About The Artist
About the Artist
Lory Lockwood is an artist who specializes in automobile and motorcycle fine art that she paints in a style called Photorealism. This contemporary style exudes a power of obsessive detail that focuses on chrome reflections, bright colors and abstract patterns.
Lockwood’s fascination with cars and motorcycles began in her teens. Growing up in New York she learned to drive in a 1966 Ford Mustang and dated a guy with a Harley Davidson. She rode the Bronx River Parkway in a Mercedes Gull Wing and learned to drive a stick shift on a 911 Porsche.
College and life led Lockwood to New Orleans where she did many portraits of local architecture, French Quarter scenes and fashion mannequins – many reflected in windows – and all of which were found from walking the streets.
One day when photographing the bark of a sycamore tree she turned around and saw the tree reflected in an automobile. The tree morphed into beautiful and strange abstract shapes seen in the paint, chrome, and the two colors of the window glass – she was hooked.
Reflections, photorealism and abstraction became her artistic focus as she painted Thunderbirds, Ferraris, Jaguars, Porsches and Mercedes. Motorcycles like Harley Davidson, Gilera, Ducatis and custom choppers soon followed.
Eventually Lockwood began going to car and motorcycle shows and found gorgeous subject matter for her exquisitely detailed oil paintings – not just cars and motorcycles but also the biker dudes and babes with their leathers and tattoos.
Lockwood loves meeting car and motorcycle enthusiasts at events such as Daytona Bike Week, Laguna Seca Historic Races, Elegance at Hershey and Pebble Beach and Amelia Island Concours d’elegance.
Artists who have inspired and influenced her work are Richard Estes, Don Eddy, Tom Blackwell, James Rosenquist and Audrey Flack.
“I have always been fascinated by mechanical objects. Knives, silver cups and ornaments were favorite subjects in her early still life paintings. They had sharp, clean edges, shiny surfaces and were reflective.”
“I am a voyeur. I love eye candy – colors, light, reflections and anything made out of chrome. I paint what I see in the world around me – it’s there and it’s shiny, vibrant and hot. Using automotive and motorcycle subject matter, my photorealistic paintings focus on the reflective, abstract nature of the subject. These mechanical images can also be seen as objects of desire – our passions and dreams. As such, realized or not, these aspirations can give us pleasure, fantasy, and a sense of identity or style. These images signify speed, power, adventure, danger, wealth, prestige, beauty, love and sex. They are realities, fantasies and illusions at the same time.”
Lory Lockwood, New Orleans
Commissions and Paintings
Car and motorcycle enthusiasts can also commission a personalized portrait.
You can also visit her fine art website lorylockwood.com
Reviews
The following are excerpts from reviews of Lory Lockwood’s shows:
“Lory Lockwood is a painter gifted with a chromium touch, an ability to make the arcane art of oil paint on canvas resemble the glossiest product photography imaginable. Her paintings of the sleekest of sports cars and vintage Detroit behemoths restored to more than mint condition represent a multifaceted approach that cuts across the cultural spectrum.…She just waves that chromium wand and distills all that she surveys into the glossiest depictions of exotically machined metal imaginable.…what’s beyond dispute is Lockwood’s ability to recreate in oils that reflective chrome sizzle – the mystique of elaborately machined metal, the aura of speed and the visceral excitement it conveys.”
Eric Bookhardt, Gambit Weekly, New Orleans, LA
“Lockwood is obsessed with the way a waxy fender or pinstriped gas tank will capture the clouds, sky and surrounding landscape, bending the scenery into strange, psychedelic patterns and tinting the myriad hues of nature the tone of a factory paint job….Lory Lockwood’s photorealistic auto paintings are so realistic they become abstract”
Doug MacCash Times Picayune, New Orleans, LA
“She’s the “chrome queen” and usually paints the image of one car reflected in the chrome of another.”
Pamela Dillon, Dayton News, Dayton, OH