The artist
Carlos Ramos
Warpaintstudios South Bay. Based in Torrance; the atelier is on Oak Street in Lomita. Charlie, in the rooms.
A painter with the sensibilities of a filmmaker
Carlos Ramos is an American contemporary fine artist. LinkedIn lists him in Torrance, California; the studio — Warpaintstudios South Bay — sits on Oak Street in Lomita. Fine art is the business and the passion: full-scale figuration, corporate and individual portraiture in oils, traditional ukiyo-e woodblock, book-jacket illustration, and periodic figure work from the nude in the academic line.
He is a traditionalist. He strives to make art the way artists used to — intellect and hands together, direct observation, color richness, and narrative points of view that change a viewer’s hour. Cinema and photography sit inside the practice: camera angle, light, compressed time.
The feat is prying that image or those objects out from one’s mind’s eye, execute this vision and exhibit before an interpretive audience. There lies the artistry.
On LinkedIn he describes a charge of sole responsibility for content, planning, and instruction. That is the classroom language of a long teaching career: twenty-eight years, in his own accounting, as a collegiate tenured Professor of Studio Art in the Los Angeles Community College District. West Los Angeles College catalogs name him Chair of Humanities and Fine Arts and Assistant Professor of Art; later editions list him as Professor of Art, emeritus. The studio’s working map, as he lists it: the United States, Japan, Taiwan, and Shenyang, China.
I am a painter with the sensibilities of a film maker making effort to move a viewing audience so deeply that their lives change.
The classroom
The public record of the teaching years is in the Los Angeles Community College District. West Los Angeles College catalogs of 2006–2008 and 2008–2010 list Carlos Ramos as Chair of Humanities and Fine Arts — architecture, art, foreign languages, humanities, multimedia, music, and philosophy under that division — with an office in the Fine Arts complex. The same catalogs, and those that follow through 2014–2016, record him as Assistant Professor of Art, with a B.A. and M.A. from California State University, Fullerton. By the 2010–2012 catalog the chair had passed to a colleague; he remained on the art faculty. Later catalogs list him as Professor of Art, emeritus.
LinkedIn keeps the pedagogical core in one line: sole responsibility for content, planning, and instruction. Direct observation was the method he used as a Professor of Studio Art, and it is still the method on Oak Street. He has written of twenty-eight years at the collegiate rank.
After the age of fifty he served in the National Guard. He was shipped to New Orleans to help with Hurricane Katrina. That later-life service is the military chapter. He did not serve in Vietnam.
Formation
As a student he looked for a universal image and found it in surface and scale: the gooey oil of Wayne Thiebaud, the beautiful difficulty of Jasper Johns, the rich application of Chuck Close. Classical Greek sculpture and the light of Bernini. He studied with Eric Fischl, whose narrative figuration brought the work full circle: drawing and painting in the service of a point of view.
He works large. Paper arrives by the fifty-yard roll. Sketches live on envelopes, napkins, place mats — anything except a tidy bound book. He is a lifetime learner. LinkedIn records unnamed study in 1983–1988 and work at Savannah College of Art and Design through 2015. West catalogs already list the Fullerton degrees; later study has returned to Fullerton and to SCAD. Manga sits beside fine art in the rooms he keeps open.
Practice
Oil, block, and wall
Portrait sittings are face to face. Figuration is full-scale. Ukiyo-e is cut and printed in the old sequence. Illustration leaves the studio as a jacket. Manga is line under rain. Murals take the South Bay wall. Craft — keyblocks, vessels, books — keeps the hand honest. The same South Bay hours include volunteer driving for Meals on Wheels of Torrance and Lomita: meals to seniors, to those fresh from the infirmary, to anyone whose health needs the door.
Studio years
What can be dated from his own account, and nothing invented beyond it.
- 1983–1988 Early study, as listed on LinkedIn. West catalogs later record a B.A. and M.A. from California State University, Fullerton.
- Teaching Twenty-eight years as a collegiate tenured Professor of Studio Art in the Los Angeles Community College District. Sole responsibility for content, planning, and instruction. Direct observation as method.
- 1998 Warpaintstudios South Bay founded. Face-to-face portraiture in oils from the first year.
- 1999 The Oak Street atelier in Lomita: 3,500 square feet, rooms enough for collaborative effort and large museum-quality work.
- 2005 National Guard, after the age of fifty. Shipped to New Orleans to help with Hurricane Katrina.
- 2006–2010 Chair of Humanities and Fine Arts, West Los Angeles College, as printed in the 2006–2008 and 2008–2010 catalogs. Assistant Professor of Art; office in the Fine Arts complex.
- 2010–2016 Remains on the West art faculty through the 2014–2016 catalog, no longer listed as chair. Later catalogs: Professor of Art, emeritus.
- 2015 Savannah College of Art and Design, as recorded on LinkedIn. Lifetime study continues, including further work at California State University, Fullerton.
- Present Torrance–Lomita. Full-scale figuration, portraiture, ukiyo-e, illustration, manga, murals. Studio work listed across the United States, Japan, Taiwan, and Shenyang, China. Volunteer driver, Meals on Wheels of Torrance and Lomita.