OXFORD, MS — Glennray Tutor rejects the traditionalist notion that art can’t be three dimensional; instead, he utilizes the flatness of a canvas to show depth in the world through metaphor in his hyperrealistic paintings. 

 

Glennray Tutor’s artwork has ranged from series featuring fireworks, comic books, and mason jars, to acutely detailed paintings of barren rural landscapes and small town life. He began his career in photorealism in the early 1980s and has since used everyday objects to tell a deeper story of the human experience.

 

“In the arrangement, I’m making a lot of comments beyond what is just on the canvas,” Tutor said. “I’m commenting on childhood, adulthood, innocence, loss of innocence, human relationships and the ideas of violence versus non-violence.” 

 

The importance of metaphor cannot be understated in Tutor’s art. In a previous series of paintings in which mason jars are seen holding vegetables and fruit, Tutor analyzes the ideas of containment and what happens to a body after death. 

 

In his current series of comic books and marbles, the hyperrealist uses commonly nostalgic items to invoke these same feelings and examine the sometimes harsh realities of life as Tutor sees them. 

 

“The marbles, they are something that can be played with,” Tutor said. “They can be a toy and give you pleasure, but also you can put one in a slingshot and hurt someone with it. It’s up to how things are used and how they are thought of.”

 

The concept of fireworks has long intrigued Tutor. He can remember loving shooting off fireworks as a child, but now they have become a staple of his art for another reason. He utilizes them to show that childlike world juxtaposed with the harm that they can cause, mirroring the romanticized nature of war and other kinds of violence.

 

 “A firework can be a thing of beauty, but as soon as you point it at someone, it becomes a weapon.”

 

Flatness is an element of painting that Tutor makes a point to overcome in his art. He believes that from impressionists to modernists, their approach to the dynamics of what is possible on a canvas is flawed. 

 

“I never bought into the idea of flat anyway,” Tutor said. “Einstein proved there is no such thing as flat. There is an infinite cosmic world and the infinite quantum world. There’s no end to it; there is no flatness. Even this canvas is made of millions of atoms.“

 

Tutor compares the beginning of his process to the composing of music. Particularly in his series on comic books and marbles, Tutor sorts through thousands of marbles, and for his current undertaking, he spent nearly a month curating hundreds of comic books and even more fireworks to find the perfect assortment of objects to portray his message.

 

Surrounded by his four cats, Tutor often paints for over nine hours a day in his studio. An obsessive process of changing and adjusting the narrative of the comic strips featured in the work, carefully arranging the objects, and then applying and reapplying layers of paint, ensuring to remove even the slightest brushstroke, makes Tutor’s work largely indistinguishable from a photograph.

 

“By the time I finish this painting, you won’t see any brush strokes. You will not see how it’s put together. I don’t want the viewer to be distracted by my technique, the brush strokes, the texture of the canvas. I want the viewer to simply experience the art.”

 

Born in Kennett, MO, in 1950, Tutor moved to Oxford to study at the University of Mississippi. He majored in Art and English, and in 1976 he received a Masters of Fine Arts degree in painting. 

 

The University of Mississippi is where he became interested in exploring abstract and real-world issues through his art, as well as how he could portray art through a variety of lenses.

 

“You can look through a telescope and see things that look like my marbles in the cosmic world,” Tutor said. “But you can also see them through a microscope in the quantum universe.”

 

Glennray Tutor paintings commonly take nearly a year to complete due to the painstakingly complex process behind them. His style has mostly remained hyperrealistic throughout his career, but the evolution of his subject matter and the context behind it has allowed for him to address a changing world and new topics. 

 

He originally planned for the painting he began in April to be done by Thanksgiving, but he now doesn’t expect it to be complete until the new year. 

 

“It’s such an arduous undertaking getting the paint placed precisely, getting the colors how I want them,” Tutor said. “When I finish a painting even now, it’s such a wonderful feeling, that there is nothing else like it.”