Artist Profile: Dick Perez; simply one of the very best.

As a youngster growing up near Philadelphia during the 1970's, one of my earliest art memories is being given a Philadelphia Phillies yearbook that featured an amazing group of pen and ink sketches. I remember trying (with great frustration) to re-create those drawings - even tracing them over and over. As simple as they looked, they were amazingly complex in their line technique and even my exact tracings could not capture the personality of the players the way the real drawings did. The artist's name always stuck with - Dick Perez.

As I went down my path of life, leaving my own artwork on the back burner for school and career, I never forgot how those drawings inspired me as a kid. And when I re-discovered an interest in drawing again in 2005 as an adult, it was with great excitement that I realized that Mr. Perez had gone on to become one of the most important sports artists in the industry today and perhaps in the entire history of professional baseball.

The work of Dick Perez is simply incredible. If you are a Phillies fan (or a baseball fan for that matter) it is impossible for you not to have seen his work at some point. Whether it be strolling by his paintings on display at Citizen's Bank Park (home of the Phillies), seeing his brushwork printed on a collectible Donruss trading card or reproduced in a game program or collectible lithograph, Dick's work is a huge part of professional baseball today and hangs in the homes of countless baseball fans across the country.

Dick is the official artist of the Baseball Hall of Fame and has won more awards and accolades than could possibly be listed here. He has painted and exhibited every Hall of Fame member at the Hall of Fame museum. His paintings of yearly inductees are the official color portraits that go on display in the museum beginning with induction weekend and remaining on display the entire year. His art has graced the covers of various Hall of Fame publications, limited edition prints and he has provided his artistic skills to many special Hall of Fame projects over the years. The art gallery room of the museum bears his name.

It is with an incredible amount of pride and excitement that the Sports Artwork Forum shares with you its exclusive interview with the great Dick Perez.

SAF - How did you get started in sports art and when did you know you could pursue it at a professional level?

DP - My involvement in sports art was evolutionary with no definitive starting point. It was a gradual development from graphic designer/art director to sports illustration. Part of my role as a graphic designer involved designing publications for colleges and universities, including their sports departments. I dealt with the Sports Information Director at Villanova University, who later became the General Manager of the Philadelphia Eagles. I designed the team’s yearbooks, collateral material, media guides, etc., and began to incorporate my own illustrations into the work. That led to doing some illustration work for the NFL. The Philadelphia Phillies took notice of my work and invited me to do work for them. It was during this period that I met collector and entrepreneur Frank Steele. We formed an enterprise hoping to bring art back to baseball cards. He was friendly with the president of the Baseball Hall of Fame, and with their imprimatur, created the Perez-Steele Baseball Hall of Fame Art Post Carts. The success of that project led to full fledged career in sports art, i.e., a twenty year role as official artist for the Baseball Hall of Fame, Donruss Diamond Kings, Topps and a bunch of other projects.

SAF - Who are your main artistic influences and which artists’ work do you most admire (classic and contemporary)?

DP - John Singer Sargent, Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida, Anders Zorn, Diego Velazquez and contemporary artist Lucien Freud, to name a few. Sargent, Sorolla and Zorn were artists who thrived in the early part of the 20th century, and Velazquez was the great Spanish court painter of the 1600s. My favorite is Sargent. His magical brushwork is what I hope to emulate when I begin many of my paintings. His strokes are expressive and suggestive not painstakingly literal. It takes years to develop the flair and confidence to paint in this manner. It is an Impressionist point of view though Sargent is not considered a true Impressionist. His style conveys that an artist’s hand and creative thinking, not a camera, is responsible for the image.

SAF - As a professional sports artist who is your primary clientele?

DP - I would like to think that it is the baseball fan and collector. Though much of my paying clientele includes sports teams, card companies and other members of the sports establishment, I am really trying to make an impression on the end viewer. I also self publish works that are directly marketed to the sports collector community.

SAF - What is your preferred medium to work in and why?

DP - Without question it is working in oils that I really enjoy. It is the classical medium, and most forgiving. I am constantly adjusting and correcting my work, and the opacity of oil paints and slower drying nature allows me to do this. Watercolor is quicker and can be very expressive. Gouache provides me with the qualities of both watercolor and oils in that it is an opaque medium. Acrylic is my least favorite, though I have created successful works with this medium.

SAF - Since you have been a sports artist, what do you consider to be your biggest accomplishment?

DP - If one takes a look at the biography that appears on my web site it will show that I have been involved in many works, some of which can be described as major accomplishments.

If I had to pick one it would be the one man exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, this nation’s oldest (art) museum and teaching institution. The 32 painting exhibit, commissioned by the Phillies, featured Baseball Hall of Fame players who had some connection to the Philadelphia area. I believe it is the only time a major museum has devoted such attention to sports art. To add to that accomplishment these works are on permanent display at the Philadelphia Phillies’ Citizens Bank Park.

SAF - Without revealing any of your trade secrets, what is your process for creating a new piece?

DP - Due to the nature of my subject matter I work from photographs. I enjoy painting baseball’s past and many of my subjects are either dead or way past their primes. For current players I have taken my own photos, hired a photographer, or rely on the card companies or those who commission the work to supply the reference.

When I am supplied photos I ask for as many as possible so that I have the final voice in the selection, or so I can combine different photos to create one image.

To some extent working from photos is dismaying in that your starting point is someone else’s creation. My least favorite thing to do is to copy from a photo directly. Sometimes that can’t be helped when the work is a one subject painting, or when an image is so compelling that it begs to be converted into a painting. But in these cases I rely heavily on technique, design, and heightened color so that it is clear to the viewer that he is looking at a painting.

What I really like to paint are narratives for which I combine a number of photos to create my own source for a painting. In recent years I am working more and more this way. I have thousands and thousands of photo images on my hard drive from photo collections I have purchased, hundreds of baseball books, and vintage sports magazines. I use all of this material to create my own pictorial reference. I deliberately work from black and white, which allows me to be more inventive with color, and more dramatic with tonal values.

Once I have my single image I make a pencil drawing on my painting surface. It is essential that you begin with a good drawing, though I am constantly adjusting and changing during the painting process. The treatment of grass, skies, and dirt are pure inventions. Though I am impressed that some artists take the inordinate amount of time to paint every fan in the stands, I would rather suggest or loosely render that part of the picture. I have a short attention span and that would drive me crazy.

SAF - How do you feel about technology as it relates to art? What technical resources have you found critical to your art business (web sites, software, tools, etc.)?

DP - I welcome the new technology. It is another tool for the artist. Photoshop enables me to create my narrative images quicker and more exact. Photoshop also allows me to change the direction of light, clarify details in shadow areas, and a variety of other things to enhance an image.

I am now experimenting with digital painting. The biggest challenge is to create a painting that does not look like it is computer generated. The new generation software is allowing me to do that, though it requires a lot of effort and creativity. It does not really look like natural media if all you do is click the watercolor button. Digital painting has captured my imagination, but I will be doing most of my work in the traditional manner.

SAF - What one bit of advice would you give to artists who aspire to achieve success in the sports artwork industry?

DP - I get a lot of email on this subject. If you love sports and your tendencies lie toward a career in art it sounds like the perfect proposition. So, I offer three pieces of advise. Your passion for art should be greater than your passion for sports. Making art should be your first choice. Sports is just a subject to which you apply your artistic skills, imagination, and point of view.

I did not start out as a sports artist. I was an illustrator who, over time, developed a focus on the genre. Second, bring something of yourself to the work. There should be a distinction between what you do and what everyone else is doing. When you make sports the major focus of your artistic existence all you are concerned with is getting a likeness. Art is more than that. I look at many well-executed realistic portraits, baseball or otherwise, and I can’t distinguish one creator from another. Which leads me to my third piece of advice; do not be impressed by being told that your painting looks “just like a photograph”. Better that someone says, “what a great work of art” than “what a great likeness”.

SAF - What new or interesting projects do you have coming up that you would like to share?

DP - I do have something in the works that I will be offering in fall of 2009. I believe it will be the pinnacle of my career in sports art. But, I really don’t want to go into too much detail at this time. Suffice to say that it involves Baseball Hall of Famers, a visual history of the game, and over 700 paintings, including past and many new works. Keep an eye on my web site. (Editor's note: Dick's web site will also be undergoing some new changes this Fall - be sure to visit).

SAF - What are the negative aspects to pursuing a career in sports art? AKA – what things in your profession do you find to be stressful or frustrating?

DP - I was told by the president of a Fine Arts teaching institution that only 8% of the art school graduates wind up doing art for a living, the rest have to get a day job. If the goal is just one subject matter in the entire field of art making imagine the odds for success.

I don’t mean to discourage anyone from pursuing a career in sports art, but rather to point out that that pursuit will require a lot of hard work, talent and luck. For many years I wondered whether collectors bought my work because of the subject or because of my art. Although I feel a little more secure about it now, you never really know.

One day I was standing in the Baseball Hall of Fame Art Gallery, next to kid who didn’t know who I was, and who was looking at a painting of Mike Schmidt that I had done. I overheard him say “Wow”. I didn’t know if he was referring to his hero, or to my work, you never really know. I hope it was both.

An unfavorable but necessary aspect to making reproductions of sports art is the red tape of procuring approvals and licensing agreements from players, the leagues and player estates. It can be time consuming and requires a business-like mentality. But it is something that must be attended to if an artist wants to remain in good standing within the industry.

Though my career in sports art has not been totally trouble free, I wouldn’t change a thing. I have enjoyed, especially in baseball, the characters, the faces, the landscapes, the colors, the baggy uniforms, and the ballet of the game. These are all aspects that offer many visual possibilities. For me it is not just painting the heroes of the game, but perpetuating and feeding a national mindset for an activity that continues to capture hearts and minds of many Americans.