Cody's profile
This current body of work emphasizes the models’ passive interaction between the artist and the studio environment. Working from life is essential. Inspiration is key. As a painter, I try to capture the models’ blemishes, psychology, flesh and the coursing veins underneath. Most of my works are seated or reclining nudes juxtaposed with a blanket, rug or walls. My landscapes are urban. I am trying to portray the aging and solitude of the structures amid the hustle of city life.
Cody is a Baltimore-based artist specializing in portrait and figurative oil paintings. He takes a humanist approach to painting, believing in the value of classical, traditional training and techniques. Inspiration is key, but then you have to put in the work. His attention to detail and quality compels him to continually re-work his canvases, until he achieves the right mood. The goal is to capture the personality, even the psychology, of his subject.
Willem de Kooning said, “Flesh is the reason why oil painting was invented.” Pryseski uses the impasto technique, thickly layering his figures with oil paint.
This brings additional texture to the work, allowing for the artist to manipulate the play of light and rendering the figure more expressive. Pryseski is inspired by Stephen Conroy, Phillip Pearlstein, and Chuck Close (whom he met when he accidentally stumbled into Close’s SoHo gallery). But his work is most strongly influenced by Lucien Freud. Cody saw Freud’s’ first U.S. show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1993. The well-worn brochure from that show remains in his studio today, always close at hand for inspiration.
Cody grew up in Baltimore, MD. He graduated from MICA in 1996 with a degree in painting and drawing and maintains a studio in Canton.
Cody is a Baltimore-based artist specializing in portrait and figurative oil paintings. He takes a humanist approach to painting, believing in the value of classical, traditional training and techniques. Inspiration is key, but then you have to put in the work. His attention to detail and quality compels him to continually re-work his canvases, until he achieves the right mood. The goal is to capture the personality, even the psychology, of his subject.
Willem de Kooning said, “Flesh is the reason why oil painting was invented.” Pryseski uses the impasto technique, thickly layering his figures with oil paint.
This brings additional texture to the work, allowing for the artist to manipulate the play of light and rendering the figure more expressive. Pryseski is inspired by Stephen Conroy, Phillip Pearlstein, and Chuck Close (whom he met when he accidentally stumbled into Close’s SoHo gallery). But his work is most strongly influenced by Lucien Freud. Cody saw Freud’s’ first U.S. show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1993. The well-worn brochure from that show remains in his studio today, always close at hand for inspiration.
Cody grew up in Baltimore, MD. He graduated from MICA in 1996 with a degree in painting and drawing and maintains a studio in Canton.
