Michael Sprouse connects past to present

Michael Sprouse draws a connection to people he sees in vintage photographs.  Painting in a contemporary style, he creates portraits of strangers who he imagines once held the very images that inspire him.

Sprouse has been drawn to old images since he was a boy, staying up late to watch Lillian Gish present silent films on the PBS show "The Silent Years."

"The images were so intense," Sprouse recalls.  "They were using their faces so expressively because they had no sound.  They literally had to convey every emotion on their faces."

He finds the same level of intensity in the faces in old photographs.

"I looked at these uncanny faces and thought, 'Wouldn't that make a great painting,'" he said.

He selects compelling old photographs, usually from 1865 to the 1960s.  From them he composes a painted portrait of the face, sometimes incorporating text or letters to create romantic, nostalgic pieces.

Sprouse focuses on the earlier days of photography because the relationship Americans had with the camera was so different then.

"It was such a different time related to the camera.  There is more essence and psyche then than now – people literally thought a part of their soul was captured by the film," said Sprouse.  "People would dress up in their uniforms for photos before they went off to war.  They thought if they never saw them again ­­- and many times, they didn't ­- they would still have this eternal keepsake."

The work of photographers, including William Brady, had put photography into the public realm during the American Civil War, but until the advent of the Kodak camera in World War I, and until the 1920s, photography was reserved for the elite, Sprouse said.

"They were unsure how to relate to the camera.  They'd often be in an apparatus, to help them hold perfectly still, and they'd wear their very best clothes to the photographer's studio," he said.

Then, traveling photographers began to journey throughout the country, some even bringing fancy clothes with them so their subjects could dress nicely, he said.

Sprouse describes the images as magical – the subject isn't looking at the camera; the camera is looking through the subject.  It's a compelling thought.

"When you're holding that photo, there's a 90 percent chance the person in that photo was holding it and looking at that photo in the same way as you all those years before," said Sprouse.  That tunnel, that connection through time, helps him feel connected to the person whose portrait he paints in his very 21st-century style.

"There's something about that I find really enchanting.  Painting brings it full circle for me," said Sprouse.

Sprouse's first photograph-based portrait exhibit opened in his gallery, eklektikos, in 1999.  "It changed my career completely almost overnight," he said.  With a full-page spread in the Washington Post and write-ups in other magazines, Sprouse won wide acclaim.

"Before this, I was doing abstract work.  I was known as a cubist, but I'd always drawn faces.  I did an entire body of this work.  I couldn't stop painting.  People were flabbergasted by it," he said.

Sprouse first made a name, and is still recognized, as a cubist-abstractionist artist.  He works in mixed media and uses collage.

He also creates contemporary, landscape-influenced pieces and paints many on commission.  "I enjoy doing that, and people enjoy having them.  They're fantastic items," he said.

Still, it is the portraits based on photographs that Sprouse is most well-known for.  He's received national acclaim for his work.

"I've been working professionally as an artist for 25 years on and off," said Sprouse.  A talented artist in high school, he attended Western Kentucky University, where he majored in fine art.

"At that time, all you could do was be an artist or teach," said Sprouse, laughing.  Graphic arts was an entirely different field.

He moved to Washington, D.C. in 1990, and opened eklektikos, a gallery he owned in Georgetown for 11 years.

"It was sort of a crazy idea.  I was young and inexperienced about the commercial aspect of selling art, but my partner said, 'Let's open our own gallery,'" he said.  It was a hit, rated among Washington, D.C.'s top 10 galleries at its peak.

But, after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Sprouse said, the city changed dramatically.  "The tech bubble burst and people stopped buying art.  We decided it was a good time to move," said Sprouse, who has resided in Lewes since 2002.

He maintains a studio in Washington, D.C. and commutes back and forth several days a week. "It's pretty easy, once you get used to it," he said, of the trip.

"I love Lewes, Rehoboth.  I love Delaware.  It's this phenomenal little treasure of a state," Sprouse said.  "This is a great place to call home."

Sprouse is online at sprouseart.com