Greg Singley

Artist Biography

Greg Singley is a man whose soul is on fire with color, not just with a single color, but an explosion of them. And he is not timid about sharing his ardor with anyone. His canvases celebrate the resplendence of every hue in the rainbow. He describes himself as an Impressionist, but from a distance his art, prints and posters appear to be unequivocally realistic. It is when the viewer comes closer that he begins to understand the connection between the work he approaches and the works on display at the Jeu de Paume on the Place de la Concorde in Paris. One day as Singley was outdoors finishing a painting, a hummingbird landed momentarily on his arm, quite likely in total bewilderment, the blooms it had spied far away with such hope had proved not to be flowers at all.

Singley was born September 30, 1950, in Greensboro, Alabama. After attending four years of business studies at an Alabama college, he enrolled in the Ringling School of Art in Sarasota, Florida. He graduated there in 1976 with a degree in Illustration and Design. After working for a time in the South as a designer, he decided to move to the Southwest United States in order to pursue a career in illustration and fine art, prints and posters. He has since free-lanced as an illustrator, serving clients as varied as Arizona Trends, New Times Weekly News and Arts Journal, Arizona Living, the Arizona Republic, and the Phoenix Gazette.

Singley takes his major inspiration from the first French Impressionists. He cites Monet (especially at Giverny), Pissarro, and Van Gogh as having most strongly influenced the evolution of his impressionistic style, and he greatly reveres the American turn-of-the-century Impressionist Maynard Dixon as well. Says Singley: "At its heart, Impressionism is a spirit. To best express this spirit, the work should be extremely abstract. The magic of an impressionistic canvas is the viewer's recognition of the greater image. By using the most fleeting bits of color and shape, I can demonstrate how each form is made of so many others.” Singley paints from the heart, with passion, and he chooses his colors instinctively, utterly without calculation. He will at times use a palette knife and even his fingers so he can apply paint to the canvas more directly, more intuitively, but he always uses a brush for the highlights and shadow strokes and other fine details. These methods have enabled him to imbue his art, prints and posters with a uniquely rich and vivid magnificence.

Greg Singley Art, Prints and Posters Collection