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Naperville Sun Out & About Article June 17-23, 2005:

LOCAL ARTISAN.

Dennis Quinn Chadra, Wheaton
By Dawn Klingensmith
SUN CORRESPONDENT
Wheaton artist Dennis Quinn Chadra spends a great deal of time and money finding beautiful objects to use in his still-life oil paintings. He scours flea markets, antiques stores and online auctions for the colorful pots and vases that serve as his centerpieces.

Yet for as much time as Chadra devotes to hunting aesthetically pleasing items to arrange and paint, his artwork really isn't about the objects.

"My work has evolved in that I'm not painting things anymore; instead, I'm painting light as it travels across ob­jects," he said.

Light, he added, gives an impression of movement to what might otherwise be just a nicely arranged assortment of inanimate stuff. By manipulating and capturing the interplay of light and shadow, Chadra can guide the viewer's eye to his intended focal point and urge the eye to travel from there to other points of light across the panels on which he paints. Such use of light and shadow for dramatic effect is called chiaroscuro.

In addition to depicting light and shadow, Chadra incorporates contrast into his paintings in other ways to cre­ate a "quiet sort of drama" among the arranged objects, he said.
"If you have something shiny, you should have something dull next to it for contrast," he explained. "If you have something short, you should also have something tall. If you have some­thing cool in terms of color, you should have something warm. Contrast is good. It's sort of a yin-yang thing."

When it comes to selecting his sub­ject matter, Chadra said he usually gravitates toward certain kinds of ob­jects: "I enjoy painting items that I like to eat and look at and collect."

For foods, he often opts for garlic, oranges, grapes and crab apples.

"Red onion is probably my favorite food to paint because the light travels through the skin and casts a red shadow onto the object the onion is placed next to," he said.

As for the other items, he has only to browse his bookshelves of pots and vases or dig through the storage room in his basement, which is packed with bronze and porcelain figurines and other items he collects.

Chadra's acquisitiveness has long surpassed his available space, though.

To free some space in the storage room, he has started a side business selling collectibles on the Internet, at www.secondlookcollectibles.com.

His full-time occupation is oversee­ing his 23-year-old company, Electro-Stock, a wholesale distributor of elec­tronic components and controls.

Reared in the western suburbs, Chadra has enjoyed art ever since he was a young child, although he has come a long way since his grade-school preoccupation with drawing futuristic cars.

After discovering in college that he had a talent for oil painting, he, like a lot of emerging artists, went through a barn-painting phase. Chadra still does occasional land­scapes but focuses mostly on still-life paintings, a form he's been perfecting for several years. In 2000, he began taking workshops led by artist David Leffel.

"That's when I got serious about painting light on objects rather than the objects themselves," Chadra said.

To infuse his paintings with light, Chadra mixes a substance called maroger in with his oil paints. The maroger gives the paint a buttery con­sistency and makes the colors appear to be translucent and luminous.

Chadra prefers using small brushes, although doing so slows his progress on a painting. Not only do the smaller brushes give him more control, but also each painting is "like reading a good book," he said. "You don't want it to end." And like a good book, his paintings are designed to make people think.

"A lot of still-life painters will do all the work for the viewer by making all the edges precise and sharp, but I like to leave some things to the viewer's imag­ination," said Chadra, whose work can be seen at his Web site, at www.chadra.com. "If you leave soft edges and some uncertainty as to what's going on in the background, their mind has to work a little bit, so they're more engaged by the painting.”

 Why are you so drawn to doing still-life paintings?
You can control the situation. You can control the light. If you paint out­side, the light shifts and moves, and you have bugs and the wind blowing your stuff around. I also like the quietness of a still-life painting.

 Does the food stay fresh long enough for you to complete a painting?
It depends. Grapes will turn into raisins in about three days. I've had that happen to me so many times. You have to keep replacing them.

 Provided the food stays fresh, do you eat it afterward?

 Yes, I always paint things I don't mind eating. You kill two birds with one stone, get two things done at once.
Some of the still-life paintings at the Art Institute have dead fish and other unsavory things. I take it these types of things don't show up in your work.

 I like to paint objects that are pleasant to look at. To have a dead rabbit or a dead fish - I can't stomach that. It’s not pleasant to look at. Plus, it would stink up the studio.

 Still-life paintings usually de­pict ordinary stuff, so why do you suppose they captivate people?

 They're usually objects that are familiar to people, so they connect with them in an emotional way. OA

Out & About Article published in the Naperville Sun June 17-23, 2005

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