Jerry Ralya
Jerry Ralya lives and pursues his art in the rural north of Vermont. A Michigan native, he went to graduate school at Stanford and later spent several years in the south of France. In California, the south of France, and Vermont—even in winter—the light has a strength and vibrancy that intrigues him and is reflected in his art.
Ralya studied anatomy and drawing for six years at the Art Students League in New York City under various instructors, and was most influenced by Sherrie McGraw. In Vermont, he ran a life-drawing workshop at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, and draws regularly from live models in his studio.
"Many people think I put the light color onto dark paper. The opposite is true. The lightest color in the drawings is the paper itself (I use pure white and various antique off-white shades). Here’s how I work.
I draw from live models and from photographs. First I draw the model with as much detail and as three-dimensional as I can—the parts you see in the finished drawing and those you don’t. Then, I look closely at the lighting and vary it for the high-contrast effect I’m after. This I do by adjusting the light on the actual model, or if I’m working from a photograph, looking more analytically at the photo. Once the proportions seem right to me and the light is appealing, I darken the dark parts of the drawing, both the background and the figure. This also covers the light parts of the drawing with a great deal of pastel dust, which I erase, as well as my original detail lines, from the parts where I want the drawing to be the lightest.
The only materials I work with are the pastel stick, an eraser, and my finger. I use a single color of pastel, and sometimes work finely powdered gold pigment into it. I have resisted the temptation to use fine blending tools because I’ve found that in heightening the realism to this degree, I take away some of the “umph” in the drawing. I take considerable pains to be accurate in those parts of the drawing that I show in detail, but I deliberately “handicap” myself by using nothing finer than the edge of a pastel stick, an eraser, and my finger. Those parts of the drawing that fade altogether into the background, I leave to the viewer to fill in with the eye."
Jerry Ralya
For more information on Jerry Ralya and a full collection of his work currently available
please Contact Polonaise Art Gallery