Malcolm T. Liepke is a contemporary American painter known for his loose brush style, restrained color palette, and apt ability to capture universal human emotions in figurative artworks. To achieve the lush textures in his paintings, Liepke make use of the alla prima (Italian, meaning at first attempt) or ‘wet-on-wet’ technique where layers of paint are applied to previous layers of wet paint. This technique requires the artist to work more quickly so that subsequent layers are completed before initial layers are dried. 

Although he attended the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena California, he dropped out after a year and a half and is primarily self-taught. An important period of this self-education was spent at the Prado in Madrid where the artist became influenced by the work of Diego Velázquez. Although Liepke’s art reflects an admiration for others such as Edgar Degas, John Singer Sargent, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, he has said that Velázquez, in particular, embodies everything that he admires in Art — “The timelessness of the figure achieved through an objective and expert rendering of the subject’s features, clothing and setting.”*

In contrast to artist like, García, Liepke is a prolific artist and often has numerous works in progress at one time, some times as many as thirty paintings. He finds his inspiration from the people around him and his portraits are often composites of various muses. He will take photographs of various people, pin them to the wall of his studio and use the various individual’s traits to create composites for further development.

In reflecting on his work, the artist has said that: “ … [N]o matter how alone we may feel in the world—how we imagine we are experiencing things in a vacuum—we all share the same human experiences. We all have the same basic needs for connection, love and understanding. I try to reach those universal needs; it’s what’s primal in art. I try to say it through mood, color, atmosphere and texture. Bottom line: It’s the [emotion], and I just want to get it out. It’s difficult to express through words things that are so beautiful that they have no words. I can’t explain it. I have to paint it.”*