My Fair Lady 1983

LeRoy Neiman made 'My Fair Lady' with paint and maybe some pastel, using color not to describe things but to create the feeling of a busy street. It’s all about the energy of the scene. Neiman wasn’t trying to hide his process. You can see all the marks, the strokes, the layering. The colors are laid down in hatched marks. It's like he wanted you to see how the painting was made. Look at the way he uses pink and orange to build up the surface of the street. It's not about making it look real. It’s about the sensation, the light, the vibe. There’s something almost Toulouse Lautrec about the subject and the way the crowd is rendered. Like Lautrec, Neiman has a loose improvisational style, capturing a moment in time, like a snapshot. Neiman's work reminds us that art is as much about the journey as it is about the destination. It's a conversation, an ongoing experiment.