Gallery: Paint It Black
December 1, 2007
Ring up Ronnie Wood at his country home just outside of Dublin, Ireland, and you’re likely to find the hard-rocking legend answering his own phone. "Just back in from painting down by the local canal," says Wood cheerily, clearly reveling in the anonymity afforded him by this bucolic retreat. "Out here, folks passing by just yell ‘Hey, Ron.’ They really couldn’t give a toss who I am."
Who Wood is depends on whom you ask. Music fans will tell you about the Faces ax man who left to take guitarist Mick Taylor’s place in the Rolling Stones, the rest being rock ’n’ roll history. But art aficionados know a different Wood.
"Ron can get $20,000 for a drawing, which is a big number for a living artist," says Danny Stern, whose San Francisco-based Limelight Agency handles Wood’s work. As for who’s buying, Stones fans understandably constitute a big percentage. But "there’s a growing interest among younger buyers who don’t relate to Ronnie as a musician," says Dewey Graff of Dewey Graff Fine Art in Eden Prairie, Minn. "They simply see his work and like it. Ron might be a Stone, but before that he was a trained artist."
The youngest of three artistic brothers, Wood was winning notice for his brushstrokes at the age of 13 ("Ronnie captured in (one) picture varying expressions … in almost Renoir style," wrote one newspaper reviewer). Fast-forward many decades and Wood, 60, has become a bona fide force in the art world, whose originals can hit seven figures. His interpretation of the Stones’ Beggars Banquet album cover fetched $1.4 million.
While Wood’s renditions of his bandmates and other music-world friends are hot sellers, Graff says buyers are increasingly drawn to his other favorite subjects. They range from nudes to landscapes to horses, the last of these born of a lifelong passion for the ponies that now extends to ownership. "I just love capturing animals in movement," admits Wood, whose thoroughbreds make the occasional mark on British horse racing contests.
But the latest object of his artistic fascination might be the most intriguing: ballet. A series of drawings and paintings focusing on that Degas-like subject has already been on exhibition, and Wood says they may soon make their signed-print debut.
"I was very lucky to be one of the first artists in 50 years to be allowed backstage at the Royal Opera House, and all the dancers have been so great, posing for me so long that they wind up falling over," Wood says with a cackle.
That laugh reminds you that this is one of the Stones’ most high-living members, whose financial woes and cocaine-ingesting exploits are recounted in the recently released autobiography, Ronnie. It’s precisely because Wood has routinely taken his glittering vocation to its ultimate end that his avocation provides a solace that borders on the therapeutic.
"When I get back here to Ireland, I love just packing my easel, getting on a bicycle, and heading off to paint. It reminds me of my childhood." Wood pauses. "It allows me to have a word with myself."
Ronnie Wood, www.ronniewood.com
Dewey Graff Fine Art, www.deweygfa.com
Limelight Agency, www.limelightagency.com
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