pictures were painted. Far from being neutral, his work is suffused with feeling. much of it melancholy.
The same loyalties surface in the work of another California artist associated with the Photorealist movement, Robert Bechtle (1932- In a statement written in 1973, Bechtel had this to say:
l try for a kind of neutrality or transparency of style that minimizes the artfulness that might prevent viewer from re ponding direetly to the subject matter. My subject matter comes from my own background and surroundings. I paint them because they are part of at l know and as such l have affection for them. l see them as particular embodiments of a general American experience 14
at the year have passed Bechtle become less interested in the interested in the in formality of the snapshot which a mumber photorealist artists turned into a convention while seeking to retain the photographic transparency which has always attacted him ,and while still using photographs for reference he has