Chuck Rosenthal, Sunlight Painter

Chuck Rosenthal, an oil painter who resides in Clearwater, Florida, has really got the depiction of that hot summer sunlight in Florida nailed. The people in his paintings are wonderful, but it is almost as if he imported the actual sunlight into his paintings. One of these paintings certainly could warm up a room during a cold winter in north country.

There is a painting of a little girl sprinting from the water on the beach at sunset. It’s called “Playing on the Beach.” Dark reds and oranges make her skin glow, and remind you that even though it’s sunset, it’s still hot on that beach. What fun!

In “Now Where’s my Mars Bar?” a young man on the beach searches his bag for a chocolate bar. The shadows are also long in this painting, but the light is a different color – more yellows than reds and oranges. Perhaps it is early morning. Perhaps the young man went for an early swim before it got too hot. He’s alone, not surrounded by beach goers, so one might assume that he got there ahead of the crowd.

A woman (mother we assume) and a young girl stand poised to enter the water on the beach in “Watching the Surf.” The viewer feels the warmth of the sun on their skins. The dark oranges and reds and long shadows seem to indicate that this is an evening beach scene

“On the Gulf” is another painting of a little girl and a woman in swimwear, but in this painting, they are already in the surf – the little girl with her bucket and the woman squatting down talking to the girl. Long shadows and deep oranges and reds in the painting again suggest evening. You wonder if the woman is trying to get the little girl to go home now. Of course, the child wants to stay on the beach.

“Clearwater Construction Workers” tells another story with a different kind of sunlight. The viewer perceives from the painting that the five men dressed in hardhats and orange vests are standing in the bright sun of midday, because of the short shadows and the sunlight that blanch their yellow hats to almost white. That walkway is hot!

Maybe you saw these men on your last trip to Clearwater in summer or anywhere in summer really – there they are figuring out something about the plan of what they are to do, or maybe it’s just too dang hot to get much work done.

This artist loves sunlight. And he can translate it onto canvas beautifully. These paintings each tell a story – actually more than one. We don’t know the artist’s version of the story – but each observer has his own story to go with the painting. And that is how art should be.