flat. It’s all in the way I put it on the canvas.
BTL S
Because red is a color I’m numb for, I really wanted to have a red in the series. One day, I was surfing the internet and saw this logo and I thought, “That’s it. That’s the red painting.” but I didn’t want to do all the ones Warhol had done. The Stones are so identifiable by that logo that Warhol had done. That’s them. So really, the only thing left for me to do was to abstract that logo. After I did the small study for it, I put just the tongue on the big one. And there are two reds in there, too. So the painting ended up being just that tongue, and very red. But those are the Stones to me: sticking out their tongue, and very red and black. Those are their colors.
G RG A O K E F
I remember when they first came out with that album Meet the Beatles. To me, there was no question where I was gonna start with the design. That album would be the basis for the painting. But the first thing I see for any painting is the color. And the first time I saw them, what struck me was those gray suits they wore. I kept seeing that gray color. But over their career, they went through so many changes, too — from the gray suits to the psychedelics to the Indian outfits. After figuring out the color, getting the shapes of their heads was a challenge. At first, I made them like regular heads. Then I made them rectangles, but that wasn’t doing it for me. So I took those rectangles and made them a hybrid of rectangles and the actual shapes of their heads. It may seem trivial, but it’s these subtle changes that make a difference to someone seeing what I want them to see. I can’t make them so abstract that there’s no relation to the person.
It’s the least abstract of all of them. And it started different from any of the rest. I’d been talking to a friend and he said I should do Georgia O’Keeffe and as soon as he said her name: Boom. Skull. Flowers. Blue New Mexico sky. And landscape. At the beginning that’s always the hardest stage — to get all the elements in there. And it looked just like O’Keeffe had painted it. And I thought, I can’t do that. So I put it back on the easel and I started to paint over it. I took the shape of the skull and the flower and I morphed them into one thing. Once I did that it made sense to me. But the hard part of that painting was getting that damn blue right. I went through three or four different blues on that painting. Nobody else probably would’ve noticed it, but I did. And I didn’t put the shiny finish on it either. I don’t see her that way. I see her as more plain.
PL NW MN
To me, Paul Newman was the golden boy. He was my favorite actor. I loved everything he did. And two things stood out about his looks: those piercing blue eyes, and, I never saw him as a dandy but as a working-class hero. So I had two blues that I worked with in that painting: the blue denim of his shirt that graduated to the blue of his eyes. And in the center I had the color for his skin tones. But it wasn’t really working for me. I lived with that skin tone for a couple months. I was trying to find the solution. And then one day I picked it up, put it on the easel, and real fast I outlined it in black. Suddenly, it made the painting more masculine, and I started seeing that what I’d just added looked like an abstracted eight ball. It reminded me of The Hustler — one of my favorite Paul Newman movies. Other people now say it looks like chalk or a piece of film. But to me, I wanted the painting to be really attractive. Which I think it is.
LT N J N
The first things I saw were his glasses — those thick bottle glasses he wore on that first album that made him look like such a nerd. And that bigness — that over-the-top personality. He just seemed like a fun one to do. To me, he’s that magenta color. Still, I didn’t want to just put a pair of glasses up there. Being an artist, I want to overdo these things sometimes. So it takes a lot of concentration to keep it simple.To keep it to a minimal amount of imagery. But that’s why my style works so well with these abbreviated paintings.
LV S
Lu C
To me, Elvis was all about movement. And black leather and black hair and giving away pink Cadillacs.That’s how I remembered him. So I put in those three diagonal lines — out to the side — to represent movement, because I don’t see Elvis as static. After I’d done it, I started looking through Google images and I found some of him wearing that black-and-white-striped shirt in Jailhouse Rock. Then people’d tell me,“That’s an E for Elvis,” or, “It’s the musical clef.” And I’d say, “Could be, could be.” Or they’d say, “That’s the shape of a ’57 Chevy fin,” or the shape of his sideburns. But your mind is not collaging all these things. What you’re seeing is a simple shape or a simple color. I don’t make a list either — because I want these things to just pop into my head. And Elvis was the breakthrough piece for me. I noticed at the beginning that I wanted to collage all these things, because there’s so much information. But I made myself keep it very abstract. So that’s where I broke through with Elvis: keeping it abstract, and not just making this collage.
JC K NKL SON
Why Lucille Ball? I have no idea. I started Lucille in Oklahoma and finished it in Santa Fe. And that was the one where I became aware that there’s an archetype for each person. And all I could think of with her was red-and-white polka dots. When I asked my sister what she thought of Lucille Ball, she said the same thing: red-andwhite polka dots. Even my clients out here were telling me they were seeing the same thing: the red-and-white polka dots. And I realized, Huh, ain’t that funny? We all pretty much have the same references. There’s something to this.
HW D H G H S
I don’t know why I chose him. I don’t know why I choose any of these people. And I had no idea where to start. I see color first. So I just started. And I kept seeing this khaki color. I was just playing around back then. I worked on it most of the day, putting things down, taking things off. And by the end of the day there were two images on it that I didn’t start out with — because Hughes was two different people. There was the genius entrepreneur side, and there was the dark, notquite-sane side. It’s the only painting that has two images in it because Hughes was two different people. My subconscious really took over on that painting. And that was a real eye-opener for me. I discovered that my subconscious self had been influenced by conscious self. And I realized, hey, don’t fight it. Just go with it.You can manipulate it and watch what it’s doing. It’s like what Carl Jung talked about: a realized person is a person where the subconscious turns it around. So, yeah, that Hughes painting is the one that really opened my eyes to what these paintings can do.
Actually, that was kind of a difficult one to do. But again, it just popped into my head: that smile. And he’s always wearing those dark sunglasses. So I approached it from that point of view. At first, I put in two rectangles going across. But that was too literal. So I kept playing with it, changing it. I started to get frustrated. But then my subconscious came in and I scraped away at it with the palette knife from left and right. Around the eyes. Not too literally but enough so that it insinuated darkness. Which is Jack. Sometimes they just paint themselves.
CH R
D L LY P RT N
Everybody in this series is an icon, and Cher’s been around since the ‘60s. To me, the first thing I see is black and dark purple, and I also envisioned her with something on her head. Plus, she always wore provocative costumes. And she has that diamond-shaped face. So the whole painting is built around a triangle. Then this woman showed me a picture of her at the Oscars with this dress made out of triangles. So, she was not a hard one to do but she’s also been the least successful in terms of peoples’ response to the painting. But that’s OK. When I’m doing these portraits, it doesn’t matter if people like them or not. I can’t think that way. I have to paint it how I see it.
WL E NL SN
She’s so iconic, and really cool. And I remember seeing her on The Porter Wagoner Show in the 60s. I saw her as very feminine and in a blond wig with white lace and glitter. And everybody saw her in pink like I did. But if you’re not also thinking about her chest, what are you thinking about? The challenge was how to do it in a tasteful way. So I incorporated all of those things — her boobs and that wig and glitter and lace — into triangles. The funny thing is, some people, when they look at Dolly, or at any of these other paintings, they get intimidated. They don’t want to be wrong about who they’re looking at. But they’re not about being right.They’re about having fun. It’s hard to come away from these paintings and not smile.
RKY
When people think of Willie, they picture the red bandanna, the braids, the jeans. So what can I take out of it and still have it say “Willie Nelson?” How do you put them in in the most simplistic and abstract way and still have it read Willie? You could sit down 10 different people and have them do abstracts of Willy and you’d get 10 different Willies. And you could say, “That doesn’t look like Willie.” But that’s not the point. The point is, it looks like Willie to me.
I was the first one in line to buy a ticket to Rocky in 1976 and the story of an underdog overcoming adversity is one that has stuck with me ever since. I had wanted to do this piece for years, but I found that synthesizing Rocky was very challenging. I guess I persevered, much like Rocky, by finding power in the contrasting colors.The red gloves hit you almost like a right hook from the man himself.
DNL D T R MP
Reactions… Donald Trump evokes them, whether it is good or bad. I get joy out of seeing people react to this portrait. This one came easily to me, almost too easy. Donald Trump’s main physical characteristics are his golden hair, his blue suit, and red power tie. This is not meant to be a political piece, but a controversial one. I don’t think I have done a portrait that is so relevant to the times.
PRNC
I had never considered doing Prince for the series until after his death. At the suggestion of many visitors in my studio, I educated myself on Prince by reading many articles that followed his untimely demise. It became clear that Prince had a profound effect on our culture. I found his personality to be huge in contrast to his diminutive stature.You can see this represented in the small center of this painting. I also respected how fiercely protective he was of his art by going to the extreme of naming himself a symbol. He was a small man with tremendous ability and an even bigger heart.