Richard Siemens
Visual Artist (Bermagui, NSW)

Richard is an award winning professional Australian artist. For the past 15 years, he has painted in a meticulous detail style, creating high quality oil and acrylic paintings, with particular emphasis to 3-Dimensional illusions on the texture, form and compositions of his subjects.

Illusion painter is how Richard Siemens describes himself and his works as quality paintings because Quality is never an accident, it is the result of intention, innovation and skillful execution. His painting style is totally self taught and he doesn't intentionally follow any art movement. His paintings have been described as 'Rare Gems', because they are meticulously detailed, which do not allow him to be prolific, but precise.

Up to seven layers of undercoats are painted on a board to achieve a paper like finish. Richard paints the background with acrylics, mainly with an airbrush, to keep a flat surface. Then, much like the old masters used to do from an outline drawing, which is Richard's blue print, he transfers the foreground to the board, ready to be painted with oils.

Some viewers are tempted to touch the flat, two-dimensional, surfaces of Richard's paintings to convince their eyes that the third-dimension is only an illusion. He encourages viewers to look at his work up close, to appreciate the realist technique.

To view more of Richards work online, visit his website below.