Paintography
- Photo Painting
- Black and White Photography
- Color Photography
PHOTOGRAPHY
Mario Castillo started being involved with Black and White Photography at the Illinois Institute of Design (the new Bauhaus) in 1964 in Chicago. At this time he was shown how to create his own pinhole camera, plus work with a professional camera, and create photograms.
While at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago he continued this practice introducing mixed media into his photos, primarily drawing. Then he received an Oakley Fellowship to USC. During this time he started to paint on photographs for his multi-media presentations as a graduate student at the University of Southern California in 1969. Castillo was then offered a Teaching Assistantship at California Institute of the Arts. It was at Cal Arts where he began to study Color Photography.
After receiving his MFA, he accepted a teaching position at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1974. Based on some commercial art work he had done in 1970, Castillo did his first series of photo paintings during his stay at the U of I. These were done on color photographs he took, then he painted over them with oils. Some of these were children from Mexicali, Baja California, and others were of still life material he would find interesting. Also this mixed media technique of painting over photos refers to the old technique of tinting photos before there was Color Photography. Castillo likes to differentiate the tinting of photographs from painting over them. Tinting is done with very thin and transparent coats of paint and does not change the photo image. While painting also makes use of thin coats, in this case, the paint can get rather thick and opaque to the point of changing the image below. In these photo paintings, Mario Castillo takes advantage of this liberty and alters the photographic imagery with a surrealistic approach which questions the proper foundations of reality.
Around 1995 as a faculty member of Columbia College Chicago, Mario Castillo begins to study digital imaging techniques and making use of Adobe Photoshop. This digital media has opened up a new universe for artists. Castillo now incorporate computer imaging with his work. He truly is excited about the infinite potential this new media offers and so he has started to experiment wit Digital Photography.
Another aspect of this new medium is that Mario Castillo turned his photo-paintings into what he calls Paintography. This is a more complex process than just painting over a photograph. To see his Paintographs please follow link.
Mario Castillo Paintographs
