Don Eddy's Near Desire/Distant Longing sold for $31,750 at Freeman's | Hindman Chicago Art + Design Sale July 18, 2024 in Chicago. An American artist, Eddy was born and raised in Long Beach, California, where he worked with custom paints in his father's auto shop. There he first learned to use the airbrush, a tool that is an important tool in his work today. He also credits his work as a travel photographer in his early 20s for improving his camera skills.

The photograph-like quality of Eddy's painting is a culmination of his work experience and art studies. Known as “Photorealism,” it has become Eddy's signature style and is a movement he helped pioneer. The process used to create his unique paintings has been described as painstaking and meticulous – his system begins with a drawing based on his photographs that have been digitally edited to capture the information he needs, followed by underpainting in three transparent colors in a series of small circles created using an air brush. It ends with the top coat, which consists of multiple layers of colors.

Eddy has lived and worked in New York City since the 1970s; The city's complex infrastructure, along with some of its greatest attractions, are frequent subjects of his most recent work. Brooklyn Railroad describes Eddy's work as requiring our perception to be drawn “to question the complexity in the simplest things around us”.