James Rizzi: The New York Paintings. This item is unavailable.James Rizzi: The New York Paintings

This book includes some 100 of the artist's paintings - the first step in the unique Rizzi 3D print - making process. A large percentage of these paintings have been produced especially for this volume, as has the jacket design, and some of these images may become the three dimensional limited edition Rizzi prints of the future. All Rizzi's intricate, light - hearted, and comical works reflect the artist's overwhelming enthusiasm and zest for life, and make it impossible to suppress a smile.

The exuberant, humorous, and colorful paintings, and the unique style of three-dimensional limited edition prints, with which James Rizzi has made his name, are all inspired by the artist's native city, New York. Rizzi takes an upbeat view of urban life, displaying his boundless sense of fun. His images show familiar buildings, parks, and places each drawn in a naive, cartoon-like style crammed with cheerful, uninhibited characters. He calls himself "a child of the cartoon era" and lists his idols as Klee, Dubuffet, Haring, Warhol, and Bugs Bunny. Rizzi starts all his paintings from a drawing, one not on site but from memory. He always creates the color image by first laying down the dominant primary color. For many of his works this is yellow. When a painting is to be used to create a three-dimensional print, the work is subsequently silk-screened. For these limited edition prints, double the number of sheets are printed. The first of each pair is used as the background, the second to produce the 3-D effect. The buildings, cars, or other objects to be raised from the plane of the background are painstakingly cut out from the second sheet using curved nail-scissors; they are then stuck onto the background in their original position using double sided adhesive foam pads that vary in thickness from 5 to 15 mm. As no two objects can be cut out in precisely the same way, each of the prints can be said to be truly individual.