For most of his life, Macey Lipman was involved in the music business. Early in his career, he worked with such diverse artists as the 5th Dimension, Heart, Chet Baker, Ravi Shankar, and Johnny Rivers. In 1972, Lipman went off on his own to break new ground and founded the first-ever independent marketing company in the recording industry. He managed marketing campaigns for scores of top recording artists, including Barbra Streisand, Cher, Madonna, Lionel Richie, Rod Stewart, Andrea Bocelli, Janet Jackson, Neil Diamond, Dolly Parton, Prince and Tina Turner, among others.

These were the “golden years of rock 'n roll.” But I still continued to paint during that time. In my early career in music, I came across an English group called The Searchers and released a song called “Love Potion #9” which became a big hit worldwide. I moved from New York to Los Angeles and, soon after, had success with a group called the 5th Dimension. They won a Grammy for “Aquarius/Let The Sun Shine In.”

Lipman accumulated a total of 57 gold and platinum album awards during his career in music. After almost 30 years in the recording industry, he closed his business to pursue another life-long passion – painting.

When I was a kid, my mom would often take me shopping to the downtown stores in Philadelphia. I remember the exact moment when we walked through the art section of Gimbel's department store, and I smelled oil paint and linseed oil for the first time. My mother bought me a starter set of oils and I got hooked on painting. I had no formal training, so it was, and still is a trial and error process. Today, I learn by making mistakes and being willing to change and correct them.

Lipman has shown his work only a handful of times over the past two decades, but never offered any of his work for sale until November 2002, with a groundbreaking show in West Hollywood, CA at the Hamilton-Selway Fine Art Gallery. The show was both a retrospective of past work and served as a debut for “The Italy Series,” photographed by Lipman and later painted after he traveled through Venice and Tuscany.

When I first started painting, I gave my pictures to my friends...When I became more proficient, I was a bit more protective and stopped giving them away. I didn't want to sell them either. Later, I would lease them for one year via MusiCares, a charity sponsored by the National Association of Recording Arts & Sciences (NARAS), the people who hand out the Grammys.

It wasn't til November 2002, when I had my show at the Hamilton-Selway Gallery, that I decided to sell my paintings. At first, it was painful to part with them, but it felt good when the gallery sold 4 paintings and 7 Giclee prints. Several of “The Italy Series” paintings were not for sale at that time, but Barbara Lazaroff, then wife and business partner of the famous chef Wolfgang Puck (Spago Restaurant), wanted to purchase all four of them. I said I'd think about it and call her tomorrow. The next day, I decided I would sell them to her. But when I called, unfortunately, she was distracted 'cause she just filed for divorce from Mr. Puck.

But that show gave me a taste of how exhilarating it could be when someone loves your work enough to commit to purchasing it. In 2004, I had a show at The Los Angeles County Museum of Art's Sales Gallery. Six Giclee prints were sold. They also rent art and two Giclee's are still on rental.

Wine country and the world of viticulture are often motifs for Lipman, whose recent work includes a series of paintings set in Napa and Sonoma, CA. Another recurring theme appeared quite by accident. Without being aware of it, he gravitated to pictures of reflections, often appearing in windows – the context that, somehow, we are a component of our environment, integrated into the landscape without being physically conscious of it. This theme keeps popping up in his paintings.

Each one of Lipman's original paintings is sourced by photographs that he's shot. He shares a passion for photography and painting...but photography is a means to an end. The final cut is the painting itself, and the story is reborn from the lens to the tip of the brush. It's what he refers to as “classical realism.”

I rely on photography as a point of view or reference. Although the paintings have a photographic quality, in that some may look two dimensional, as in “The Arboretum,” or appear wide angle, as in the “Napa Valley Landscape,” they are not “photo realism.” I maintain a great deal of “painterly” qualities and techniques, such as the millions of dots you see in some of the pictures, a la Seurat, and the brush strokes in the foreground of the “Mt. Hood” painting. Most of these paintings took an average of 6 months to a year and a half to complete.

Many of the images are also available as full-size, signed and numbered limited-edition Giclee prints on 100% rag paper and linen canvas, printed by Duganne Ateliers in Santa Monica, CA.

Lipman has recently opened a gallery/studio in West Hollywood where he spends most of his time painting. You're welcome to drop by the gallery and check out his latest work in progress. Macey Lipman Art is located at 511 N. La Cienega Blvd, Suite 210, Los Angeles, CA 90048, phone 310.652.6030.