Timothy Duffy

My subject is the male figure, rendered from images of fashion models. I came of age in what one could call the GQ Era; Calvin Klein ads, and Details magazine depictions of the contemporary ideal male figure. He is typically shown from the waist up (although the waist line has dropped over the years!) with zero body fat and increasingly sculpted abs. He is in his twenties, and is masculine, but not manly, pretty but not gay. I have typically kept the figure in a 2 dimensional realm. In fact they often float in the page, recalling the shallow emotional content of the context in which they were derived. I enjoy the mark making and the work. I like making lines with pens and brushes. I often will over emphasize a line of my own creation over a true rendering from the image. I am not so much concerned about realism, so much as the fantasy. Just like the cologne ad, I wish to evoke something more than the forms themselves. I find myself searching for the emotional sub layers in the faces of these models… even in their postures. I am always aware that another artist chose this model, in this position, with this lighting and this background etc. to tell his story.