Having lived as an experimental ‘artist-at-large’ for the past two decades, I took it upon myself to try my hand at representative oil painting this year. I moved to Florence, Italy, in December, 2012, because I wanted to see how renaissance painters created Beauty on canvas. What I found was that far from being hyperrealist in the execution of their paintings, the Old Masters simply attempted to create Beauty in as realistic a way as was possible. Trompe l’oeil was a...

Spanning periods spent in a vast range of locations, an identifiable style begins to crystallize, which links seemingly disparate expressions, heedless of media employed. A forthright, earnest, and earthy vein courses through the works of Jesse Waugh, as he endeavors to deliver pulchritude manifest. The compendium concludes with The Pulchrist Manifesto, which should serve to define the art movement which has been inaugurated by Jesse Waugh.

I first noticed Jesse Waugh as a young student at L.A.City College in 1995. He would sit in the History of Cinema class, on the right hand side of one of the front rows of the college movie theater, with his roaring twenties-style, buzzed-on-the-back-and-sides, neatly-combed-on-top haircut. When I saw him working at the Temporary Contemporary Art Museum downtown I approached him to model for some photos, not realizing how well my offer fit into his particular style of se...