Trajan studied drawing and sculpture at the renowned University of California (Los Angeles) – which has one of the most highly regarded art departments in the USA. Trajan’s first love is sculpture and his work owes much to an appreciation of the classical figurative idiom of the Classical Greek period and its subsequent revival in the Renaissance and more recently, notably in the work of Rodin.
This allegiance is most obvious in the choice of presentation of the figure – often with a pronounced torsion of the body, as is found in later Greek art.
In his drawings and paintings, Trajan’s love of sculpture is clear in his choice the lighting of the figure – a high degree of chiaroscuro is used to emphasize the three-dimensional nature of the subject – in fact such illumination of a subject is referred to as ‘sculptural lighting’.
The veneration of the human figure and in particular the nude has, of course been at the center of art throughout history for obvious reasons, as Trajan describes in his own words:
“The nude will always be a powerful theme in art as we are drawn to relate to the subject on at least three levels:
Firstly, we can admire the subject purely as an exercise in form, in the same way that one might admire a painting of a flower, a still life or even an abstract work – perhaps solely a pleasing combination of color, form, light and shade.
Secondly, we may be enticed into wondering about the personality of (or “life behind”) the model or, if we are simply viewing a portion of the body (which is often the focus of my work), we are obliged to contemplate the life behind the flesh - we may be intrigued by what cannot be seen. This is the power of figurative art – that we inevitably project our own understanding or interpretation on the figure before us, being more or less conscious of the psychic element in our own projections.
Thirdly, the nude will have more or less obvious erotic content - as the noted art critic, Kenneth Clark, said “No nude, however abstract, should fail to arouse in the spectator some vestige of erotic feeling – if it does not do so, it is bad art and false morals. The desire to be connected with another human is so fundamental a part of our nature, that our judgment of what is known as ‘pure form’ is inevitably influenced by it”.
