Will Rochfort's paintings combine the style of golden age cinema with the narrative and detail of a Norman Rockwell painting, and he draws inspiration from them both.
Like most artists, as a kid he was always making something - he loved to build models, make comics, and, above all, draw people doing things. He has always had a bent toward narrative work; he always enjoyed looking at picture and comic books, so when it was time to go to university he started thinking about illustration. While taking some introductory classes at university, he just happened to stumble upon a class about the illustrator Norman Rockwell - who, not being as ubiquitous in the UK as he is in the US, Rochfort had never heard of before. "I was fascinated. I remember one of the paintings they showed in the presentation, the one of the pitcher winding up and the umpire looking through his legs, and just being amazed by his storytelling and sense of design. I instantly went off to research Rockwell and learn everything I could about him. I studied his methods of painting, the way he photographed his models, his materials - everything. He was a brilliant craftsman; he was dedicated to getting the right reference and he worked like crazy." Will ended up transferring to a fine art major because he wanted to focus on painting - he recalls that the students were pretty much left to their own devices there, there wasn't a lot of instruction but there were no restrictions either. So Will pursued his own interest in narrative painting and taught himself how to work realistically. For his final project, he tried an oil painting for the first time: "I worked on it for two months, it was a major undertaking! It was a painting of a father and son called 'The Waiting Room' and it was incredibly Rockwell, basically a ripoff," he said with a laugh. "I studied all his methods of painting and composing and telling a story and used them in this painting."
Although he was consciously imitating Rockwell's methods when he started out, he quickly moved beyond them, and although his work still shows Rockwell's influence in its ability to show a story at a glance, he notes that he's no longer consciously imitating Rockwell. "I'm still honing different aspects of visual storytelling - I'm most interested in telling the first chapter. I want to start a story for the viewer, make them wonder what happens next and invite them to fill in the details with their imagination."
He looks at fine artists as well as illustrators: John Singer Sargent, Edgar Degas, and Joaquin Sorolla are three he admires for their brushwork, compositions, and ability to stage and frame a scene. But equally as significant as the artists are the filmmakers.
"Films are my biggest inspiration, really," Will said. "I draw a lot of both direct and indirect ideas from them. Sometimes it's the whole 'feel' of a film, sometimes it's a split second of a scene - there was this very brief scene in Hidden Figures that inspired the painting 'Ticker Tape'. I also love the behind-the-scenes drama, especially the way sets and cameras and lights looked during the golden age of film in the 40s and 50s - the equipment is so cool and it just captures the magic of movies. I'm always trying to tell a story, but to tell it in a slightly heightened reality - this is something Rockwell did well, and Spielberg and Tarantino are always doing this too - the action is always staged, and they don't hide the fact that it's made up, they give you a glimpse of the sleight-of-hand that makes it happen. Film is a form of escape for me, and to some degree I want my paintings to do the same thing for the viewer, let them get lost in the created world of the painting for a moment."
