The Marvin Wells Story

My introduction to art began as a young boy. I always loved to draw, copying cartoon pictures such as the Incredible Hunk, Spider-Man, and other superheroes. I would look at a picture of my brother and draw it. I took advanced placement (AP) art in high school. At this point, I knew this was something I wanted to do, so by high school, I took art classes after high school, and later in college, I believed I could produce a masterpiece like no one had ever seen before.

The River Edge painting was the first challenge I endured after high school. To complete a master, I would have had to invest to complete this work. All drawings, paintings, and pen & ink were started with a simple two photograph, to draw paint and pin & ink murals. The two paintings by Marvin Wells are River Edge and A Walk on State. The others are pen & ink; one is a painting and a mural of the River Edge, and the other is Grant Park, The Old Millennium.   

Painting has been a lifelong journey for me. I started the first picture, The River Edge, about a year or two after high school. The River Edge project began around 1985. Around this time, starting with the 1980s, these pictures are from ground level to the top of each building. I used a zoom-in lens camera to photograph the top of these buildings for both picture paintings. The River Edge and Grant Park (The Old Millennium) paintings have taken almost two hundred pictures to complete both paintings. I have visited museums in Chicago and art galleries around 700 North Superior and the surrounding areas. I can’t find any paintings or drawings comparable to my paintings or drawings; why can’t I find anything similar? Most artists will not spend four months, 8 to 10 hours, or 16 hours a day drawing one picture or spend years doing one painting.

For this reason, I can’t find any paintings or pin & ink in the Art Institute, Smithsonian Museum, or The Field Museum. Technical art is very rare to find on a masterpiece level. These paintings will be ready for the public soon.