YOUNGSTOWN

Joseph Sheppard wants his paintings to have the look of the great works of Michelangelo and Rubens.

But Michelangelo never painted the Baltimore Ravens and Rubens never broached the subject of volleyball players.

"I can't do what they did in the Renaissance," said Sheppard, whose show "50 Years of Art," is on display at the Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown.

"They painted religious or mythology (subjects). If I did that with my technique, it would look like old paintings."

The Owings Mills, Md., native, takes the Renaissance subject of warriors in battle, and transforms it to modern football and sand volleyball. A boxer being handed down from the ring after being killed in a bout is depicted like Christ as he was removed from the cross.

For the most part, Sheppard steers clear of specific subjects associated with the Old Masters, although the show does include drawings of the crucifixion and the mythological figure of Daedalus.

Sheppard's bar and boxing scenes, nudes and street scenes all have elements that identify the works as modern.

Sheppard tried his hand at modern techniques when he entered the Maryland Institute of Art out of high school.

"My first exposure were to the contemporary giants of the time, Matisse, Picasso. I was trying to copy them, painting figures with two eyes on the same side of the head, and putting sand in my paint."

He adopted classical techniques while studying at the institute with Jacques Maroger, who was chief restorer at the Louvre in Paris and celebrated for rediscovering the techniques of Old Master painters.

"He won me over," Sheppard said. "I've been painting in the classical way ever since."

Although he paints landscapes and still-lifes, Sheppard said his forte is the human figure, which forms the basis of "50 Years of Art."

He has drawn the human figure since he started drawing as a child.

"I copied comics," he said. "I drew Batman and all those, like every other kid."

Sheppard, who first traveled to Europe under a Guggenheim Fellowship, has become so adept at rendering the human form that he gave up painting from models years ago.

"It's all from my knowledge of anatomy," he said. "I've written five or six books on drawing and anatomy. I taught anatomy and I taught life drawing."

Teaching anatomy and life drawing to others at the Maryland Institute and Dickinson College in Carlisle cemented his knowledge of the subjects.

"If a model is standing for 20 minutes and I have 20 students, I'm drawing from every single pose," he said. "I would sit down at everybody's drawing and correct it. While they drew one, I drew 20, all the way around."

For "50 years of Art," Sheppard, 72, assembled a show that is not a traditional retrospective. He chose 20 works from the 2,000 he has sold, and painted new versions.

"These were, for one reason or the other, what I liked the best," he said. "I said, 'I'm going to do those, and I'm going to do them big.' But they're not copies. They're recreations of older ideas. None of them are exactly like the other ones. Compositions are different. Colors are different. The subject's the same."

All the paintings -- except for the Butler's permanent collection work, "Mr. Mack's Fighter's Gym," which earned Sheppard his first national prize -- were done in 1999 through 2001.

The show also features large-scale drawings and sculptures.

Sheppard picked up sculpting when he moved to Europe about 25 years ago.

"When I moved to Italy, I moved to Florence first, and I got interested in sculpture because there's so much there," he explained. "And then I moved to this town, Pietrasanta, where I am now, it's nothing but sculpture. I started sculpting because everyone else is sculpting."

Sheppard said he has always been "a big producer" of art, but his production has increased as he has gotten older.

"It seems I used to have a lot of time to do (other) things. At one time, besides painting, I was racing cars. Another time I was boxing. Now, all I'm doing is turning out work. I work seven days a week."

"50 Years of Art" will be up through Aug. 18. Information: (330) 743-1711 and www.butlerart.com

Sheppard's Web site is at www.josephsheppard.com