Early in my career I was covering a sports banquet for a non-profit organization… while crouched next to a table looking for an interesting angle, I noticed the unmistakable artist Leroy Neiman.
Seizing the opportunity I asked if I could take his portrait someday. He surprisingly said yes and handed me a card.
Leroy was a world famous artist know for color and movement in his paintings, so I had the idea to build a contraption that would spin behind him with pieces of color paper attached… thus mixing color and movement. I was finally putting my engineering degree to use lol. It was quite ambitious, took me days to build in my NYC apartment.
For the shoot I rented a studio, hired an assistant, and we set-up the contraption. The shoot went great, except I couldn't get the spinning background to look as good as it did in my testing. Leroy was a pleasure, very professional and a real warm guy... with his trademark cigar and bright yellow sports jacket, only he could get away with that. I tried to capture his spirit and those talented magical hands.
A week later I visited him at his studio on the Upper West Side, a beautiful space in an historic building just off Central Park. I brought images from the shoot. Even tho the images didn’t match my original vision I was very happy with the results. He liked them too and I gave him permission to use a few.
He then asked me if I ever played baseball. Strange question I thought. "Sure I played in little league" and before I knew it I found myself changing into a NY Mets uniform he just happened to have standing by. As I'm swinging the bat and making believe I’m standing at the plate getting ready for a pitch he’s taking photos of me. Weird cool moment.
I found out later many artists work with reference photos. Leroy was interested in how the uniform moved and wanted to capture a natural authentic look. At the time he was working on a new piece… of Mike Piazza, superstar catcher for Major League Baseball New York Mets and future Hall of Famer. and he would refer to those photos of me as reference.
Leroy Neiman was one of the most popular living artists in the US before his passing in 2012. I’m grateful for the experience we shared.
