Art history-Rodger Duncan
1990
Many artists of every creative field made their way to the Pines. It’s natural setting was a haven that inspired creativity. It was only natural that they would give back to the community using their art, and so is the case with fashion illustrator Rodger Duncan. In 1989 he created the “Fashion of the Pines” poster art for the show.
Rodger Duncan and Mila-Moreira a Brazilian television Star, and model Iman
Rodger Duncan was born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, USA, and studied fine art at the Pennsylvania Academy of Arts. He received his masters degree after a year of studying painting in Florence, Italy. The artists he most admired were Picasso and Matisse, for their sense of colour and shape.
His first commissions were advertisements for department stores and he later worked for designers Calvin Klein, Oscar de la Renta, Chanel, Ralph Lauren, Stephen Jones, Patrick Kelly, Carolina Herrara and Anne Klein. This illustration is of a Ralph Lauren red satin trenchcoat published in American Vogue in 1985.
He was a young American illustrator, who worked at lightning speed and always with a live model. Said the artist “the model is the drawing, I am attracted to fashion illustration as a form of personal expression, interpreting the mood of the model according to what she is wearing. She is a young, active woman, her gestures and movements inspire me and because I work so fast she can always be caught in motion.”
There was a shape and feeling in Duncan’s dynamic brushstrokes and glowing gouache colours, which, coupled with his ability to capture a likeness in just a few lines, were much appreciated by American Vogue. They regularly commissioned from him both fashion drawings and portraits of elegantly dressed socialites.
The outstanding characteristic of Duncan’s work was his use of blocks of high-voltage colour. His figures are free and easy, yet still sophisticated and with an undercurrent of energy concealed beneath a deceptively relaxed poise.
