O&S JANUARY 2010
David Jon Kassan Bernardo Torrens Kristin Ravel Max Ginsburg Duma Gustavo Adolfo Aybar Karen Kaapcke Jose Parra Andrei Guruianu Tony Pro more inside … Poetry review by
Steve Halle
VOLUME 3 ISSUE 1
CON
poets and artists 5 Adam Reeder 11 Kristin Ravel Publisher / E.I.C. DIDI MENENDEZ Creative Director I. M. BESS
24 Duma 32 Bernardo Torrens
Poetry Editors DAVID KRUMP MELISSA McEWEN
40 Gustavo Adolfo Aybar
Art Reviewer GRADY HARP
44 Kristi Ropeleski
Poetry Reviewer STEVE HALLE
54 Janelle Mckain 60 Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino 61 Karen Kaapcke 69 Hal Sirowitz 70 Kimberly L. Becker
Copyright reverts back to contributors upon publication. O&S: PoetsandArtists.com requests first publisher rights of poems published in future reprints of books, anthologies, website publications, podcasts, radio, etc. The full issue is available for viewing online from the Poets and Artists website. Print copies available at www.amazon.com. For submission guidelines and further information, please stop by www.poetsandartists.com
71 Jose Parra 80 Max Ginsburg 92 Andrei Guruianu 93 Tony Pro 100 Doug Clarke
TENTS reviews 20 Paul Martínez Pompa 51 Davidd Batalon 80 Jorg Dubin
on the cover
12 David Jon Kassan
Balance oil on wood panel 40” x 34”
Adam
www.adamreeder.com
Reeder
was born and raised in the Los Angeles Area and Camarillo, California. After
studying medicine briefly, (where he gained knowledge of osteology and myology for his future art), he eventually graduated from Utah Valley State College in Fine Art. He completed his MFA in sculpture at The Academy of Art in San Francisco.
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Q&A
Adam Reeder
What do you hope art historians will say about your work 300 years from now? That I chronicled the shift in society when iconic technological images became symbols for all of society, not just coke bottles, or movie stars. How has technology influenced your work? my work is about “how technology changes the way western culture interacts with it’s world” this body of work is called “socio- technic evolution” Do you have a ritual you follow before each new work is started? I start with a felling I have, then I ponder about what that “feeling” looks like. Then one day, right before I go to sleep, I see it. Have any of your mistakes become a success? I was a sculptor before 9/ 11, then after the financial collapse, I had to switch gears. I picked pre-med. I studied gross anatomy. I have used that knowledge to create greater anatomically accurate sculptures. Do you find yourself visualizing everything as someday becoming a sculpture? If I see an interesting or beautiful person, I think “how would they look as a sculpture?” What has been your biggest challenge? The hardest thing to
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Her bronze 19” x 9” x 12”
capture is serenity, or peace. That is because it is a state of mind, sensed rather than seen. How long does it take to finish one of your sculptures? 25-50 hours What are you working on next? A continuation of my “socio- technic evolution”
series. It will be sculpture of the EXXON Mobile pegasus logo (designed by my great grandpa). My version will be a lifesize horse with solar panel wings. What is your hidden talent? I make friends easy. I hear that I make people feel good about themselves.
ADAM REEDER
“I follow a tradition that is free from classical realism, but is not prisoner to the “Modernist” tradition. Mine is a break from modern tradition and classical realism. This new tradition is comprised of symbols common to the world around me, readable for everyone.” ADAM REEDER
Atlas With His iPod bronze 96” x 36” x 22”
Pan With His iPod bronze 22” x 15” x 12”
Untitiled
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oil based clay
22” x 4” x 3”
ADAM REEDER
Against bronze 14” x 9” x 15”
Fallen Man bronze 17” x 10” x 22”
Adam Reeder Sleeping Gamer bronze 15” x 14” x 28”
Kristin Ravel Kristin Ravel, originally
from rural Michigan, is currently earning her MFA at
Accident in 1992
Columbia College Chicago. While in Chicago, she teaches writing and rhetoric to college
Your bag and mine are close. Your pen’s inside. Your kindergarten recess. Your broken stencils. The time you yelled, “Our alphabet is a faulty one,” and pushed me off the swing. Then rain. You hear the nickels on concrete. If only you missed kicking the ball into the street. A pack of pink gum. Watch the boy at recess. I followed, running on the grass. I was ready, proving that our alphabet is a faulty one and that the boy at recess chewed gum. The rain. This swing was only built for one. This recess is faulty. I miss the alphabet. Those nickels.
students and works as the Graduate Student Coordinating Mentor at Columbia College’s Writing Center. Along with teaching and being taught, Kristin is an assistant editor for the poetry magazine Court Green. Her work has appeared in publications, including Temenos, elimae, Admit2, Susquehanna Review, and The Central Review and is forthcoming in Indefinite Space.
Echoes the Dead Make The bird is silent in hiding nothing to do with branches fallen the nesting or the taking fingers left to dance near slick bones leave the light out of every dawn only a sky thistles keep sticking orange petal red blooded heart the white spider climbing
long and woody a weedy twigging inside a tree the leaves greener than they should
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www.davidkassan.com www.blog.davidkassan.com
David Jon
Kassan
Following his initial drawing studies
at University of the Arts in Philadelphia, David attended Syracuse University in New York. On completion of his degree, he moved to Brooklyn to continue his studies at The National Academy of Design and the Art Students League of New York.
His honors and awards from Arts organizations and magazines include: The National Academy of Design School of Fine Art, The Portrait Society of America, The Art Students League of New York, The Artist’s Magazine, The Society of Illustrators, and Communication Arts, The Newington-Cropsey Foundation’s Travel Award, which enabled him to enrich his Art History studies with classes in Italian Renaissance from the British Institute in Florence, Italy. While there, he assembled his thoughts and sketches into a limited edition book titled “Lentamente Italia”. David currently writes an ongoing feature for Drawing magazine on anatomy and also contributes to myamericanartist.com. Recently his work has graced the covers of American Artist’s Drawing Magazine (winter 09) as well as Australia’s contemporary art publication Emtpy Magazine. David’s work is currently featured in Die Gestalten’s recent showcase book of young contemporary artists called The Upset. David Jon Kassan is currently represented by Gallery Henoch, New York.
Left Working on Koi oil on panel 90” x 65”
My Aunt Dale oil on panel 25” x 26”
DAVID JON KASSAN
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Aurora oil on panel 48� x 60�
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DAVID JON KASSAN
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Q&A
David Jon Kassan
How do you feel about formal training? I think that formal training is very important, there are so many different varieties of formal training today that it the subjective choices with whom an artist studies informs how they want their work to look and feel. A strong balance between a high level of skill
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and concept is really important in my opinion. Having the skill can help an artist to do the artistic gymnastics to create outside of the box. Do you have a ritual or specific process you follow when creating art? maybe just lots of observation and thought around who the subject is that I am painting. How do you bring emotion across to a flat surface? The emotion in my pieces is all brought about by the
“My work is a way of meditation, a way of slowing down time though the careful observation of overlooked slices of my environment. It is the subtlety of emotion in my acquaintances that inhabit the aforementioned environment which intrigues me. My paintings strive for reality, a chance to mimic life in both scale and complexity. Taking the abstract form from the streets where they get lost and moving them into the gallery space where they can be contemplated as accidental abstractions.”
Grace in Profile oil on paper on panel 21” x 26”
DAVID JON KASSAN
Lucas at 3 and a Half Months graphite on bristol 14” x 8”
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Self Portrait at Age 30 (detail) models. I just try to record it and what I see honestly and accurately. If you knew your time was up what would be the last image you would leave us with? Maybe one last Self Portrait, something that would reflect on what I have done. Something that can speak for me after im gone. Which three other artists would you consider to be your contemporaries? There are so many painters that are around my age that I always look in on, they are doing some amazing
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oil on panel
40” x 26”
stuff and pushing boundaries, Nicolas Uribe, José Parlá, and Connor Harrington, are just three great painters off the top of my head. How does your environment influence your work? The environment for me has been an influence and a foe, I see some many aspects of what’s around me that I want to paint everything, painting for me is exploration, a search to understand everything. So its been hard for me to focus on only certain things. I don’t understand painter’s block cause my head is exploding with ideas to paint, The environment around me really shapes my work, cause my work is
DAVID JON KASSAN
Brush Back
oil on paper and panel
built on observation and my surroundings constantly speak to me visually and this becomes my visual vocabulary for my work. Whose work would you acquire if you were a collector? Antonio Lopez, , Nicolas Uribe, José Parlá, and Connor Harrington; and work that I find that is made with honesty. Have any of your mistakes become a success? HA, I think that all of my paintings are Mis Takes, I’m trying to get a painting that I have in my head, each
DAVID JON KASSAN
24” x 23”
painting is an attempt for me to get at the one in my brain. But each one misses for some reason or another, each is a glaring area that I need to refine in the next piece. Must there be a statement with each creation? No, I’m not a narrative artist, I want each painting to speak for itself, speak through the model’s expression and not through my brushwork, I want to put myself out of the viewer to model equation. I believe that fancy brushwork tends to obscure who is in the painting and speaks more to the ego of the artist.
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My Kill Adore Him by Paul Martínez Pompa Review by Steve
Halle University of Notre Dame Press, 2009, 80 pages, ISBN 978-0268035181, $18
P
AUL MARTÍNEZ POMPA’S first collection of poems, My Kill Adore Him will provoke or evoke an array of emotions and reactions from readers. Selected by Martín Espada for the 2008 Andres Montoya Poetry Prize from Letras Latinas, part of the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame, Martínez Pompa’s book is divided into four sections of poems with congruent themes: masculinity, Chicago, the experience of being a Mexican-American poet, and the exploitative politics of late capitalism. At the core of Martínez Pompa’s, My Kill Adore Him, however, is a hard-to-pinpoint poetic trait that undergirds all the above topics: ferocity. It is by way of this ferociousness that Martínez Pompa attempts to speak what other poets cannot or will not. The first section, “A Lesson in Masculinity,” begins with the poem “Film Strip,” fulfilling Espada’s introductory description of Martínez Pompa as “a poet of the image, a poet of strong diction, a poet of meticulous craft.” Set in a middle school or junior high classroom on a day when the class is divided by gender for sex education, the poem provides the literal lesson in masculinity the section title implies, blending pre-teen awkwardness, sexual double entendres, and psychoanalytic connections to the father into an intense opening poem. In the first stanza, we learn the boy students have “been isolated from the girls / to learn our bodies,” “our” implicating the speaker, his classmates, and readers. Despite a literal scene of males alone in a classroom, the sexual tension builds through Martínez Pompa’s shrewd use of sexualized words that chime, ending lines two through four of the quatrain with “harder,” “shudder,” and “fingers,” loaded images describing not only desks, the boys’ asses, and the teacher’s interaction with the movie projector but also the boys’ curiosity and undeveloped knowledge of the forbidden topic. The second stanza builds the motif, as the boys’ “swell into concentration” while the projector begins. In the third stanza, the motif turns toward sexual guilt and the image of the father as it bleeds into the fourth quatrain: “The projector’s clatter / surrounds us like criminals: / narrated crosssection of the testicles, / the animated penis a cruel reminder / of our fathers.” The consonant chime on “criminals” and “testicles” highlights the relationship of sexual guilt and the body, moving the poem forward into its conclusion, as we move from the crude cross-sections and animations to something sublimely unreal, the naked father’s genitals, which prove to instruct us far better than any filmstrip when gazed at secretly: “Their nude / bodies a revelation, a portrait of manhood / larger than anything we could imagine.” The motif of masculinity continues throughout this section, but it extends beyond the body and psychology in poems like “Edwin Sucks Dick,” a poem that uses indeterminacy to shocking effect. The poem begins by describing a rumor about Edwin embodied by bathroom graffiti, echoing the title and
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introducing the poem’s ambiguities, that escalates on to gym-locker graffiti and then verbal assaults from other boys when Edwin passes by in the school hallway. After the fourth couplet, the poem takes a decided turn: It got physical as he stripped off sweaty gym shorts. A clumsy first swing grazed his cheek. He took another perfectly to his mouth. One by one more boys jumped in. Others just watched—afraid, aroused. At first read, it appears Edwin is receiving a beat down from his classmates, a consequence for rumors of his homosexuality. But fists are only implied. This could just as easily be group sex or a gang rape, as the boys get “physical” once he strips “off sweaty gym shorts,” and cocks, instead of fists, could just as easily be implied by “grazed his cheek” and “took another perfectly to his mouth.” The final two words of the poem, “afraid, aroused” echo the indeterminacy, as the onlookers and readers alike are asked to judge which type of physical confrontation the poem presents. Either way, we all feel the simultaneous fear of the barbaric within us, whether sexual or violent. It makes readers question, as I did, is there a difference between the two? In the second section, “City of Broken,” Martínez Pompa shifts the focus to his native Chicago and its wrecked urban landscapes, but he also continues to interrogate masculinity in poems like “Men Watching Men (El Gato Negro Bar),” which presents a scene of homoerotic voyeurism where straight men dance with or gaze at transgendered women (as Martínez Pompa explains in the collection’s end notes). Yet this section emphasizes the images that, for better or worse, are the city I love, Chicago. In the first poem, “Clamor,” readers experience the deafening rumble of CTA buses, echoed in the stops and starts of punctuation, as the speaker gazes at two lovers: “how he is draped in the orchestra of her. fingers. untouched // by this. city of broken lovers who slip across / the bus window.” The mourning for the victims of Chicago’s violent crime is also uniquely depicted in “How to Hear Chicago:” Here a spirit must yell to be heard yet a bullet need only whisper to make its point—sometimes I imagine you right before your death with an entire city in your ears. Even though I know Martínez Pompa is from Chicago and cannot help but find Chicago in his most breathtaking lines from the section “City of Broken,” he is careful to never call Chicago by name, knowing full well that what is broken in Chicago also wants repair elsewhere. With this in mind in the third section, “The War on Poets Goes On,” Martínez Pompa shifts the focus of the collection to language, the poet’s profession, and issues of Mexican-American identity politics. The first poem “Retablos: 10 Deleted Tongues” is one of the few slip-ups in the collection, as the Spanish-to-English wordplay borders on too cute as it mimics numbered sections: “Oh-no” for uno, “Doze” for dos, “Trace” for tres, “Cutthroat” for MY KILL ADORE HIM
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cuatro, and so forth. The poem does not hit the right note of satiric humor for the kind of politico-linguistic issues it tackles. The best poems from the third section, though, trap us all in world events, pointing at our complicity. In “The Body as Weapon, as Inspiration,” Martínez Pompa returns to images of the body by describing a Jerusalem suicide bombing: “tiny fragments of glass / & bone caught in the skin of the undead.” The poem haunts me, as a poet who writes politically conscious poems, when it implicates “a poet / thousands of miles away, excited / by the burden of writing this thing.” “Amputee Etcetera” continues to implicate the poet, beginning with this stanza: Nothing cuter than a war amputee. His limb not as fleshy ruin but as fresh bouquet of soft tissue, blasted with love through desert air. The juxtaposition of images here creates its effect through use of the line break to separate the horrible from the pleasant, as “cuter” becomes “amputee” and the ruined limb a bouquet. These turns of phrase make the final stanza’s turn more stark: Nothing truer than a poet who resists on paper. Admire his nerve to condemn from a safe distance, where he can keep his shoes and his conscience perfectly clean. The delight poets receive from getting a poem correct, even when it is full of horror like the previous two poems, is a fraught part of being a writer, the work poets do is often mitigated by the distance and safety of our vantage point. Three consecutive poems at the end of this third section, “Poetry Reading at the Café Tamale,” “Exclamation Point,” and “Commercial Break,” all feature the misunderstanding and exploitation of the poet. “Poetry Reading at the Café Tamale” engages Martínez Pompa as a misunderstood MexicanAmerican, brought to read poetry as a lesson in multicultural diversity that, according to the audience, is cheapened when it is discovered the reader does not speak Spanish fluently. The prose poem “Exclamation Point” juxtaposes a found description of the punctuation mark with parenthetical situations where it would be used in charged dialogue with a police officer, like “(Do you want me to put a cap in your mexakin ass!)”. “Commercial Break” parodies an advertisement in prose poem form, in which the company “Pretty White Poetry” advises putting Mexicans and “Español” into poems because “our words are edgy, but never make liberal white readers uncomfortable—that means more publishing opportunities for you!” Unlike the slip in “Retablos: 10 Deleted Tongues,” this poem features pure satiric vitriol. The last section of the collection, “While Late Capitalism,” keeps up the
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MY KILL ADORE HIM
politicized charge of the aforementioned three poems, merging current events and popular culture topics in poems based on NBA “members,”erectile dysfunction, male pattern baldness, exploitative clothing production, consumerism, and illegal immigration, to name a few. The last poem “Mykilladoreher,” however, stands out from the rest and serves as the lynchpin of Martínez Pompa’s collection. The title of the poem resembles the title of the collection, both of which, I found out by doing research, refer, by way of homophonic translation from English to Spanish, to maquiladoras. Maquiladoras are factories in Mexico stationed close to the US border that import raw materials duty and tariff free and export products to the country the imports originated from, mainly the US. These factory jobs employ mostly women because of their supposed dexterity in performing the repetitive tasks of factory labor, the ability to pay women less than men, and the alleged ease of control supervisors have over them. The system is fraught with claims of oppression and exploitation, both in substandard working conditions and sexual exploitation of the workers by male bosses. The English title, “Mykilladoreher” echoes maquiladora, but the extra sonorant /r/ also adds meaning, bringing the word “horror” clearly to mind; “My kill add horror” is another possible reading of the translation. Martínez Pompa’s choice to run the words together into one word invites multiple interpretations, echoing the complicity of poet and reader alike indicated in previous politically charged poems. The poem “Mykilladoreher” presents us with Mexican women workers in a five-prose-poem sequence that blends narrative and lyric to powerful effect, putting me in mind of Muriel Rukeyser’s “The Book of the Dead” or Ammiel Alcalay’s from the warring factions, albeit on a much smaller scale than those long poems. The poem begins with Lucia, who “broke the machine twice in one week” and is “no longer automatic,” being terminated from her sewing job. The second section switches to Elena, who dresses Miss Piggy dolls while “The supervisor brushes against her back.” Repeating her monotonous task, Elena notices that “the room begins to blur” and “Her mouth opens like an empty wallet as naked dolls march on.” The third section reveals the problems women who work in maquiladoras have, including “headaches, blurred vision, diarrhea” caused by “Acetone working past unfiltered exhaust systems and through their livers.” The fourth section shifts to Celia, reacting to a maquiladora closing: “The decision was made across the border.” The lack of control over the situation leads Celia to “imagine the whole place caught inside a tiny globe. Something she could pick up. Shake.” The fifth and final section reprises language from the other four, and the collection as a whole, in a remix or mash-up that provides a heartrending dénouement. Paul Martínez Pompa’s strong first collection ultimately invokes Rimbaud’s old maxim “I is another.” Over the arc of the whole collection, Martínez Pompa shifts back and forth between the first-person perspective and that of the imagined other, to the point where the perspectives necessarily blur, and I cannot tell if I am seeing or touching what Martínez Pompa, the poet, has seen and touched in real places like Chicago, or what his mind’s eye lets him envision or pretend to touch. By the end of My Kill Adore Him, I learn that the poet’s exhaustion is also that of the immigrant, the one who embodies borders, who shifts perspective by crossing over, crossing back, othering the self, and learning that “Despite the blurred other, the ache might be real. Something she could pick up. Across the border, nothing I can imagine.” Aided by Martínez Pompa, I cross these borders, noting I can(not) imagine.
MY KILL ADORE HIM
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www.dumaarte.com www.duma-artecontemporanea.blogspot.com
Duma
Duma was born in Lisbon, Portugal in 1973. She studied in IADE (Visual Arts, Design and Marketing Institute) and also studied Drawing and Painting at the National Society of Fine Arts in Lisbon. Duma began her professional fine art career at the age of 21 and since then she has had 17 solo shows and has participated in more than a hundred group shows. She works with some major Art Galleries in Portugal, but she has also had shows in other countries of Europe like Spain, France, Austria, England and Italy and in the United States (New York and Miami). Duma participates frequently in art fairs in Portugal and Spain and she was awarded several times with European painting prizes.
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Cookie Buttons oil on canvas 120 cm x 100 cm
DUMA
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“My paintings show the viewer just a little piece of the full scene. I like to leave space for the viewer’s imagination. In each frame there is an unlimited universe of actions, thoughts and emotions, each character shows us just a little bit of its personality. I have a very graphic, clean, soft, but at the same time, strong, simple style, very influenced by graphic design, digital illustration, photography, fashion and the simple fact of being a woman.” DUMA
Q&A
DUMA How do you feel about formal training? I think formal training is very important, it gives us a new perspective and technical notion of how we can achieve what we want on a canvas, but, at the same time, it doesn’t give us creativity and it doesn’t turn anyone to a great painter if the painter himself doesn’t have certain skills to become successful. Formal training gives us a faster technical knowledge and shows us more ways of using the materials. But to create good art that is not the only requirement. How has technology influenced your work? Since my work is based on photographs, photoshop and computers are my best friends to begin the composition process. I could do everything by hand, and sometimes I do it, but the computer helps to simplify, and this accelerates all the process. Beyond that, the internet has opened a great door to see what’s being done all over the world, so we can visit lots of galleries or artists’ studios only through their websites. I’m very influenced by graphic design and digital illustration, so I’m tremendously influenced by technology.
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What is your day typically like as an artist? I paint about 6 hours a day. I do 2 sessions of 3 hours each, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. My paintings take lots of time to be done so I have to work a lot. On some days of the week I also give painting classes at my studio, which is something I love. My job is very solitary and the painting classes give me the opportunity to be in contact with other people of different ages and experiences, but at the same time, with the same interest in art in general. How do you know when a work is done? My work is very methodical and planned, so, for me, it’s easier to know when the work is done. When I finish the first layer of paint I do some corrections that I see the painting needs, and by that time I already have in my mind how it will look at the end. After a second or a third layer of paint I know it’s done. What is your secret weapon? My secret weapon is my great passion about painting and all the process involved. Attached to that I think it is very important to have a great determination and willpower to achieve my goals.
DUMA
Girls just wanna have fun oil on canvas 170 cm x 100 cm
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The Spy oil on canvas 100 cm x 100 cm
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DUMA
Striped Tie oil on canvas 100 cm x 100 cm
DUMA
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Explain your process. I work strictly from photographs. I use photos that I take or photos from other sources, and then I use photoshop to cut and frame the piece I want to work with from that photo. I take off the content behind the character
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and create a new feeling and a new atmosphere with a clean background. I use photographs to have some guidelines of anatomy, light and shades but I always change some items like the hair, mouth, colors, dress, etc. I study the figure in the photograph and start to draw on it, by hand, some lines to divide all different levels of shades and light so the painting can look like an illustration made by vectors in a computer. I draw directly on the canvas with the maximum precision I can. All the lines of shades and light and all the forms to create the character, with a watercolor pencil, using lots of measurements to be sure that everything is in the right place. I then start to paint the first layer. After that, if I
feel the work needs it, I do some corrections of color, glaze, form, etc, and later I give it a second layer of paint, sometimes a third one. I only use oil paint so it’s a slow process. I like to use many neutral colors, almost all over the canvas and then I put some strong colors to emphasis some points of the composition. I love to work with large scales because I want my characters to always be larger than the natural size. The smallest size I do is 80 x 80cm. I have the great happiness of doing what I most like for living. Thinking about a new life oil on canvas 150 cm x 100 cm
DUMA
www.bernardotorrens.com
Bernardo
Torrens
Since 1980 Torrens has been a full time artist. He is self-taught, and never attended an art school. Since 1992 he has been showing regularly in Europe and the US, mainly in Art Fairs, both solo and group shows, and a few museum shows as well. His last solo show took place in NYC at Bernarducci Meissel Gallery.
Paternity with Spiderman acrylic on wood 47” x 59”
“My work is about the human being. The deepest part of the human being. Any of my subjects tries to be the representation of humanity. Also in some cases they pretend to be the representation of a group of all people. My work also is deeply connected with my life and circumstances. Weight, intensity, sincerity, reflection are key words to describe my work. Technique, virtuosity, are only tools, not the goal. There is something else. It should be. If not… it is only ‘fireworks’.” BERNARDO TORRENS
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Helena II acrylic on wood 23.5” x 19.5”
Kitchen Sculion acrylic on wood 71” x 39”
Liz III acrylic on wood 32” x 63.75”
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BERNARDO TORRENS
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The Art Dealer acrylic on wood 38� x 45.5�
Q&A
BERNARDO TORRENS
Explain your achromatic style. From my very early works, a part of them were in black and white. When I say black and white, it means I only used black to do them. That created a b/w photographic image look-a-like, and at the time I only used live models, not photography. After a while (years) I began to investigate the use of glazes in my b/w works, but did not like the result. It was like those old photographs, hand colored. Not what I was looking for.
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I was pursuing the idea of creating some color feeling without using the full color range, something achromatic. I found that by only using the temperature of the color I was able to create images with some sense of life, something between color and no color. With this temperature modulation the eye of the viewer recognizes, probably unconsciously, the different ranges of color in the image that makes them feel they are not in front of a black and white image, and creates the sense of life in the works.
BERNARDO TORRENS
Holly I acrylic on wood 25.5” x 32”
Do you feel an urge to continue on to other techniques or have your found your signature? I think I have found my way of work. For sure there will be in the future some changes as in the past, but not dramatic changes. How has technology influenced your work? Certainly all the new technologies have affected my way of work. Digital cameras, computers, etc are great tools and sometimes save a lot of time. What are you working on next?
BERNARDO TORRENS
I’m working in a very large (for me) outside nude. It is the second “outside” figure and it is, probably, the biggest change in my work for the last few years. What are the major differences between art in the USA versus Spain? In general they are the same, but probably people here are more into local art and artists in terms of galleries, not museum shows of course. But both countries are very similar in terms of art. What is your hidden talent? I cook very well (people say).
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Gustavo Adolfo Aybar A native of the Dominican Republic, Gustavo Adolfo Aybar now lives in Kansas City. Finishing his master’s degree in Romance Languages & Literature at the University of Missouri-Kansas City May of 2010, Aybar will pursue his Ph.D. in Caribbean Studies with a focus on the African Diaspora. He has been a featured poet at The Blue Room, Shane Evans’ Dream Studio, Riverfront Reading Series at The Writer’s Place, along with numerous colleges and universities. As a member of The Latino Writers Collective his work can be found in their first anthology Primera Pagina: Poetry from the Latino Heartland (Scapegoat Press, 2008), and/or their readings. He also has upcoming publications in Black Magnolias Literary Journal, NINE: A Journal of Baseball History, and will be a poet-in-residence at Present Magazine from January until June of 2010.
Wallflower Mambo “You aint Dominican”, she says —envious eyes admiring the shorter gradually balding man a car’s length away, whose arms move like a tropical storm, twirling his partner at sixty miles per hour.
Because our sultry Spanish accents stem from conquistadors, explorers and religious zealots with an unquenchable thirst for gold and land used to destroy a jungle of souls which sprung from indigenous fruit.
Pulsing with wild abandon, fingers touching slightly, spirits dancing swiftly— exchanging alluring glances and inviting smiles.
Because our Taino culture dates back to around 800 A.D. and one interpretation of the island’s name, Quisqueya, means mother of the earth.
“Los Dominicanos they’re born dancing, and oye nene, you’ve already stepped on me twice.”
Because our descendants endured the Middle Passage, sugar cane and rice plantations, plus the percussive beating of our hearts resemble African drumbeats like Tito’s congas and timbales and their steps live in the clave.
Gaze drifting back to the balding man wishing to charm him with her enchantress eyes— believing that executing a fancy dip or an elegant twist is indicative of a people’s essence or a nation’s pride. I stepped on her twice. Like twice the American government intervened and occupied the country with its military might during the 20th century. Like twice, the number of times we fought to gain our independence against French Haiti, and 2/27 is the day we celebrate our liberation. Like too many cultures are entwined in our geneology to ever simply say— I am Dominican. 40
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So this is my Yoruba song chanted to a Catholic saint, meant for the thunder god, Chango. This is my Flamenco scream plucked from inebriated guitars —clinching to a lover’s memory in brokenhearted Bachata laments. This is my Flamenco stomp echoed in ballet folclórico footfalls. This is my Dominican hue. This is my Dominican kink. This is my Dominican twang. This is my Salsa twirl. This is my Merengue swing. This is my Dominican dance. This is my Dominican dance. This is my Dominican dance.
An Absolute Necessity i be
& i be working 11-7
she be 2-11 we be weekends together eating late sleeping late & we be eating Haagen Daaz, Dulce de leche with bananas & we be watching new releases or WB at 2 in the morning or we be love jonesing i be darius she be nina i be say baby can I be your slave she be uh huh then it gets started this game we play where my lips
she be don’t stop
we be lionel and flashdance dancing on the ceiling and oh oh oh what a feeling we be
& i be
she be
amnesic i be what’s my name what’s my name what’s my name
like hssssh, delivering warm sensations to exposed back to tense shoulders relishing strong loving masculine hands constantly separated by an excess of obligations,
do you love it baby, is it good to you baby, we be muffled screams through sweaty palms, we be thump thump thumping pound pound pounding sleeping walls, we be back scratching biting, breathing heavy & sweating & sweating & sweating & com
she be tonight’s obligation, sensitive to, desperate for my touch,
pletely soiling clean sheets, we be
she be
ohhhh god, daisies or forget-me-nots submissive to my wind,
& i be take that take that take that,
big bad wolf blowing her house down,
& she be like quit teasing me
kiss parted hips thighs crescent moon birthmarks, toes too because she likes that shit
i be like yellow traffic signals or yield signs cause were not on any schedule so there’s no need to rush this love
we be legs cramping, toes curling & bruised, we be
she be
hmmm, this this little piggy, straw house
we be ummmm, we be we be weekends together
GUSTAVO ADOLFO AYBAR
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Upon Him Asking Why I’m Resisting After Mark Greenwold’s painting “Why Not Say What Happened”
Flashing a scarlet glance I tell him that I am a Hawthorne love— planted with a 60’s seed which bloomed and blossomed from a 60’s need. “What the hell does that mean?” he says directing his cackle and attention towards his books. I was at Woodstock for Christ sakes. I heard Joni, Joan Baez & Jimi. I skinny dipped and danced & dropped acid. I smoked refer, marched and refused to burn my bras because though breasts bound my spirit & my love were wild. Until he caged me in— lured me in slowly with his revolutionary smile tie-dyed in stories & rhythms. And I reveled & rebelled against his colors coming alive in song. But, oh darling, his songs… his songs were more than music & lyrics. So we hit the road & hitchhiked, lived in communal camps & organized, protested plus watched pigeons feed and he kept secrets in every corner of his smile. Yet, he wanted me to be one of those loyal, anguished women who waited out Crusades or wars and wrote me two letters before his body arrived. A hundred million songs replayed in my head that night. Now they come twisted and bright in flashbacks which return me to the wildness at my core.
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GUSTAVO ADOLFO AYBAR
Upon Him Asking Why I’m Resisting
No more—Laughter sputtering through walls. No more—Slow walks, sandwiches and beer or concerts on the grass. No more—Tunneling down basements shuttered windows or locked doors. No more—Army ants following orders of forced enlistments. No more—Thoughts of winding up leather-faced lovers. No more—Woodsmoke & dust. No more—Diamonds & rust. No more—Fine-spun fingers pricking at the crease of my pants. No more—Bullets whistling past our brother’s heads. No more—Peace. No more—Love. There’s no peace. There’s no love. There’s no music when we touch.
writing process of Introspective: The Upon Him Asking Why I’m Resisting
“Joni Mitchell taught me how to love.” This quote, taken from the film Love Actually (2003) started my Swinging Sixties poem, which I did not write until seven months later. Needing to discover who was Joni and what powers she possessed propelled me to Clouds (her first album), to the Woodstock video, Across the Universe (2007), mod fashion, Taschen Books, Acid Dreams, Haight-Ashbury, along with countless other sources that discussed the changes and challenges of the decade. Upon Him Asking Why I’m Resisting is an eckphrastic poem, commissioned by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Arts for the Sparks! Out Loud Alive poetry night, that also included other great poets. Though I intended to reference the elements of the painting in the piece, conversations with Natasha Ria-El Scari and Linda Rodriguez, fellow poets and great friends, brought out the story and the direction I chose to take. Mark Greenwold’s work is described as “multi-faceted explorations of the issues and complexities of life: grown-up lives, grown-up bodies, and grown-up feelings about love and loss.”I feel I was able to accomplish that.
GUSTAVO ADOLFO AYBAR
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Kristi is a painter
based in MontrĂŠal. She has exhibited nationally and internationally for many years, at such venues as the Museum of Canadian Contemporary Art and The Philoctetes Centre for the Study of the Imagination. Her work has been featured in The Montreal Mirror, TimeOut New York, The Ottawa Citizen, The Santa Barbara News Press and was recently included in a survey of Canadian contemporary painters entitled Carte Blanche Vol.2: Painting. Ropeleski has received awards for research and creation from The Quebec Council of Arts and Letters, The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation. Ropeleski has a DEC from Dawson College, a BFA from Concordia University and an MFA from York University. She teaches at Dawson College and The Visual Arts Centre in MontrĂŠal.
Ropeleski www.kristiropeleski.com
White Noise 3 oil on canvas 60� x 72�
All Ropeleski paintings photographed by Tom Blanchard poetsandartists.com
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White Noise 2 oil on canvas 36” x 48”
“My work is an elaboration on one sole question and that is “Where do you end and I begin.” The relationship between the body and the ground in White Noise elucidates broader notions of perception and illusion through the use of scale, gesture, color and context. The boundaries that ordinarily delineate the body and space become questionable. The lack of information in the ground proposes a particular approach to space, proposing layers of hypothetical space extending towards a sense of space defined by the viewer’s body, my body and the bodies represented in paint.” 46
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KRISTI ROPELESKI
KRISTI ROPELESKI
White Noise 4 oil on canvas 60” x 72”
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Q&A
Kristi Ropeleski
How do you feel about formal training? I often hear that question and it makes me wonder why people ask it. Is it that there is a feeling that there is a lack of formal training in art or that it is not as useful as formal training in other domains? Perhaps it is that the structure of formal training and the art process seem to contradict one another. Art making has always been an area of study, yet somehow it does seem to be developing into an increasingly academic pursuit, going beyond formal/traditional training. There are simply more ways to be an artist right now. That being said, the role of formal training is even more important as it is often misunderstood as being in opposition to new media and more theoretical approaches. Formal training provides artists with the technical ability to become visually articulate across all mediums. In addition to this, I think a major benefit is the community you develop throughout your academic career. Do you have a ritual you follow before each new work is started? I am always ruminating over something like a colour or a rhythm which later somehow manifests as an image. Thoughts and wonderings also begin to infiltrate said image. As of late I physically enact my ideas, which are generally non-verbal in their inception, and record it through photography. I seek a visual articulation. This part of my process is intuitive. I piece together fragments of these visual ideas and invent along the way. I’m often unsure of what I am doing or how I am going to do it at this point, but that uncertainty provides creative opportunity. Have any of your mistakes become a success? Yes and no- All my mistakes have been mistakes. When I am wrong, I am dead wrong. However, I think that the best position to be in to learn is one that accepts failure. If I worried about
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making mistakes, I would never paint. Some of my mistakes have grown on me in a sentimental sort of way and sometimes I start a painting that I feel is maybe a bad idea just because I have to see what it is going to look like. When I give artist presentations and lecture to my students, I always include these ‘mistakes’ because a) it’s rare to see and b) it’s interesting to talk about. I often ask them for their feedback which is usually quite interesting. Sometimes they have technical suggestions or questions that help me to understand what is going right or wrong with said mistake. I regularly document and discard paintings, sometimes I cut out the parts I like and keep them. What is your secret weapon? My Heart. Do you feel you have already found your “style” or are you still processing? I’m glad that you put the word style in quotations. I’ve always been curious about that. As far as I’m concerned, the art-making process is about a corporeal translation beginning with observation and moving towards physical output and analysis. Style could be attributed to the unique gesture or touch of an individual’s hand or a particular way of organizing visual information. I regard what is perceived as style as being a trace of a specific set of physical aspects of the artist. All other “style” risks being contrived. Other than what I’ve just mentioned, my work bears no attempt at style, the series are all very distinct from one another. My interests are consistent, but evolving, and as a result, have worked their way through a number of expressions. I am proud of that, it is difficult yet almost impossible not to walk away from a successful body of work once you have completed it. One of the big challenges as an artist is not to be seduced by being clever or having a “catch”, even aesthetically. How has the current economic situation affected your art? No. Artists will always make art regardless of circumstance.
White Noise 5 oil on canvas 84” x 60”
KRISTI ROPELESKI
White Noise 1 oil on canvas 72” x 72”
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KRISTI ROPELESKI
METHOD MADNESS
OUTSIDER/INSIDER: The Art of Davidd Batalon Review by Grady
V
Harp
IEWING THE ART of Davidd Batalon satisfies at least two visual passions – the human figure and architecture. And in Batalon’s gifted hands these two seemingly disparate subjects seem to fuse: his figures are solid and firmly based on his paintings’ grounds, giving a feeling that they have grown up from the substantial matrix much in the way
DAVIDD BATALON
magnificent buildings are constructed; his architectural renderings are molded with a physicality that makes them equal actors/human counterparts on his painted stages that offer such strange stories. Davidd Batalon, a California artist, endured a certain degree of ostracism as a youth. A Filipino American lad living in the midst of a nonFilipino population, he found his poetsandartists.com
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preoccupation with art an early alternative for releasing emotions and ideas he was otherwise not free to express, including his gradual acceptance of his sexuality. His first ‘canvases’ were school desktops, or paper towels from his parents’gas station on which he created realistic renderings with ballpoint pens. Despite his parents’ wishes that he study Medicine, Davidd stayed the course of his passion, earning a Master’s degree in Fine Arts. As his technical facility polished, so also did his courage to tackle subjects for his paintings that had been mere occult suggestions. His ability to create credible figures interacting in the strange allegories that emerged from his canvases allowed him to approach his audience more openly and honestly. And so began Davidd’s unique pictorial language, a romantic language that suffuses his architectural sound stages with characters unafraid to act out his dramas, to interact, and to address the sensual even erotic overtones of his creations. As the artist states ‘I try to be aware of how technique and intent merge and work with one another. A harmonious process. A graceful balance. A marriage. I realize as
THAT LITTLE RELEASE
my artwork matures, it almost feels as if a painting does some of the thinking for me. It’s a strange way to describe it, but it’s no different than sleeping on a problem, and waking in the morning with a solution. I suppose the act of creating truly embraces that magical part of ourselves.’ While Davidd’s paintings present realistic figures involved
in various tasks that seem like metaphors he wishes for us the viewer to ponder, the resulting works are at once believable settings for acts that include humor and parody and social comment along with maintaining the sensitive stance of each participant in the painted story. ‘I enjoy when that quiet dialog between me and an inspiration turns into TRIPLE DARE
“A man’s work is nothing but the slow trek to rediscover through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.” Camus something tangible in the world, all because I taught my hand how to manipulate a marking device onto a surface. There’s something personal involved in that process: a direct contact with imagination. For me, that’s some cool form of alchemy.’ Davidd Batalon’s richly colorful paintings may seem immediately accessible at first glance, so well defined are his characters and his strong sense of the power of architectural structure, but standing before his works leads to appreciating the wry sense of humor the paintings convey. In Method Madness a lone man is seated with a view of an impending storm as he holds a string tied to rings of keys fairly close to the electrical cord with plug that has snaked up his legs to meet the keys: one waits for that historical lightning strike representing the discovery of electricity! In That Little Release all manner of past frustrations become a comical SKIN DEEP
THE EDGE OF NIGHT
preparation for the two men dropping water balloons and aiming slingshots at suggested people below their sturdy, classical balcony. The carefully observed architecture of the human body draws attention to the mass of another being in Triple Dare: three nude men busy themselves washing a rhinoceros in a painting that has
subtle sensual overtones. A marked social statement finds a comedic plane in the classically composed Skin Deep. And all of these elements – detailed construction of otherworldly architectural realms, the massively developed partially nude male figure, and the added ‘surprise’ of a toy water spouting boutonnière - come together in The Edge of Night. Some critics and essayists have compared Davidd Batalon to such famous painters as Thomas Hart Benson, Edward Hopper and especially George Tooker, and while elements of his painting style does suggest observation of those artists’ treatment of light, mass, and space, Batalon’s impressive canvases have found their own strong language. His paintings can be appreciated on many levels, as reflections of classicism, as bold examples of sturdy representational art of our time, as open studies of gay dilemmas and humor, and as symbols that once again suggest that a dose of comedy is the global glue that can bind us all as one family.
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Janelle
McKain janellemckain.daportfolio.com
Janelle McKain has always had a creative mind. At age 5, she began drawing the “ghosts” that haunted her at night. With an over active imagination, writing,
singing,
composing
music,
drawing and watercolor painting are outlets she chooses to vent her creative energy. Her favorite media, however,
“In my life, making art and
remains drawing. In December 1979 she graduated from
breathing are equally
college with a degree in Fine Arts
important. Drawing is a
Currently McKain is Department Chair
spiritual experience for
NE where she teaches drawing and
Education
and
began
teaching
art.
at Millard South High School in Omaha, advanced drawing classes.
me, and it is this purging of my soul that I am addicted to. I must draw
magazines, poetry books, and online feature articles, and will be included in
an
surreal
upcoming artists
book
entitled
with
other
“Imagine
the
because my soul yearns
Imaginations” published by nEogist. Her
to breathe and inspiration
Abnormals Gallery.
is forcing me to gasp for
be exhibited at the Murphy Hill Gallery,
air, I know no other way.”
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Her works have been published in various
poetsandartists.com
work will be exhibited in Berlin at the She was Primary
Finalist in the Energy Art Salon 2009 to Chicago in January 2010.
Daphne graphite on arches paper 11” x 14”
Q&A
What do you hope art historians will say about your work 300 years from now? I visualize several art historians uncovering my work in a large portfolio and screaming for joy. (I think that sounds like a good scenario to start with.) Opening the contents of a well-worn portfolio they find various layers of old drawings of the surreal artist, Janelle McKain, multiple shapes and sizes, hundreds, no…. more than that! They will surely note that I was prolific! They will sit near each other on the floor of some dusty back room, as if to venture on a long
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Virgin Spring graphite on arches paper 16” x 17”
journey together, and wide-eyed they will stare at the provocative imagery before them. Each will glance up at the other without saying a word. Their minds will be racing with questions, but there will be no answers. The drawings absorb their thoughts and they are transported in mesmerizing focus of what they are seeing. It is as if they are drugged and my drawings are the narcotic. If my meager markings of today could leave such an aura (even in some small part), this would be my hope. I want to captivate the
Bon Vivant graphite on arches aquarelle paper 14.25” x 19.25”
JANELLE McKAIN
viewer’s imagination, cause him/ her to wonder. I am not making art to necessarily please an audience, it is my attempt to captivate an imaginative state of mind, one that takes the viewer on a journey away from reality to reflect on their very soul. Dali observed, “Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating.” Do you have a ritual you follow before each new work is started? I draw shapes and lines… I doodle. I may do this randomly several days before I actually start a new drawing. I attempt to find a “creative” and open state of mind. I make lots of circles I stack them in various patterns, random groupings and this tends to create a relaxing state of mind for me to begin a composition. Perhaps I start with a random face… I love to draw faces. I am not sure there is a predictable ritual I assume. I listen to music and become very involved in the rhythms and vocals. I am transported to that euphoric place where ideas flow. As I sketch, I release any suggestion of logical thinking … imagery flows in shapes, lines, textures, values and things begin to fill the paper – by now, I am working on a final composition and away from the scratch paper I was doodling on. I can stop and start at this point and it never really seems to distract me… images continue to appear once the drawing is started. They seem to erupt from my subconscious with very little effort. I am not overly concerned with WHAT I am drawing as the imagery seems to form, I am, however, watching how the composition flows and comes together. I enjoy a fluid composition and this is really the only thing I “think” about as I work. How do you know when your work is done? I begin to lose interest, I see less and less space that demands attention. I can feel the “winding down” of the drawing. I force myself to go back in at this point and crisp up the edges to create a professional looking piece, the tiniest of details I may have overlooked are now touched up.
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Trinity graphite on arches paper 11” x 14”
At a certain point I no longer want to work with the drawing anymore. It is done, there is nothing left to say. The composition is coherent and I am satisfied enough to leave it alone. I pick up another piece of scratch paper, and the process begins all over again. Who is your favorite model for your work and do you work live
or from photographs? Most of the ideas for my work come from fleeting memories, dream sequences, abnormal and irrational thought processes… it is a way to process my creative energy really. I often see and feel things that I believe would not be socially acceptable if they were heard or seen. If I were not drawing, I believe I would
JANELLE McKAIN
him in my mind’s eye to this day. So, when it comes to models and references… my mind is already overloaded with imagery. My strongest desire is simply to release it on paper. My daughter also appears in many of my drawings, she is willing to pose in creative and strange positions and is very relaxed in front of a camera and can easily translate emotion through her eyes and facial expressions. I use photographs of Kayla as a jumping off point for a drawing, if I need inspiration. There is a real and intimate connection between mother and daughter, she is very much an extension of me. Of course, I have also used myself as a reference especially as a hand model, my husband too. I don’t really rely heavily on models or photographs, though I do need them on occasion. How long does one of your drawings take to finish? Anywhere from 20 – 60 hours, depending on the size of the piece. I usually work on more than one drawing at a time, so it varies. What are you working on next?
Enigma graphite on arches paper 11” x 14”
eventually end up in a straight jacket staring at a corner. Drawing and breathing are really of equal importance to me. When I was a child, “ghost like” figures would sit on my bed at night and keep me in a state of anxiety calling for my mother. Bless her heart, she would get up and come to my rescue every night, only to find that once she left the room… they would
JANELLE McKAIN
reappear. I began drawing these ghost-like figures with my crayons at around age 5. They still appear in various forms in and around my drawings, though I hardly realize this until the work is entirely finished. I am very glad the ghosts have left my bedside, I sleep well at this stage of my life. I also had an imaginary friend named Joey. He was my companion for nearly 3 years as a young child. I can still vividly see
I recently started a 4 part series, (the likes of which I have never done before). It is much different working through a pre-conceived series. The imagery is definitely more controlled and planned. It has been difficult for me to come to grips with a new way of drawing but one must stretch as an artist to eventually grow. The current series deals with the parallelism between lunar phases/ woman’s ages/ and the 4 seasons. The first drawing of the series is titled “Virgin Spring”. I tried to portray the beautiful innocent girl, the energy of renewal and inspiration, the increasing moon and the preovulatory phase of a woman; the phase identified with the “Virgin”. This series idea came from a photo-manipulation call for artists on a site I am a member of…. abnormals.org, since I am not totally skilled at digital manipulation, I decided to draw the ideas out. It has provided a new approach I have enjoyed very much.
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Gregory Vincent
St.Thomasino was born in
Greenwich
Village, New York, and was raised in both the city and in the country across the Hudson River in New Jersey. He was educated at home,
Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear
eventually to enter Fordham University where he received a degree in philosophy. In
the reed of a loom the guideways, of a loom, or
2009 he received the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Doctor of Arts in Leadership program at Franklin Pierce University in
when suddenly, when suddenly this is spring, and this is summer and this, this is open sky. the birds resemble a man.
New Hampshire. His poetry and prose have appeared in print in Barrow Street, jubilat, in OCHO #21 and in Xcp: Cross-Cultural Poetics and online at Pindeldyboz, In Posse Review, elimae, Word
dandelion. giddying. budded. spree. roundly, with joy for nothing and for everything the day, with my own heart too soon, arrayed. this haste
For/Word and at The Poet’s Corner at Fieralingue. In his spare time he edits the online
this pasturing. this coffee companion. this cup. this yellow sky
poetry journal, Eratio.
Introspective:
The writing process of Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear
The Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh left us a series of self-potraits, and among them the bandaged-ear self-portraits, upon which my poem is based. After van Gogh I am moved to feel there is a certain solitude in extreme emotion, a certain solitude in the sensibilities that cannot but know in such manner and that cannot but find expression in like passion and color (and as in Irises, where the I rises, and in Wheat Fields, where I am beside him). I tried to capture a fragment of that in my poem.
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Karen
Kaapcke
www.karenkaapcke.com
Karen Kaapcke started painting and drawing while completing her Master’s degree in Philosophy, which led to a total life change; following a period of struggle and introspection, she then moved to New York City where she studied sculpture, painting, and drawing techniques at the Art Students’ League. There she met Ted Seth Jacobs, whom she went on to study with for several years both in NYC and at his studio in France. Upon her return to NYC, she won a full scholarship to continue her training at the National Academy of Design School of Fine Art. She has taught for many years at Parsons School of Design, the Crosby Street Painting Studio, and offers workshops and private and group lessons out of her studio and in France. Karen has won numerous awards for her work, and is represented in many private collections. Publications include: American Artist, The Artist’s Magazine, International Artist Magazine, American Arts Quarterly and The New York Post. She has been in shows at the Butler Institute of American Art, the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Gallery Henoch, and the Forum Gallery, among many others. Her current exhibition, Karen Kaapcke: Paintings and Drawings, will be on view at the H. Pelham Curtis Gallery at the New Canaan Library through January 4, 2010. Karen currently maintains homes both in Harlem, New York City and in the village in France where she studied, and where she returns each summer with her family to live and paint in the relative calm of the countryside.
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Daniel I 62
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oil on linen 18” x 22” KAREN KAAPCKE
“I was trained in the classical tradition, but as a contemporary realist I work with all the self-consciousness and selfquestioning that has resulted from the ruptures as well as developments in the art world in recent times. The subject matter of my paintings often come from the very act of painting itself: light and darkness or shadow becomes that which is revealed or concealed; the relationship between my self and my model becomes a question of what may be public/visible and what must remain private. And yet just as often I am moved by the simple beauty of light passing across a shoulder; my work then becomes a meditation on and celebration of that simple event.” KAREN KAAPCKE
Self-Portrait with Ear Buds KAREN KAAPCKE
oil on panel 6” x 6” poetsandartists.com
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Q&A
Karen Kaapcke
Do you have a ritual you follow before each new work is started? I prefer painting in the morning. Nothing is better than waking up while I am painting or drawing, coffee by my side. I usually bike to my studio, which begins to clear my mind, and as I ride I start visualizing what I’ll be working on, reducing it to one small thing. I find this moment of visualization crucial – all visualization is, but this one carries me right into my work. By reducing my image to just one small thing that I’ll be working on (which I always end up working way beyond), not only takes the pressure off, of feeling overwhelmed by how much you really do have to get done, but it is a great pleasure –imagine how fortunate, I get to spend the whole morning contemplating the play of light on a nose. Has your art inspired a poem? My art hasn’t that I know of inspired a poem, but several of my paintings have been directly influenced by poems – probably a lot of them have! One in particular, “Their Throats Have Birds”, was not terribly long in the making – about 3 or 4 months, which is pretty usual for me – but was long in the finishing. I was struggling to find its completion, and as I usually do during these periods I went to listen to plenty of live music, and I read a lot of poetry. At this time I went to listen to an evening of poetry readings, and what I ended up hearing by a total stranger, whose name unfortunately I do not recall, gave me immediately what I needed. He read a compelling piece – but when he uttered the phrase “….and their throats have birds”, I saw the rest of my painting in full. It also brought it full circle, making sense of another inspiring moment that gave me my initial imagery: I had been to a dance and song performance that was a tribute to Katherine Dunham, a great American choreographer. One dancer who was speaking broke out into spontaneous singing/chanting, leaning her head back, as she was memorializing Ms. Dunham’s life. This image, of this woman, her head back, her mouth open with the voice emanating such beauty from this empty space, became the painting, and her throat truly did have birds. What medium have you not used in the past that you may wish to try out? Silverpoint. I do so much highly rendered drawing, and can spend many weeks on just one piece, often using nothing other than a 4H pencil. This is really already only steps away from silverpoint, which I hope to start working with this coming year or the next.
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Where do you find your inspiration? The deepest and most general thing that inspires me to paint or draw at all, is the daily sense of both being alive and wondering about being alive. When I was studying philosophy, the only response that eventually made any sense to me, to this biggest of all questions was just to sit quietly and take a look around me at people, at their faces, bodies – this was a truth and meaning beyond all words, in the language of vision and feeling. But there’s another level of inspiration that affects me as I work each day, and that comes from music. Music is color (I have a slight synesthesia where I often see color when listening to live music), melodic line is drawing, and as I listen to it images and colors evolve, or even appear in the first place. Perhaps because music is the least visual of arts, it leaves me most free to visualize on my own. I often listen to Bach when I draw – the measured quality of the music replicating the process of drawing, the weaving in and out of the contrapuntal sounds being like the hatching and cross-hatching of marks developing into a composed whole. While drawing “Eric/Trance”, I listened to Bach’s “The Art of the Fugue” over and over again, until I was finished. I listened repeatedly to Beethoven’s late sting quartets while working on my Ground Zero paintings, listening over and over again to how he brought such meaning to tragedy. What do you hope art historians will say about your work 300 years from now? If art historians were to even be aware of me in 300 years, this would be the deepest honor and mark of success, more than any success I may find in my lifetime. Were this to happen, I would hope for my work to be seen as continuing the classical figurative tradition, which is important in and of itself – but with the crucial addition of noting that my work addressed issues of privacy at a time when each individual life became so public in an unprecedented way; and how my work addressed what it meant to be embodied, to be flesh, with all it’s fragility, vulnerability and strength, at a time when individuals began to lead lives that are so abstract, digitized and virtual. In other words, not only to have continued the classical tradition at a time when that tradition is being ruptured, but in a way that shows how that very tradition was able to evolve and address contemporary life and concerns.
KAREN KAAPCKE
Their Throats Have Birds
oil on canvas and panel, and charcoal 42” x 36”
Explain your process. First, I make sure I have a surface that feels good to the touch. Whenever I teach, I make of point of noting that if you just love the way your surface feels to you before you even start painting, you’re off to a good start. I often use double-oil primed linen, covered with a layer of foundation (lead) white. Lately however, I have been enjoying the absorbency of a true gesso ground, sanded down to buttery smooth, for smaller panels. I begin with a very quick charcoal envelope sketch blocking in at the very least the entirety of the figure, top, bottom, side to side. With the charcoal, I then shift the composition around, seeking the best placement for the figure in the canvas, blocking in more elements of the figure, and adjusting
KAREN KAAPCKE
proportions. I often to go into a certain level of detail, but soon I just reach the moment where I know it’s time to stop drawing and start the painting process. Sometimes this is very early on, with barely a sketch drawn in, but sometimes I enjoy going well into the drawing with charcoal, developing the shadows a bit and so on. I did this with the painting here, “Unfinished Girl, Winter”. When I start painting, I use extremely loose paint for the first layer, and first quickly go over my charcoal lines with a raw sienna or other light earth tone. I am always amazed by how as soon as I start to paint, I think: ‘now, I’m really seeing things.’ It seems each successive layer brings with it more and more of the ability to see. So I don’t just go over the charcoal lines as I drew them – I make
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corrections every step of the way. I believe you should never assume that you got anything right. I then usually start laying in washes of color, which for me replaces the monochromatic underpainting stage. I feel that if you start right away with your closest approximation to the true color of what you are seeing, you are best able to keep a true and saturated color throughout successive layers. Then, as one is only just making mistakes and then correcting them, each layer becomes an attempt to get the color and forms closer to what is there. Once the first wash-in is established, I focus on form painting, working from dark to light and as my trust in the drawing becomes more established, I then concentrate on painting the light as it hits each surface, and the color of that light. Each successive layer of paint will have more pigment and less thinning, and my main concern is to evaluate quietly and ‘objectively’ where each previous attempt or pass has (of course) missed the mark. Finally, as the painting becomes developed,
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my attention shifts once more to the content of the painting, and I will begin to consider how the play of light guides the viewer’s eye, and how the composition similarly dictates where the eye wants to go. I also hold now to my vision of what I want the paint to look like, and the surface quality –things which go beyond simply the subject or model you are looking at. It is here, in these final stages, that I will introduce the element of play and the very necessary risk-taking that goes with it. I may use mediums, either cold-pressed linseed oil, or a glazing medium. It was at this point in the painting “Unfinished Girl, Winter”, when I was working with various ideas for the background, and keeping in mind also the quality of the painting surface that I was working with, that I began to start playing with large brushstrokes while lightening up the background. When I pulled back to take a look, not having filled in all the background yet, I realized it was actually finished, just as it was. After all, my daughter is, at 6 years old, herself unfinished.
KAREN KAAPCKE
Unfinished Girl, Winter oil on linen 36” x 48” KAREN KAAPCKE
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World-view oil on gessoed panel 9” x 12”
Introspective:
The painting process of World-view
This particular piece, “World-view”, was extremely challenging, particularly so because the challenges came at me from every direction: in terms of materials, in terms of composition, and in terms of meaning. It was also uniquely important, in the sense that these challenges pushed me to a new level in my painting. This was the first painting I did using a new ground, a pre-mixed true gesso formula, a bright ground containing chalk dust (I’d been looking for surfaces that reflect more light). It is extremely absorbent, and soaked up my paints as soon as I started laying in the first wash. Technically, the learning curve was steep –each step of the way I had to learn how the layers gradually decreased in absorbency, and this necessarily affected how I applied the paint and how I did my modeling of forms. I had to work faster, and rely more on color shifts than on smoothly painted surfaces to convey the turning towards or away from light. The compositional challenge occurred later in the painting – initially, the image was inspired by a conversation I had with my model when she answered my question about whether she had kids by holding her breasts in her hands as if she were cradling them, and said “These are my babies”. Rather far on in the painting, however, I saw how this
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composition which is extremely downward oriented – towards her breasts and belly – became even more so as the light simply glowed on those parts of her body. I struggled to brighten up her face, her forehead, trying to create a competing glow, but the falseness of that light undermined the composition even more. Feeling a bit stuck, and immensely frustrated, I had started to turn on the radio while I worked, and began a routine of listening to the morning news each day. The presidential campaign was in full swing, as were issues of the veil in several countries. It all came together one moment when I realized that a kind of veil, but not a thoroughly political one, would solve the composition problem perfectly, by framing as well as providing a point of interest in the top half. And the intensity of the meaning, of combining a veil, however ‘innocent’ with this woman’s nurturing nudity, gave the painting a jolt of energy. I worked quite a bit with the veil, not wanting it to be too political, maybe only even hinting at the politics of the veil, without doing away with it all together. I struggled to keep the painting both painted in a way that would draw one in, and to keep the intensity of this new meaning alive in a way that would challenge the viewer while not letting him or her turn away.
KAREN KAAPCKE
Hal is the author of 4 collections of poetry. His first book, Mother said,
Sirowitz
was translated into 9 languages. He’s the best selling translated poet in Norway. Garrison Keillor reads several of his poems on his NPR radio show, The Writers Almanac.
Thoughts That Make You Shake I hungered for a slice of pizza until I got one. The thought of eating it already made me feel fat. And thoughts don’t have any calories, except the ones that make you shake. But those are too hard to maintain. Who wants to scare himself for twenty-four hours?
Blood Everywhere When I saw a red mark on my shirt, I thought I had a wound. I found one near my shoulder. I must have bumped into some sharp object, or something bumped into me. There were two ways to look at it. One blamed the object. And the other blamed the person. I put the blame on the object. The blood kept pouring out like it was expected somewhere. I applied pressure to the wound. And since its one escape route was closed, it stayed where it was supposed to. The wound soon was covered with a scab and turned brownish. That was the end of my adventure in red.
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Kimberly L.
Becker
is a member of Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers.
Her poetry appears in many journals and anthologies, most recently Diverse Voices Quarterly, Future Earth Magazine, I Was Indian (FootHills), and the monthly web feature on Verse Daily. Her first manuscript, of which “Beads” is a part, was a finalist for the DeNovo Award (C&R Press). A grant from the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County, Maryland funded her recent study of Cherokee language, history and culture at the Museum of the Cherokee Indian in Cherokee, North Carolina. Current projects include adapting Cherokee myths into plays for production by Cherokee Youth in Radio.
Beads At Harpers Ferry, the rivers were rough at the seams with a prevalence of currents when you worked for a month on the frame for the canoe, wanting to perfect it although later she leaked in such manner that she would not answer. • In your back pocket, a letter from the Secretary of War let you double your coupons at the U.S. Armory and Arsenal. One of your many lists was for Indian presents: 36 Pipe Tomahawks—at H. Ferry 40 fish Griggs such as the Indians use with a single barbed point 12 Red Silk Hanckerchiefs • Dozens of colored beads (blue ones were most coveted and you failed to get enough): they prefer beeds to any thing and will part with the last mouthful or articles of clothing they have for a few of those beeds. You never understood that wampum wasn’t merely money, wasn’t just for trade, but had a deeper meaning, outward sign of inward word. • My own gold and jade bead necklace from the Smithsonian— proof of purchased love, those knotted promises along the cord— all finally lost to broken clasp. Lewis of obsessive lists, did you guess at the setting out what would be your main discovery? That killing would come as readily as giving? That you would trade the bead of a bullet for the gift of your life? • 00 70
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Introspective:
The writing process of Beads
Written over several drafts, this poem was an experiment in incorporating historical documents into creative work. I also played with adding the visual bullets/beads to string the stanzas together and this led to the discovery (recovery) of a childhood memory of a certain beaded necklace, also a gift, part of a personal history of broken trust. Against this, I had in mind the history of broken trust by the U.S. government towards Indians, where “discovery” has often meant theft and genocide. The last line (ultimately revised to span the last two lines) came to me very early on and so I wrote towards it and in that sense the poem had its own current. Mostly I wanted the poem to be about the worth of words, personal and collective, packing list or treaty. A visit to Harpers Ferry precipitated the first draft that had nothing to do with Lewis, the man or the myth, but I made a conscious decision not to limit the poem to my own experience or reaction to a place where rivers meet in an uneasy confluence.
Jose
Parra was born in
Guadalajara Mexico.
His early instruction started at his father’s
gallery-studio.
He
studied
College at ITESO and art at the University
of
Guadalajara,
Art
Students league of New York and Carlos Vargas Pons’ Studio.
He has
participated with galleries in Canada, Europe, Mexico and the United States, and has exhibited in museums in San Miguel de Allende and Guadalajara. He has collaborated in catalogues, the book Powerfully Beautiful and next year in Dreamscapes, Imaginaire and La estética y el Arte Contemporáneo II (Aesthetics and Contemporary Art II) In Argentina.
www.joseparra.com
“The purpose of this body of work is to take the freedom the XX century has given us and blend it with the theatrical sense and excesses of baroque, using a fantastic twist. The goal is to discover the drama in beauty, the sadness in joy, the magic within the ordinary, the hope at the last minute of the apocalypse. Explore the worlds that inhabit us. I like to think of a painting as a story poured on a canvas.” JOSE PARRA
Self Portrait Sewing a Harlequin oil on canvas 35” x 27”
The Marchioness and Flying Monkeys oil on canvas 51” x 43” JOSE PARRA
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Q&A
Jose Parra
Where do you find your inspiration? I was born in a family devoted to baroque art. I grew up among replicas from baroque masters and craftsmen, everything from painting to sculpture, carvings, embossing and frames from and inspired by the Spanish American baroque. I was somehow captivated by the richness and drama of those images. I also learned that in order to find the beauty of a piece it two ingredients were necessary: Inspiration and tons of work, that’s how baroque
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works and there was no way around it. This was the language I learned when I was a kid. Then I noticed I could express ideas through this language, departing from the mere duplication of pieces and styles. When I blended this with all the input of my grandmother, her fantasy and the way she used to link ideas together, a great tool was made: a ticket to travel and unveil worlds to be discovered. Once you know what to do and what the language you’ll use is, it’s time for the next step, and that lies in the search of the feeling. One has to undertake a search within the hidden corners of the soul.
JOSE PARRA
The Tower (The Tibutes of the Ether) oil on canvas 47” x 66”
JOSE PARRA
Although some feelings could be skindeep at the moment, music makes everything come to the surface in the most incredible way. Sometimes the feeling that comes from masterpieces like Rachmaninov’s Piano concerto No. 2, Bizet’s Carmen or any Bach, to name just a few is so incredibly enormous that it invades every region of one’s chest until the tears roll down so it wouldn’t explode. That’s the time for answers. After the storm, the mind starts looking for images to match those feelings. An energy surrounds the atmosphere, and I confess, sometimes I even act like some of the characters or play a little bit in order to comprehend their roles and what there is to be expressed, probably as a theater director does because what I try to achieve is that, to put a play on a canvas, a tale, a story. Do you have a ritual you follow before each new work is started? This is a very interesting question I didn’t expect. Somehow it makes me think I’m not the only one with rituals. As time goes by I believe that is an intrinsic part of our human nature, I believe that’s how cults have been created. Some parts of the ritual obey a need or a practical nature: Changing clothes first, then if I’m tired I go get a Gatorade or Coffee and Mazapan (Mexican peanut candy) depending on the weather or mood. The colors should be placed on the palette on a specific order, just as when a session is finished all brushes should be cleaned in a specific way too. A rag should always be placed only on my right leg before even lifting a brush… but turning my palette clockwise before a session doesn’t make any sense at all, does it? What do you hope art historians will say about your work 300 years from now? They will probably say that I was not quite happy with the establishment of late XX century, not only of the way the art world had been driving the market to “Fast-Easy Art” but also for the risks that it represented, what would have happened when people finally realized that the king was naked all the time and that the invisible costumes they bought that only “privileged” minds could see where in fact… you know… Those who sold it will have to invest a lot of resources to maintain it. Selling a box of Tide in a few thousands will need some other thousands to keep the value of it. They would probably say that I was one of the many painters that wanted to make people believe in art again. Going back to hard work and speech within
the artwork itself, not in the manifestos that needed to go along with art in the same “Combo” in order to give value to what otherwise wouldn’t. I hope the proposal I’ve been working on could keep communicating in 300 years, without the need of speech. To me a piece of art should always stand by its own, otherwise it’s something else, not art exactly. Not too long ago I had the fortune to visit the exhibition of Remedios Varo in Mexico City and I had the chance to see a phenomenon. She was sharing the museum with two other painters a bit more… “conceptual” on the same floor, although she had only 20 or 25% of the space maximum, she had 90% of the visitors. While it only takes less than a minute to look at a conceptual minimalistic piece of artwork, looking a Remedios Varo could take hours. People, including myself were trapped in her content, colors, hidden spots, meanings, stories… Sometimes the time invested in observing a piece of art is proportionally the same to the time that it took making it. I wish I could create pieces that could make people stay a little longer, I wish I could get to have Varo’s effect. To me a work of art should have a universal character, one that any person with a sensibility could appreciate but at the same time could offer a possibility to go beyond the first impression. Raquel Tibol once said that a good piece of art should say something different every time it was seen. I hope that 300 years from now some of the aspects of the proposal I’m working on, could still offer new questions and clues about the content, although they have a fantastic language they talk about situations of our times: the change in the male and female rolls, the search for a new consciousness, the apocalyptic feeling of the end of an era, and the possibility of a brand new start, and all the hidden dialogues between the characters. In an Almodovar’s syndrome they will probably notice that I depict the world through the male, but I lived through some of my female characters, representing thus the inner and outside world. There are things given by my subconscious, as an exercise in keeping the senses open. So there are some things in paintings that after a few years give me an idea of what was going on, and there are things yet to be discovered even by myself. I believe that could be common among painters when you keep your self open. Have any of your mistakes become a
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The False Clothing of Cleonte oil on canvas 47” x 66” success? Sometimes a little idea that you didn’t think was quite important, suddenly takes on a life of its own and becomes something quite surprising. Then one has to learn when you become a tool of the painting and listen carefully to it. I think that if you love the result there will be at least someone who will love it like you. When for some reason there is a problem on the painting, and that happens a lot in figurative, you have to turn a mistake into an opportunity to make things different. When you are doing abstract and you need to balance with red in a corner you just take your brush, hand, spatula or whatever and put red on the canvas. If you had the same problem in figurative you’ll have to
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justify that red. Sometimes the results turn out to give a special touch to the painting. What are you working on next? I’m working on some commissions including a personal view of the Olympus, and next I’ll keep exploring and designing new machines, devices and buildings. There’s a ton of paintings that I was not able to do for the last exhibition and they are still waiting to come out. Hopefully they will soon. What is your hidden talent? I love making parties and extravagant events, the problem is that they take time and resources, the last big party was a couple of years ago with more than 500 people. Once I’m in a better position I hope to
JOSE PARRA
The Light Alley oil on canvas 48” x 35” give extraordinary experiences to people in this kind of events and / or exhibitions, like the last show in Guadalajara where we had a few performances and surprises. I also like cooking and doing things with wood. I made the tables at the studio and I also crate the paintings when they go with frame. When I was a teenager I made a bar out of the old headboard of my parent’s bed during the summer, I had a lot of fun. Has your art inspired a poem? I’ll be working soon in art exchange with a very good friend of mine making a painting based on a poem and vice versa. But thanks to the reach of internet I’ve seen some paintings in blogs along with poems, some of them from known authors, but some I
JOSE PARRA
believe could be new since they don’t put the name of the source. What medium have you not used in the past that you may wish to try out? Sculpture, engraving and some other printing processes that I think are quite enriching. From these, sculpture is the one that I like the most, is like playing is so fun! How did 2009 treat you? Much better than 2008. I found new sources of inspiration and new tales and characters. It was a year of discovery, probably with a lot of pressure before the exhibition in Guadalajara, but it was worth every minute. There are new projects and interesting new horizons. Just need to keep working.
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Introspective: The painting process of The Arival of Coronado to the Lands of Arizona
This has been one of the paintings that has provided some of the most interesting challenges so far, starting with the dimensions: 7’ x 11’ and then the subject matter. It was a commission from collectors and very good friends in Arizona, the problem was: how an idealistic, pacifist and vegetarian would paint conquistadors in the dessert? They are soldiers at the end of it all. So, in order to put some poetry on it, I included Nike, the Goddess of Victory with a frustrated expression this time since the goal of the expedition failed, after not founding the Cibola’s seven Cities of gold. Although there are lances and spears none of the soldiers is carrying a weapon. I had the fortune to visit Arizona, invited by the Monika and Mark Riely, and I had the chance to get all the sense of the environment, since the dessert is completely different to the idea we have in Mexico. I had the chance to photograph plants, animals, rocks and we even had the fortune to see a gila monster while we were walking back home. All this brought a special feeling to the painting, it finally provided answers to challenges such as perspective, use of color and how to include the right contrast to the scene, how to give the idea of this huge procession, how to blend something historical to a more poetic narrative and how to turn an unsuccessful episode into something epic and hopefully glorious.
JOSE PARRA
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The Arrival of Coronado to the Lands of Arizona oil on canvas 7’ x 11’ JOSE PARRA
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Jorg Dubin Review by Grady
Harp
“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back-- Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE power, and magic in it. Begin it now.” MAN WITH A BLACK HAT
T
HE QUESTION is often posed ‘What is the current period of art in which we are living?’ – a query that reflects art history’s predilection to categorize movements such as Impressionism, Expressionism, Abstraction, etc. But the current state of creative art in the 21st century defies such tidy shelving: perhaps it is the speed of communication or the ‘right to reason’ that, say, Twittering provides that tosses all labels to the wind and settles on each artist the individuality that precludes labels. Such is most assuredly the case with Southern California artist Jorg Dubin. His fascinating, probing canvases are at once representational portraits, realistically rendered in oil on linen with an attention to detail that is rare among his contemporaries.
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WALLS, DOORS, REFLECTIONS
And yet the quality draughtsmanship of the type Dubin achieves is not what makes his works unique: fellow artists such as Lucien Freud, Eric Fischl, Avigdor Arikha, Odd Nerdrum among others treat the figure with great style and technique. What Dubin brings to the easel is an extraordinary sense of exploration of the psyche of his models, or better said, a flux of interchange between what the artist brings to the session with the model coupled with the visual stimuli that blossom as he pulls the figure into his world of inimitable imagination. A man of quiet unassuming exterior, an artist who is always ready to credit the influences of other artists in his mastery of his craft, Jorg Dubin has that manner of thinking that is best described as being an existentialist: his quiet demeanor as well as his finished strange and haunting paintings attest to the concept that the focus of philosophical thought should be to deal with the conditions of existence of the individual person and his/her emotions, actions, responsibilities, and thoughts. He is fully capable of painting the outer likeness of his model with careful attention to realistic near-
JORG DUBIN
WELL SEEKER REVISITED
photographic detail, but his fascination or obsession with the darker aspects of each of our personalities finds its way through the gradual layering of paint, bringing focus to the psychological person beneath the physical appearance of the model. Not that Dubin pushes his paintings to distortion in the manner of Francis Bacon or Jenny Saville or Cecily Brown: his sense of organizational detail and story telling requires that he allow his model to first be approached as a recognizable figure, often a figure with surface flaws or variations in form that either age or other enemies have altered that figure, before the mental and emotional data take over. Yet for all his realistic representation he is unafraid to alter the effects of lighting, of setting, and of brush technique to add that element of mystery, an invitation to the viewer to take the imagery yet further than the clues the artist has presented. Dubin’s canvases emerge, then, from a mind ever alert to idiosyncrasies as well as a technique that
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ENTRANCE
PRODUCE GIRL WITH A PINK BALLOON
allows him to enter realms unavailable to many figurative artists. In Walls, Doors, Reflections the elements of his craft are combined in a painting depicting the artist on the left, the malleable model in the middle, and Stephen Douglas (one of Dubin’s primary teachers and influences) on the right: the story unfolds as the painting is studied closely. In Well Seeker Revisited the model, perhaps at rest from a pose, reflects in an odd series of doors and mirrors, a figure rendered with the utmost detail coupled with a flowing, dripping, ? decomposing atmosphere. Dubin’s many large scale portraits include figures that may appear disturbing, as in Draw where an ominous heavy male ready to use the gun tucked in his belt seems to emerge from a shadowy background, not unlike our fears of the night, or in Entrance –the seated female, knees together, sits before a purse on the floor ajar to reveal a rather raw red hint of a story, or Produce, the full figured female sits anchored by a chain to a nearby water bird. But he is also able to uncover the whimsical or fantastic aspect of his models in other paintings, as in Girl with a Pink Balloon (a seductive blond model atop a child’s building block), Man with a Black Hat (a seated man with a horn that allows appreciation of Dubin’s control of detail in tandem with his 82
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JORG DUBIN
DRAW
KNIGHT B.I.G.
‘post-modern’ approach to peripheral ambiguities) or Knight or B.I.G., portraits of great dignity and gentle deportment of figures who might in other artist’s hands become threatening. Jorg Dubin is a fine colorist whose matrices allow him to at times seem as random playing with pigment, perhaps offering some relief from the intensity of the central subject matter – the examination of the human being as a container of experience, of change, of countless possibilities of inner turmoil or joy: what the exterior presents is only the beginning of the endlessly fascinating characters he brings to our attention.
“In everything I demand that there should be life, the possibility of existence, and then all is well; we are not then called upon to ask whether the work is beautiful or ugly. The feeling that what has been created has life comes before either consideration and is the only criterion in matters of art.” GEORG BÜCHNER JORG DUBIN
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www.maxginsburg.com www.ginsburgillustration.com
Max Ginsburg has exhibited extensively. His most recent exhibitions have been at the Martin Luther King Labor Center, Gallery 1199, NYC, in 2008, and in 2009 at the Dayton International Peace Museum’s Gallery in Dayton, OH. In 2011, he will have a Painting Retrospective at the Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH. He has been included in many group shows such as the National Academy of Design, the Butler Institute of American Art, the Academy of Arts and Letters, the Christophers, the Art Renewal Center, the Museum of the City of New York, the Allied Artists and having won many awards. His paintings are also included in museum and public collections such as The New Britain Museum, the Art Renewal Center, the Society of Illustrators, the Service Employees international Union and the AFL-CIO Labor College. Ginsburg was one of America’s foremost illustrators for twenty four years. He has taught art for forty years at the Art Students League, the School of Visual Art and the High School of Art and Design. Recently he has been giving occasional workshops and ‘life painting’ demonstrations. He also teaches a summer painting class at the Art Students League, NYC.
Crossroads
“My paintings are about humanity. My art is concerned with Peace and Justice and the Truth about the Human Condition. My paintings are realistic in form as well as content in order to powerfully communicate ideas and MAX GINSBURG feelings.” 86
poetsandartists.com
Q&A
oil
26” x 40”
Max Ginsburg
What are your thoughts on today’s realism? I welcome the revival of realism. During the twentieth century it has been disfavored and prevented from developing, which resulted in crude and amateurish realistic art. In the past twenty years realism has been improving due to the growing number of academies and ateliers and some of the art schools which are teaching traditional realism using more structured curricula. But realism today is still compromised, meaning badly drawn and badly observed work. Nevertheless the new opportunity to develop realistic skills, after a century of drought, is a positive! Realism today is represented in various ways. One way is an academic or classical style. Another is photorealism. Then there is painting that is loosely called “representational” that is usually a mixed bag of abstraction and realism. Many of these works are exhibited in galleries if they are considered “saleable”. But what about good paintings that are “not saleable”? As for representation in museums,
Homeless
oil
25” x 40”
curators are conditioned to accept art that is in vogue. And what is often accepted in one century is denied in another . Traditional realism with strong social concerns is not well represented. This is the tradition of Old Masters like Caravaggio, Velasquez, Rembrandt, Goya, Kromskoi, Bouvaret, Repin, Kollwitz. This is the kind of painting I am trying to do and promote in and about my historical time period. How much time does a painting take to finish? Depending on the size and subject of the painting the time spent could vary from one day to six months or more. Where do you find your inspiration? My inspiration comes from the subject, the idea and the artistic design or image. Sometimes I might be inspired by another artist’s work. For example, I recently did a painting called “Torture - Abu Ghraib”. This was based on the tragedies at the Abu - Ghraib prison in Iraq. Revealing the truth about these criminal acts was inspirational, much in the same way that renaissance painters were inspired to paint the crucifixion torture images depicting man’s inhumanity to man. I was also inspired by the crucifixion
MAX GINSBURG
paintings of Old Masters like Caravaggio and Rembrandt. Do you have a ritual you follow before each new work is started? I have no ritual, but I’ll explain my procedure in a later section. What do you hope art historians will say about your work 300 years from now? I hope art historians will get it right when it comes to realism. Most of them today are at a disadvantage because they don’t see drawing or form, they don’t have an aesthetic feeling for realism because they have been “educated” mostly from a “modern art” point of view. I’m hoping for better educated art historians in the near future. On the other hand, judging by history, a flop during one century can be a success during the next. And the critics fall in line like sheep conforming to the vogue of their historic period. As for what critics will think in 300 years, I will leave that to the fantasies of science fiction. Have any of your mistakes become a success? In my painting if I make a mistake I try to correct it. Of course it is possible that a critic might deem a bad drawing as a creative success which I see as a
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Peace March
oil
48” x 70”
mistake. But in my style of painting there are often nuances of tone or color that are not always applied with deliberate brushwork that create beautiful passages of atmosphere or texture. I would not call this a mistake. I would rather say it is a by-product of experimentation or subliminal painting. What are you working on next? I am always painting studies from life, especially when I give workshops and demonstrations. I am now in the process of painting a 50” x 70” painting of people at a bus stop. In my studio photo, you’ll probably see the blocking-in stage of this painting. After this I plan to paint an anti war scene as well as an anti poverty painting. How did 2009 treat you? In 2009 I gave a several workshops and demos. Previously I taught from 1960 to 2000 at the School of Visual Art, the Art Students League, NYC and the H.S. of Art and Design, NYC and thought I would
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no longer teach and only paint. However, I decided instead that promoting these workshops would eventually bring me a “little needed fame” for my exhibition ambitions and ... besides I do enjoy teaching! In 2009 I had an exhibition at the Dayton International Peace Museum’s Gallery, OH and in 2008 I had an exhibition at the Martin Luther King Labor Center, Gallery 1199, NYC. In 2011 I will have a Painting Retrospective Exhibition at the Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown OH. Actually my present interest is in promoting my type of social realist paintings through public venues rather than commercial galleries. Judging by the audience reactions my work received at my shows there is quite an enthusiastic response. People identify with my paintings and say that they don’t see realism like this today. And of course the reason is that this kind of work is not condoned or promoted by the art establishment.
MAX GINSBURG
Explain your process. In the case of my figure compositions my process could vary from one idea to the next. Sometimes I work only from life and sometimes I will use photographs. There are advantages and disadvantages to both. In the case of my “Torture - Abu Ghraib” (Oil on Stretched double primed linen), I got the idea after seeing those horrible torture photos that American soldiers took at the Abu-Ghraib prison in Iraq. Old Master crucifixion paintings became some of my inspiration. They symbolized man’s inhumanity to man through their depiction of Christ being tortured. I then began making sketches in pencil from life (models posing), and from my imagination until I worked up a composition in pencil. Then I drew a one inch grid over my drawing. Based on the proportion of my sketch I calculated what size to do my painting - 46” x 32”. I then proceeded to stretch my canvas. Then I drew in charcoal my larger grid on the canvas in proportion to my sketch grid. Now I could notate where each figure was to be placed, and then sketched the figures loosely in charcoal, making adjustments all the time. At this point, I would go over the drawing again but with a large bristle filbert brush using an oil wash. Then I would block in the figures using the same large brush painting in oil and working from life. I also had the costumes and props ready to paint in the painting along with the models who usually posed one at a time. Only the lunging dog was painted totally from a grainy Abu-Ghraib photo off the internet. This block-in became
MAX GINSBURG
Torture - Abu Ghraib
oil on stretched double primed linen
an underpainting over which I proceeded to do my final painting. The final painting required compositional and drawing adjustments constantly. Finishing the painting is not merely a matter of rendering, but of constantly observing, building and correcting
46” x 32”
form, color and values. Hiring the models became rather expensive so sometimes I worked from photographs I took of these models. Sometimes I used other photo references as needed. When the darker colors sank in I sprayed on some retouch varnish.
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Introspective:
The painting process of War Pieta
I wanted to bring attention to the horror of war and in this case the war in Iraq. I thought of a mother losing her son and the Pieta paintings of the Old Masters and Michelangelo’s Pieta came to mind, showing the Madonna mourning the death of her son. In my painting I sought to symbolically connect, and also contrast, the image of a real mother screaming in anguish over the loss of her soldier son to the Old Master images of the Madonna quietly and serenely mourning the death of her son. The torn fatigues, the mangled soldier’s body and the flag identify and symbolize one of the many young Americans who have been killed. I tried to paint the mother as a woman of forty and yet appear similar in looks, including the shawl, to the classic Madonna of Michelangelo’s Pieta. The barren burning oil field wasteland compositionally strengthens the concept. Above the black smoke of the burning oil fields is an actual gold sky again to make the connection to the religious paintings of the early rennaissence. For this painting I wanted the expression of anguish of the mother screaming in agony so I hired a photographer to do a photo shooting with the models posing in various positions and expressions in accordance with my directions. I used photography because a model posing could not hold the intensity of this expression. About 100 photos were taken and I selected three to
work from that had the facial expression and the pose I wanted. I referred to scrap reference for certain details such as the dead soldier’s facial expression and wounded soldiers in battle. The amputation of the leg and arm was my doing in order to fully express my outrage against the war. Before I did the photoshooting I made some layout sketches for the poses and the general composition. After the shooting I altered the sketches until I was satisfied with my composition. Then I drew a one inch grid and determined the final size of my canvas, 50” x 60”. In this case I ordered a custom made stretcher which I do for large paintings. After I stretched my canvas I drew a grid to scale. For this painting I had digital images which I projected and traced in charcoal and oil wash. This enabled me to easily alter the drawing as needed and make other adjustments. Then I proceeded to paint the block-in of the figures and later the background. I painted sections at a time because I like to paint wet on wet for a better development of the form. As the painting developed, changes and adjustments were a constant. For the gold sky I mixed gold powder with linseed oil, which is the medium I use, and then brushed on the gold mixture. The direction of my paintings in general vary and change as they develop. These changes are not preplanned, but my initial concept remains true.
MAX GINSBURG
Self Portrait oil 10” x 10”
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MAX GINSBURG
War Pieta
MAX GINSBURG
oil on stretched canvas
50” x 60”
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Andrei
Andrei Guruianu
Guruianu www.andreiguruianu.com.
Poetry Is the Anguish of Memory I find in Europe’s cities of ashes the most beautiful girls in the world. Their perky breasts, white against white in the summer heat, and I am hanging over the edge of rivers and lakes, you hear that? like the time we were children and would stare at the water for hours, dazed by its never ending lines, only now it’s the beautiful girls, the fall in love cities of Sunday cafes and Saturday nights, hotel walls grand piazzas, underground unknowns, ripple of water you hear that? underground there is a ripple of water that once passed beneath our laughter, children’s laughter at the warped reflections we disturbed with our toes, wet toes we later dug into the dust of streets, scribbled love without ever seeing love but water speaks the same language all over this continent, listen how it soaks the ashes, the muslin down to bare skin, how it gurgles through its severed throat about how close we came and how far we’ve gotten.
Introspective:
The writing process of Poetry Is the Anguish of Memory
“Poetry is the Anguish of Memory” is a look back through time at how we come to hold the beliefs we do, how our actions or the actions of others shape who we are and what we hold as truth. Through the constant flowing of the river, of waters oblivious to our intent, it also explores the distances we put (for various personal reasons) between our former selves and who we are at present. As poets and writers we often look behind us. We try to make sense of what has passed, how it has affected us, and how it shapes our outlook on future events. I believe this condition is that much more pronounced in those who have lived through some kind of traumatic experience or a life-altering event. As a non-native writer and immigrant at an
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is a Romanian-born writer living in Vestal, New York. He is the author of three previous collections of poetry: And Nothing Was Sacred Anymore (March Street Press, 2009), Front Porch World View (Main Street Rag, 2009), Days When I Saw the Horizon Bleed (FootHills Publishing, 2006); also author of the chapbooks Anamnesis (Finishing Line Press, forthcoming 2010) and It Was Like That Once (Pudding House, 2008). Guruianu teaches at Ithaca College and Binghamton University where he is also a Ph.D. candidate. In 2009 he worked as guest editor of Yellow Medicine Review and edited the anthology “Twenty Years After the Fall: Émigré and Immigrant Writers Reflect” (Wising Up Press). He is also the founder and executive editor of the literary journal The Broome Review (www.thebroomereview .com) and currently serves as the Broome County, NY Poet Laureate 2009-2010.
early age to this country, I find myself among exilic/diasporic poets for whom the backwards gaze is not a temporary state of mind but a way of being. It is something I believe they engage in perpetually, consciously and unconsciously, in order to rebuild, remember, and reminisce about the past. Such a nonlinear temporal existence can paralyze or become a source of creativity and reinvention—a constant search for something to affirm the individual self. In this sense the writer is always seeking, reaching beyond the present and into the past. By straddling historical, personal, and collective realities, the exilic poet hopes to discover that moment of spontaneity where beauty and brutality manage to transcend time.
Tony Pro was born in Northridge, CA in 1973. He grew up in Southern California around artists such as his father, Julio (1929- ), who was an up and coming artist in the southwest art community. Being the youngest of 4 children, Pro was taken all around the country to some of the countries biggest art shows where he met legends like Jim Bama and Frank McCarthy. As a child, he also visited many studios of famous deceased artists such as E. Irving Couse and Nicolai Fechin. Pro received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Graphic Design from California State University, Northridge and at the same time attended California Art Institute where he studied with famed illustrator, Glenn Orbik. There he learned the value of academic figure and head drawing and how to apply strict study principles to his craft and, largely, trained himself to paint. In 2005, Pro was awarded the highly coveted Best of Show award at the 14th Annual Oil Painters of America Show, given by juror, Daniel Gerhartz. That year Pro, also, was one of the TOP 10 finalists of the Portrait Society of America Show in Washington D.C. Also that year, Pro’s painting “Mothers Love” was featured on the cover of Southwest Art Magazine, as well as a feature article. Pro is a guest member of Richard Schmid’s Putney Painters and is currently privately teaching master classes in painting. In 2007, Pro started his production company with the production of Jeremy Lipking’s first demonstration DVD, The Portrait Sketch. Currently, he lives in Westlake Village with his wife, Elizabeth and 3 children, Ian, William and Ava.
Tony
Pro
www.tonypro-fineart.com
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Ready for the cold
Q&A
Tony Pro
Chelsey oil on linen 12” x 9” TONY PRO
Where do you find your inspiration? The inspiration for my work comes from life itself. To me, honesty is the most important when it comes to painting and by being honest I like to paint the things I see that are beautiful, intriguing or sometimes, bothersome to me. Roses in the garden, a memory I wish to paint of the site of my wife and kids, a devotion to a higher power, or a social issue that affects myself and others. As artists, I feel that it is important to communicate what we see and feel on canvas and if I am good enough, technically, I can convey those thoughts
oil on linen
9” x 12”
and feelings to the people who view my work. This is our duty as artists, to show the beauty of this world to those who cannot see it. Do you have a ritual you follow before each new work is started? Sometimes I go through ideas that I have written down or saved in a folder. Images that I have seen or things I have thought about and I get them down on sketch paper. I try and workout a composition that will not only compliment the subject but that will also keep the eye flowing. Aside from being a fine artist, I also have a degree in graphic design so I am very in to the abstract design patterns of a picture. By abstract, I mean the pattern of light and dark shapes that please the eye, applied to representational
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painting. What do you hope art historians will say about your work 300 years from now?_ 300 years from now, if my work has survived, I hope that viewers still get the same feeling then about what they see through my eyes, as viewers do now. One always hopes that their work is “timeless.” This always makes the best art; images that transcend time and place and gives meaning to life through the beauty of art. What are you working on next? I am currently building a show based on my life experiences and thoughts. I am also producing my instructional DVD that is a portrait sketch of my father. It will be dedicated to him and not only will it be an informative tool as to how I paint from life but it will also be an intimate moment between Father and Son. My father is a successful doctor/artist/family man. He has been my role model all my life and this will be my chance to capture the man on canvas and will also be fun to have on film, for the rest of my life. What is your hidden talent? A lot of people don’t know that I am an avid lover of food and I have a passion for the culinary arts. Sometimes I have to stop myself from putting too much time in studying about cooking as it’s not my career, but had I not gone to art school, the culinary arts would have been my second choice. It’s another hands on endeavor that provides so much pleasure as the end product, and it’s something I have always loved. I guess it’s the Italian in me that wants to please people with my art and food. I also get this trait from my dad. What medium have you not used in the past that you may wish to try out? I have yet to start sculpting but this is something that I will do once I get more time and can really devote the appropriate the energy towards it. I have always admired sculpture, particularly marble and I am still baffled at how so many were so good at it. I know it will also further my craft as a painter as I have heard from other painters that once they learned to sculpt, it gives “another dimension” to understanding form and how to accurately paint it.
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They Know No Bounds
oil on linen
48” x 30”
TONY PRO
“My work is about life through my eyes. It’s a memory, a thought, a glimpse of a view of life that I translate to the painted surface. Anything that stirs my interest or inspires me, I feel like I need to put it down. My work will always be that of a self portrait into my life.” TONY PRO poetsandartists.com
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Lux Muni (Light of the World)
Introspective:
oil/24kt gold on cradled masonite
12” x 12”
The painting process of Lux Mundi
This particular painting was one that I had been inspired by a painting that used to hang in my room as a child. It was a Charles Chambers painting who was a very famous Catholic painter from the 1940s and ‘50s, and it depicted the young, innocent Christ Child. He used his own son as the model for the painting and I always loved that piece, so I did a similar painting. The only difference was that on mine I wanted to gild the halo with 24 KT gold and that was a big learning process for me. Gilding is a very time consuming process and when introduced to a painting it makes it all the more difficult. Maude oil on linen 8” x 6”
TONY PRO
This painting is important to me for two reasons, one it reaffirms my belief in the innocence and love of our Saviour and it also showcases my son at age 3. It speaks to me as an honest painting, and I did not want to rush this painting at all. It had to be perfect, and it took me a great deal of time to paint this piece. It was showcased at the California Art Club Gold Medal show, and was purchased by a collector from Los Angeles.
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Doug Clarke LIQUIDMETHOD www.liquidmethod.com
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He Had It Coming to Him
oil
7.5” x 17”
Liquidmethod (a.k.a.) Doug Clarke,
is a commercial illustrator & artist living in Virginia Beach, Virginia. He has worked with small and high profile clients alike with his work being featured in various publications and sites worldwide. Working professionally since 1998, Doug’s work has appeared in National Geographic, LAWeekly, AltDaily, Link, Portfolio, American Way and The Source. Ever progressing as an artist, he has been profiled as one of the Seven Cities emerging underground artist. Recently, Doug was also a featured artist at the Scion Kalospectra gallery art exhibit. On the fine art side, Doug does commissioned portraits, including Pat DiNizio of the Smithereens and Alfredo Torres of MAX FM. Most recently, he was awarded the Summit Award for Norfolk’s Plein Air Exhibition. His art is collected afar and abroad internationally. poetsandartists.com
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“I have a deep affinity for cinema, film noir and movie posters from the mid 20th Century. My heroes range from Akira Kurosawa, Alfred Hitchcock to John Singer Sargent, and Edward Hopper. The list of artists that inspire me is long & lengthy, but from them I draw inspiration to try and paint cinematically. I want my paintings to be freeze frames of a film. There is something fascinating about a heroine who takes charge of her fate in the balance between danger and death. The fleeting seconds of an impacting car crash or a chance encounter with evil, all of that and more is what inspires me to paint my subjects in peril. I refer to my genre of painting, for the most part, as “graphic pulp fiction.” The implication of a plot within the scenery of my work is very gratifying. There is more to painting than just a genre although, that is why I feel that I must study the human figure, landscape and light to be DOUG CLARKE able to become a great painter.”
Q&A
Doug Clarke
Who is you favorite model for your work and do you work live or from photographs? My favorite model is my wife. I work from both live and from various photos and research. I truly believe that one has to learn to draw well from life and have a strong drawing foundation. I belong to the Norfolk Figure Drawing Group, which meets once a week for figure drawing. Moleskines are also something I think every artist should have, especially when sketching everyday life. Life drawing is like working out and keeping in shape. What do you hope art historians will say about your work 300 years from now? Honestly, I don’t care about 300 years from now. What matters to me is what people think about my work now. Who wants to be the famous after they died artist? I’d rather be the successful living artist. How has technology influenced your work?
End of the Day oil 5” x 8”
DOUG CLARKE
It too many ways to count. It has it’s place. But, traditional media is just as relevant as it ever was. Do you have a ritual you follow before each new work is started?
No, that would be predictable. Which would make me complacent. I try to learn something for each painting I do, even if it is something small to put me out of my comfort zone. Have any of your mistakes become a success? Every painting is a mistake or a collection of mistakes. That’s what makes painting so hard and yet so rewarding. It’s not easy as a beginner, and it remains tough as a skilled painter. I don’t want painting to be easy, it should be difficult, otherwise I’m not pushing myself as an artist. Growth without struggle is impossible. Do you find yourself visualizing everything as someday becoming a painting? No. I do find myself observing color and light more and more. When the light in the late afternoon hits the highway, or shadows or skies have a great spectrum of color, I ask myself, “What colors am I really looking at and how can I paint them?” How do you know when a work is done? I don’t most of the time. That’s why I like to let it sit with me awhile in the studio. To me, I
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Babae sa Kuwarto Número Tres feel that every painting I finish has room for improvement. Sometimes though, you have to cut your loses and move on. If you have the time, letting a painting sit around for a week or so can be good to really take in all of the composition. What has been your biggest challenge? My biggest challenge was a commissioned landscape that was huge and I put way too much pressure on myself to get it right, when I had no idea what right really was. But I learned a lot from it and began to learn how to appreciate landscape paintings more
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mixed media/digital
than I used to. What are you working on next? My goal for this coming year is to get enough work together to have a showing or event on the west coast. I love film noir and pulp fiction. It is my favorite subject to paint. Especially making a painting that looks like a cinematic screen shot. What is your hidden talent? I like to write and to my surprise, sometimes a story or two turns out half way decent. But I’m a long way from being a Jack Kerouac. Long ways away.
24” x 24”
Atractivo Y Violento! digital 19” x 13” DOUG CLARKE
Explain your process. I don’t really have a process for every painting, I vary from piece to piece. For this painting and a few other landscapes I’ve done recently, the main thing was to start straight into painting with just a few lines for guides. I’ve used pencil to draw straight on the canvas to work out composition on others, but for this painting, it
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was important to go straight into paint and build it out through blocking in areas and laying strokes for general placement of the street and buildings. This can be challenging and fun because there is leeway to move and adjust as needed. I started with a paynes gray wash because I felt the street really held together the base tone. There were several challenges with how dark to go in some areas and how light to
DOUG CLARKE
San Francisco Street Trolley go in others, but the one element that I had to try several times and wipe and repaint was the trolley cable lines above the street. Painting them in with detail really obliterated any sense to the depth of field. At the end there are always improvements to be had, but I felt it was a good try. I’ve learned it’s best to give your all, but stop when you’ve reached a point to where you can live with the good and the bad. What I try not to do is forget
DOUG CLARKE
oil
16” x 20”
the mistakes made so I won’t reproduce them on my next painting. Easier said than done, but then that’s why painting is a challenge. For me, I am learning to take it much more seriously, and approach each new painting with the attitude of a student, “What will this painting teach me? What can I learn next?” If there is one thing I’ve learned from this painting, it’s that not everything needs to be fully rendered.
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