Ronnie Wood - The Famous Flames Collection

 

Ronnie Wood was born in 1947 in Middlesex, England, into a musical and artistic family. Before beginning his musical career he received formal art training at Ealing College of Art, London.

Throughout the years, the artist and the musician have been inseparable. As his musical career progressed, Ronnie continued his passion for painting and drawing; his subjects ranging from band members and musicians he admired, knew and sometimes played with, to family and close friends’ and of course, the self-portrait. It is as natural to find him with a pencil as with a guitar, drawing portraits of contemporaries and finding inspiration from his musical influences.

In America in the early 1980s, Ronnie produced his first prints three woodcuts and a series of monotypes. At that time he was not yet an experienced printmaker and it was with great enthusiasm that he seized upon the opportunity in 1987 to spend several months working in a professional printmaking studio in England. Since then he has devoted a considerable amount of time to printmaking, producing a number of images using various techniques etching, dry-point, screen-print and woodcut

Over the years Ronnie Wood¹s work has been widely exhibited. In 1996, he had a retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, Sao Paulo, Brazil. His work has been honoured with numerous solo exhibitions in North and South America, in the Far East and throughout Europe.

Wood has been painting and sketching ever since he was a child and is a passionate and dedicated artist, taking inspiration from artists such as Egon Schiele, Henri Matisse, Vincent Van Gogh and Pablo Picasso. Nowadays Wood is adept at creating pieces from landscapes, to portraiture, abstract to architectural; creating his original pieces in charcoals, oils, watercolours, spray paints, oil pastels and acrylics. Varying his style and his medium depending on the feeling or mood he is trying to evoke with his work.

His debut collection for Washington Green Fine Art features four pieces entitled The Famous Flames Suite, focusing on the members of The Rolling Stones. And a fifth piece entitled Stones on Stage – Got Me Rockin’.

There is no kind of therapy like the one you have from starting and seeing a picture through to the end.

Painting at full throttle, and with technical prowess, Wood gives the art lover an exhilarating and thrilling front row view of the Stones on stage, as his vibrant paintings convey the electricity of a live performance. The intensity that Ronnie Wood brings to his guitar playing on stage is brilliantly echoed on canvas and paper as he translates the rawness of a Rolling Stones performance through rhythmic lines, bold colours and awesomely accurate facial expressions.

The images in The Famous Flames Suite display a flamboyant synergy, as the orange wave-like flame sweeps dramatically across the painting, creating an exhilarating feeling of movement. Referencing photographs of each band member on stage, Wood first creates a dramatic black backdrop and paints his fellow Stones with breathtaking clarity and realism. Effortlessly working in acrylics, then oils and robustly embellishing the art with oil pastels. Meanwhile, the electric and vibrant backdrop in Stones on Stage – Got Me Rockin’ is matched by the animated performance of the band, captured by Wood, as Jagger struts energetically across the foreground of the canvas.

rw11012pf_the_famous_flames_suite and got me rockin paper

The Famous Flames Suite and Got Me Rockin'

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The Famous Flames Suite

rw11009pf_the_famous_flames_black limo canvas

The Famous Flames, Black Limo (Canvas)

rw11006pf_the_famous_flames_hi hat canvas

The Famous Flames, Hi Hat (Canvas)

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The Famous Flames, Rip This Joint (Canvas)