The Art of TRAC 2019 by William Rolland Gallery of Fine Art

Although representational art inspires deep affection and enjoys broad democratic appeal, until The Representational Art Conference was created there was a thorough lack of academic attention to the work of traditionally trained artists in the 21st century. Michael Pearce and Michael Adams put together the first conference in 2012 to create a place for the discussion of the philosophy and practice of artists involved in the universities, colleges, ateliers, and private studios where the techniques of the old masters are still taught and used in the present day. The California Lutheran University administration led by President Chris Kimball enthusiastically endorsed the idea, providing underwriting for the conference. TRAC provides a platform for discussion. It does not aspire to establishing a single monolithic aesthetic for representational art, but to identify commonalities, to help to understand the unique possibilities of representational art, and perhaps provide some illumination about future directions. Lectures, panel discussions, visits to exhibition spaces, and studio art demonstrations will explore the direction of 21st-century representational art, through portrayal of recognizable people, places and objects. The Representational Art Conference 2019 is an international cultural event presented by the California Lutheran University Arts Initiative.

The Art of TRAC2019: Art exhibitions in association with The Representational Art Conference 2019

The Representational Art Conference 2019 (TRAC2019) is the premier international art conference focused on the philosophical underpinnings of representational art in the 21st Century.

The Art of 2019

The catalogue of art exhibitions in association with The Representational Art Conference 2019, presented by the California Lutheran University Arts Initiative

TRAC2019 Invitational William Rolland Gallery of Fine Art

CLU

Kwan Fong Gallery of Art and Culture Carnegie Art Museum Blackboard Gallery at Studio Channel Islands

The Art of

Catalogue of art exhibitions in partnership with The Representational Art Conference 2019, presented by the California Lutheran University Arts Initiative

TRAC2019 Invitational William Rolland Gallery of Fine Art Kwan Fong Gallery of Art and Culture Carnegie Art Museum Blackboard Gallery at Studio Channel Islands

Cover image: Regina Jacobson, Friend or Fowler, oil on canvas, 44 x 64 inches. Courtesy of the artist. Copyright ÂŠ 2019 California Lutheran University All art provided by the artist unless otherwise noted; copyright holders retain their individual copyrights All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, with out the prior written permission California Lutheran University. Edited by Max Eastman, Rachel Schmid, with help from Hallie Maxwell and Emma Herren Book design by Michael Lynn Adams

Contents 4 Acknowledgments 5 Introduction The Exhibitions

7 TRAC2019 Invitational The Crowne Plaza Ventura Beach

37 Pathos Along a Contemporary Frontier:

Border Paintings by Rigoberto Alonso Gonzalez

William Rolland Gallery of Fine Art California Lutheran University

51 Method and Process: Works by

Michael Obermeyer and Christopher Slatoff

Kwan Fong Gallery of Art and Culture California Lutheran University

65 The Imaginary: Art Commingling Realism and Imagination Carnegie Art Museum

93 The Illusionists Blackboard Gallery at Studio Channel Islands

149 List of Artists and Advertisers

Acknowledgments Thank you to the TRAC2019 Sponsors and Partners: Underwritten by California Lutheran University Sponsor RayMar Art Exhibitors Kline Academy Michael Harding Artist Oil Colors Rosemary & Co Art Consulting: Scandinavia Books on Art & Architecture Partners Art Renewal Center California Art Club California Lutheran University Art Dept. Carnegie Art Museum Kwan Fong Gallery of Art and Culture Project AWE

In a conference dedicated to the pleasure gained from visual experience, it is of course fitting that we include multiple opportunities for the indulgent act of looking at well-crafted art. We organized an exhibition within the conference hotel’s rooms and halls for this reason, then partnered with several other community-based art spaces. The Art of TRAC2019 is a way to make permanent in public memory the images that provided us with a shared experience over the course of several days in Ventura, California. As the movement for representational art grows, we hope this memento serves as a visual archive of a very small survey of the superlative work being created in our time. Creating this catalogue was an endeavor made possible only through the dedication and hard work of many individuals. Underwriting was provided for this and TRAC by California Lutheran University’s President Chris Kimball. Special thanks to Rachel Schmid for championing the book–she and Cindy Keitel invested much time in bridging important community relationships and their achievements paid off. Max Eastman devoted many hours in editing. Many curators worked tirelessly to assemble and produce material, including Michael Pearce and Rachel Schmid from Cal Lutheran University, Carnegie Art Museum Director Suzanne Bellah, Joseph Bravo for the William Rolland Gallery of Fine Art, and Public Art Service’s Gerald Zwers. Dozens of artists and a good many galleries and private collectors have contributed the highest quality photographs of their work and allowed for them to be reproduced here– we are deeply appreciative of this. We are also pleased to acknowledge our publication sponsors. Information about each is located at the conclusion of the catalogue entries. And lastly, we thank you, the reader of this catalogue, who supported us and encouraged us to continue to make TRAC the absolute best it could be. We never could have succeeded without you. –The Committee for The Representational Art Conference 2019 at California Lutheran University

The Art of TRAC2019

The Representational Art Conference The Representational Art Conference 2019 (TRAC2019) is the premier international art conference focused on the philosophical underpinnings of representational art in the 21st Century. Although representational art inspires deep affection and enjoys broad democratic appeal, until The Representational Art Conference was created there was a thorough lack of academic attention to the work of traditionally trained artists in the 21st century. Michael Pearce and Michael Adams put together the first conference in 2012 to create a place for the discussion of the philosophy and practice of artists involved in the universities, colleges, ateliers, and private studios where the techniques of the old masters are still taught and used in the present day. The California Lutheran University administration led by President Chris Kimball enthusiastically endorsed the idea, providing underwriting for the conference. TRAC provides a platform for discussion. It does not aspire to establishing a single monolithic aesthetic for representational art, but to identify commonalities, to help to understand the unique possibilities of representational art, and perhaps provide some illumination about future directions. Lectures, panel discussions, visits to exhibition spaces, and studio art demonstrations will explore the direction of 21st-century representational art, through portrayal of recognizable people, places and objects. The Representational Art Conference 2019 is an international cultural event presented by the California Lutheran University Arts Initiative.

The Art of TRAC2019

TRAC2019 Invitational Crowne Plaza Ventura Beach March 31 - April 4, 2019 When we presented TRAC2015 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, we offered a coinciding exhibit of work by conference presenters and award winning artists from our online competition. It was a really invigorating experience. The nature of the competition being virtual meant the TRAC committee and judges were introduced to artists the world over, with a variety of subject matters, working in various media. Over the years since, I have continued to draw from those contacts, and have included several artists in gallery exhibitions who didn’t take away a prize in their competition round, but who were very accomplished artists. We offered another competition for TRAC2019, inviting all artists who were awarded at the Cerulean, Alizarin, or Cadmium levels to participate in this exhibit. Each of the four rounds was judged by a distinguished panel of jurors, including artists, curators, and gallery directors. We are sincerely grateful for each who lent their voice as a judge. Congratulations to Carole Belliveau who won the Grand Prize of this year’s competition with her work, “The Beating Heart of a Dove.” In addition to artists from the competition, the exhibit features works from demo artists and others involved in the conference. A special thanks to Gerald Zwers for curating the exhibition further. ~RTS

Crowne Plaza Ventura Beach

450 East Harbor Blvd Ventura, CA 93001 800 842-0800

The Art of TRAC2019

Featuring the work of: Michael Lynn Adams Cici Artemisia Carole Belliveau Ray Harris Carol Heyer Regina Jacobson Scott Kiche Kathy Kleinsteiber David Molesky Michael Pearce Mica Pillemer Catherine Prescott Ana Schmidt Nancy Stainton Ricky Mujica Theresa Spehar-Fahey Oceana Rain Stuart Cynda Valle Veronica Winters Gerald Zwers Curated by Gerald Zwers, Rachel Schmid, and TRAC2019 online competition jurors

Ana Schmidt

Ofelia Acrylic 28” x 21”

The Art of TRAC2019

Catherine Prescott

Sam with Miraak Oil 38” x 31” 2018

The Art of TRAC2019

Cici Artemisia

Sycamore! Acrylic 40” x 30”

The Art of TRAC2019

Cynda Valle

Beware the Crone’s Embrace Oil on canvas 52” x 42”

The Art of TRAC2019

Kathy Kleinsteiber

The Great Escape I - Desert Bighorn Acrylic 20” x 16”

The Art of TRAC2019

Mica Pillemer

Renewal Oil 21” x 25”

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Michael Lynn Adams

The Artist as a Young Man Oil on panel 24” x 18”

The Art of TRAC2019

Michael Lynn Adams

Cousins Oil on panel 24” x 18”

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Michael Pearce

Double, Double, Toil and Trouble Oil on canvas 64” x 30”

The Art of TRAC2019

Oceana Rain Stuart

Eternal Bliss Bronze sculpture 27” x 15” x 9”

The Art of TRAC2019

Ray Harris

Le Toque Chef Oil 23” x 27”

The Art of TRAC2019

Ricky Mujica

Loss Oil 8” x 10”

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Regina Jacobson

Where Are You Going Oil on canvas (unframed) 54” x 48“ 2016

The Art of TRAC2019

Regina Jacobson

Just As I Am Oil on panel (framed) 46” x 40” 2018

The Art of TRAC2019

Theresa Spehar-Fahey

The Gifts Watercolor 42” x 32” 2012

The Art of TRAC2019

Veronica Winters

Sunshine Oil and aluminum foil on panel 16” x 20”

The Art of TRAC2019

David Molesky

Octopussian Waystation (Turbulent Mirror Series) Oil on linen 54” x 78” 2011 Courtesy of the Patrice Lu Collection

The Art of TRAC2019

Scott Kiche

El Lenjuaje del Tiempo Oil on canvas 24” x 36” 2012

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Scott Kiche

Citrus in Basket 24” x 48”

The Art of TRAC2019

Scott Kiche

Portrait of Lady in Fur Coat 14” x 17”

The Art of TRAC2019

Gerald Zwers

The First Inhabitants Glazed acrylic on panel 24” x 30” 2016

The Art of TRAC2019

Gerald Zwers

The Monument Builder Acrylic on panel 12” x 19”

The Art of TRAC2019

Xavier Montes

Going Home Acylic on canvas 26” x 24”

The Art of TRAC2019

Mary Gail King

Falling Into the Infinite Mixed media with metal leaf on panel 20” x 16”

The Art of TRAC2019

Carol Heyer

Language of Flower Acrylic on canvas 13” x 19” 2016

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Carol Heyer

Root Doctor - Levitation Acrylic on canvas 30” x 40” 2019

The Art of TRAC2019

Carol Heyer

Spell Caster Mixed media 13” x 19” 2016

The Art of TRAC2019

Carole Belliveau

The Beating Heart of a Dove Oil on silver leaf 24” x 30”

The Art of TRAC2019

Pathos Along a Contemporary Frontier: Border Paintings by Rigoberto Alonso Gonzalez William Rolland Gallery of Fine Art California Lutheran University February 28 - April 11, 2019 For many, life along the Rio Grande border is fraught with ubiquitous violence and trauma. Gonzalezâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s largescale, graphic images reflect this aspect of the region in monumental scenes of cartel bloodshed, unrelenting wilderness, femicide, and intimate familial portraits. The artist depicts both perpetrators and victims with a cold clarity and the compassionate sympathy of characters in a Biblical epic. In Gonzalezâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; paintings, victims may be innocent martyrs or culpable perpetrators fallen afoul of their cartel masters. He calls on the compositional devices of the European painting canon to present the complexities of this contemporary subject in a manner befitting the tradition of grand scale history painting as well as devotional narrative. Painted in a Neo-Baroque style, these images are provocative and disturbing. They encourage the viewer to reorient their sense of the cultural center and reimagine implications from the perspective of those living along the US/Mexico border. Rigoberto Alonso Gonzalez was born in 1973 in Tamaulipas, Mexico. He received his BFA from the University of Texas, Pan American, and his MFA from the New York Academy of Art. His artwork has been exhibited in Sweden, Norway, Mexico and throughout the Southwest United States. Please note: Images in this exhibition feature depictions of violence, and can be challenging to engage with. This exhibition was curated by Joseph Bravo. Works for this exhibition have been generously loaned from the Collection of Dr. Esteban Ortega Brown and Matt Gonzalez.

William Rolland Gallery of Fine Art California Lutheran University

60 West Olsen Road Thousand Oaks, CA 91360 CalLutheran.edu/rolland

The Art of TRAC2019

The artworks of Rigoberto Alonso Gonzalez are compelling for their technical virtuosity, their grandeur, their pathos but perhaps mostly for their dramatic narratives which depict the reality of narco-cartel violence along La Frontera. This is not conveyed with a journalistic optic but with a carefully composed Baroque sensibility that is reminiscent of a Neapolitan aesthetic and reflects the influence of the Caravaggisti. But it also recalls the gritty realism of Jusepe de Ribera and the restrained but present color of Nicolas Poussin. Rigoberto Gonzalez is not only cognizant of his art historical precedents he is overtly reverential of them in a way that is neither simply emulatory nor anachronistic. There is an authenticity in his application of the Baroque aesthetic and a fluency in its visual idiom that can only be attained through a cultural immersion. This sincerity distinguishes these paintings from mere historic appropriation. For the Mexican artist, the Baroque is an omnipresent feature of the environment and inextricably woven into the fabric of the cultural imagination. More than a way or seeing, it is a way of being.

Pathos Along a Contemporary Frontier: Border Paintings by Rigoberto Alonso Gonzalez By Joseph Bravo

The Art of TRAC2019

Born in 1973 in Reynosa Tamaulipas, Mexico, Rigoberto Gonzalez graduated from the University of Texas at Pan America in 1999 where he received a B.F. A. degree. He attended the New York Academy of art where he attained his M.F.A. in 2004. There he honed his technical skills and further acquainted himself with Social Realism. Like the Viceregal Baroque, Social Realism looms large in Mexican art history and itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s rich mural tradition features some of the most iconic examples ever created. Artists like Diego Rivera, JosĂŠ Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros informed a revolutionary sense of national identity that pervades the visual imagination of Mexican culture to this day. Their names are listed among the national heroes and their examples represent a patriotic call to arms for Mexican artists who by experience know the power such imagery has to inform the cultural conscience of a society. Since before the Spanish conquest, the region along the Rio Grande River has been a frontier demarcating empire. The interface of Spanish Viceregal and eventually Anglo-American hegemonies, this territory has been a region in which sovereignty has been less than self-determined. Historically, justice has been in short supply along La Frontera but tragedy has been ubiquitous. Wars of conquest, wars of revolution, civil wars, ranch wars, race wars, wars on terror, drug wars, cartel wars, trade wars and culture wars have all been fought in this territory. This is where the casualties are created and this where the consequences of catastrophic decisions made elsewhere are most keenly felt.

So perhaps it is not surprising that a young artist from Reynosa, Mexico currently living in Harlingen, Texas might feel compelled to address this contiguous tragedy with a heartfelt sensitivity that acknowledges the humanity of its victims. Gonzalez records a contemporary history of conflict between the narco-cartels as they vie for territorial control in house to house fighting which has left entire towns depopulated, tens of thousands of people dead and countless thousands more disappeared. His paintings are the visual corollaries to the Corrido ballades which have for generations been sung by Mexican itinerate musicians chronicling the exploits of revolutionary fighters and bandidos in an officially neglected history that, if not for these troubadours, would go largely unrecorded. Like all histories, these Corrido narratives can be partisan and, in a region of perpetually shifting alliances, this can place their singers at mortal peril. Neutrality is not an option afforded by the combatants in a society where conscription, extortion, kidnapping and murder are commonplace. Nobody is immune from cartel violence which has touched every family along La Frontera. Hence, distinctions between perpetrators and victims are blurred. The cartel member’s loyalty is forever in question and anyone might arbitrarily become suspect of having a rival affiliation. The law enforcement officer conducting an official raid on a criminal compound might also be affiliated with a rival cartel. The murderer of a woman’s son might be her son as well. Nothing can be taken for granted and nothing may be what it seems. The only thing of which one can be certain is the reality of the human suffering. In his mural sized painting entitled “Balacera en Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico (Shootout in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico)” the artist depicts the aftermath of a violent encounter. Beside the deceased lays his assault rifle and his mother kneels over him in a mournful Pieta as she is consoled by other family members who share her grief. The victim’s equation with a Christ figure is not precluded by his status as perpetrator. The artist does not proffer judgment for the death is no less tragic for the culpability of its victim because this is mitigated by untenable circumstance. Loitering at left are the law enforcement officers whose identities, and perhaps affiliations, are as much concealed as revealed by their paramilitary uniforms. At right are the musicians commemorating the event so its significance will not be forgotten. In this tour de force of composition and drama, Gonzalez combines the folk optic of the Corrido with the tradition of the European history painting to create an image of grandiosity befitting the scale of its tragedy. At once theatrical in its compositional

The Art of TRAC2019

contrivance yet appallingly real in the events it depicts, this commanding painting ennobles its subjects by placing them in a quasi-Biblical context that recalls the most ambitious narratives of Baroque tradition. At once contiguous with historic precedents yet unmistakably contemporary in its optic, the painting draws on tradition without slavishly repeating it to create a temporally syncretic aesthetic that is both vital and pertinent in the current era. In paintings like “Por andar con la gente equivocada. (Because he belonged for the wrong group)” and “Levanton” (The Kidnapping) the artist shows the reality of kidnapping and torture in the manner an artist of the Baroque era would depict the martyrdom of saints. Likewise, his paintings depicting decapitated heads recall the martyrdom of John the Baptist and Carravagio’s portrayals of the consequences of Salome’s treachery and Herod’s venality. Decapitation has a long history within the Mexican indigenous context as well and is a prominent image within the religious and art historical canons of the Mayans and the Aztecs. But the paintings also recall more contemporary images of Wahhabist beheadings in the Middle East and how these have been used as a propaganda tactic to instill terror in regional populations. The appearance of these gruesome dismemberments in a contemporary Mexican context is not a coincidence as these tactics have been emulated by the Mexican cartels and prosecuted with equivalent malice and frequency much closer to home. With titles like “Para que Aprendan a respetar” the paintings convey the alleged motive for such atrocities through which cartels inspire terror if not respect. While aestheticized, the violence is not sanitized for its beauty and its horror is displayed with an elegance that is lyrical in composition yet graphic in detail. These paintings are undeniably visceral and overtly sentimental yet the artist displays a clear-eyed objectivity that is neither maudlin nor exploitive. They do not glamorize violence nor do they valorize its perpetrators. Like the religious paintings on which they are modeled, the artist presents them as devotionals for moral and spiritual contemplation. They are an incitement to virtue through horror of vice intended to at once convict the viewers’ conscience and invoke an ethical imperative. In his paintings entitled “La Ribera del Diablo (The Devils Riverside)” and “Crotalus,” Rigoberto Gonzalez points to the hazards of immigration and the awesome hostility of the landscape. Along that part of the river, on the Mexican side, it is called the “Devil’s riverside” because of all the deaths that occur there. There heaven and hell are said to be very close together. While not entirely impenetrable,

the Sonoran desert extracts a heavy price from any who would attempt to traverse it and rattlesnakes are not the most hazardous of its dangers. Merciless heat, treacherous terrain, the scarcity of water and human predators more fierce than any canine coyotes all threaten the lives of those who are motivated by desperation to venture through this inhospitable land. Here, hunted by Border Patrol and human traffickers alike, the immigrant is prey that is as likely to provide a feast for vultures as they are to reach a promised land whose security and opportunity seems to forever lay over a distant horizon. The infant depicted in “Anchor” is an Christic icon of that hope for a better life for the next generation if not the present. Yet its future too is uncertain as it lays abandoned in perilous surroundings. The title of the work implies the stigma the child will endure should it be fortunate enough to survive its current peril. Rigoberto Alonso Gonzalez is an emerging contemporary master of the conflation of the Mexican Baroque and Social Realism whose conscience and talent provides a patriotic example like those great Mexican artists who preceded him. His artwork is undeniably culturally pertinent, socially relevant and charged with political implications, yet it avoids the pitfalls of pedanticism or mere partisanship. While unmistakably Mexican, Gonzalez’ narratives invoke a universal humanity that transcends nationalism or cultural specificity. His paintings provide a benchmark for the ambition skilled figurative representationalism can achieve when an artist knows why to paint as well as they know how to paint. –JB

The Art of TRAC2019

Rigoberto Alonso Gonzalez

Para que Aprendan a respetar (so that they learn to be respectful) Oil on wood 20â&#x20AC;? diameter tondo 2015

The Art of TRAC2019

Rigoberto Alonso Gonzalez

Para que Aprendan a respetar (so that they learn to be respectful) Oil on linen 20” x 18” 2007

The Art of TRAC2019

Rigoberto Alonso Gonzalez

Balacera en Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico (Shootout in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico) Oil on linen 10’ x 20’ 2010

The Art of TRAC2019

Rigoberto Alonso Gonzalez

Levanton (Kidnapping) Oil on linen 8â&#x20AC;&#x2122; x 6â&#x20AC;&#x2122; 2009

The Art of TRAC2019

Rigoberto Alonso Gonzalez

La Ribera del Diablo (The Devil’s Riverside) Oil on linen 60” x 48” 2018

The Art of TRAC2019

Rigoberto Alonso Gonzalez

Ancla (Anchor) Oil on linen 36” x 24” 2009

The Art of TRAC2019

Rigoberto Alonso Gonzalez

Por andar con la gente equivocada (Because he belonged to the wrong group) Oil on linen 72â&#x20AC;? x 60â&#x20AC;? 2008

The Art of TRAC2019

Rigoberto Alonso Gonzalez

El Recuerdo Transfigurado (Transfigured Memory) Oil on linen 60” x 48” 2004

The Art of TRAC2019

Rigoberto Alonso Gonzalez

Crotalus Oil on linen 36” x 30” 2017

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Method and Process Works by Michael Obermeyer & Christopher Slatoff Kwan Fong Gallery of Art and Culture at California Lutheran University March 20 - April 11, 2019 Inspiration can be an elusive muse for an artist, and is often seen as pitted against hard work. When both are combined we are witness to the stunning results of human output. This exhibition presents the skill and gift behind two artists’ work in two separate genres: sculpture and painting. In Michael Obermeyer’s work we see captured landscapes. A plein air artist (painting outdoors), Michael travels to locations and searches for the perfect composition, lighting, and feel. Because he paints outside, it is a fight against time as the light can quickly change and the scene will be different. He describes it as, “paint like your hair’s on fire.” He often presents framed views in his work; the perfect angle to view a scene through tree leaves, branches, buildings, or a coastline. Christopher Slatoff is a sculpture artist who creates monumental works. On display you can see original small clay figures he used to begin his works, and how they evolved into larger bronze and plaster pieces, sometimes years later. Subtle things have changed, but all with significance. His piece “The Illustrated Man,” developed through a long and close friendship with the author Ray Bradbury, and their conversations inspired the creation and design of the work. Other pieces to see include a series of steps in the process that led to the famed “Hecuba” sculpture on USC’s campus. This exhibition was created to coincide with The Representational Art Conference (TRAC2019), a California Lutheran University Arts Initiative.

Kwan Fong Gallery of Art and Culture California Lutheran University 60 West Olsen Road Thousand Oaks, CA 91360

CalLutheran.edu/kwanfong

The Art of TRAC2019

Michael Obermeyer

Hazy Morning Oil on canvas 9” x 12”

The Art of TRAC2019

Michael Obermeyer

Cove Moonrise Oil on canvas 20” x 24”

The Art of TRAC2019

Michael Obermeyer

Laguna Dusk Oil on canvas 20” x 24”

The Art of TRAC2019

Michael Obermeyer

Timeless Vista Oil on canvas 12” x 16”

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Michael Obermeyer

The West End, Anguilla Oil on canvas 11” x 14”

The Art of TRAC2019

Christopher Slatoff

The Illustrated Man Bronze 36â&#x20AC;? tall

The Art of TRAC2019

Christopher Slatoff

Pieta

Bronze 9” x 12” x 5”

The Art of TRAC2019

Christopher Slatoff

Judge Robert Maclay Widney Bronze

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Christopher Slatoff

Faces of the Moon Bronze Center: 73” x 18” x 16”

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Christopher Slatoff

Column (from Faces of the Moon) Bronze 73” x 18” x 16”

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Christopher Slatoff

Martin Luther Bronze 18” x 8” x 9”

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Christopher Slatoff

Enduring Heroes Bust Cast resin 32” x 26” x 12”

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Christopher Slatoff

Enduring Heroes Clay model

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The Imaginary Image: Art Commingling Realism & Imagination Carnegie Art Museum March 10 - May 19, 2019

This exhibit was directly inspired by the 2019 The Representational Art Conference’s thematic exploration of the relationship between imagination and 21st-century representational art. As the Carnegie Art Museum’s collection began with acquisitions by Oxnard citizens of art by artists such as Paul Lauritz and Kathryn Leighton in the 1920s, the late heyday of popularity in the sunshine state for Impressionism, Regionalism and variants of realism, the Museum has always kept a part of its collecting and exhibiting focus on the broad scope of representational art created by California artists. The exhibit’s theme of realism with imaginary undercurrents originally posed by Professor Michael Pearce of California Lutheran University’s Art Department, would seem to be a snap for an institution with such grounding. However, a rather intensive search ensued for works combining the high technical level inherently needed to be visually convincing with threads of the imaginary that do not lean heavily towards anime. The Imaginary consequently attempts to give substance to the mental investigation of imagination’s role in representational art by sharing current samples of work by remarkable Southern California artists who have been enfolding an imaginary approach into their art. These artists have injected inventive, imaginary aspects through meaningful color usage, subtle historic/literary references or mythical and environmental allusions into the traditional genres of representational art such as portraiture, landscapes and still lifes. In the process, they have intertwined into their subject matter a relevance to contemporary topics such as global warming, economic concern, gender equality and mindfulness. The result is a fresh visual imagery of currency for our times. Art provided courtesy of artists, with special thanks for artworks lent courtesy of American Legacy Fine Arts, Pasadena. Exhibited in partnership with TRAC2019, a California Lutheran University Arts Initiative Event. Curated by Carnegie Art Museum Director, Suzanne Bellah

Carnegie Art Museum 424 South C Street Oxnard, CA 93030

www.carnegieam.org

The Art of TRAC2019

Adonna Khare

Chimps with Skulls (Triptych) Graphite on paper 78” x 36” (panels 1 & 3) & 68” x 36” (panel 2)

The Art of TRAC2019

Adrienne Stein

Bacchante II Oil on linen 19” x 18” 2018 Courtesy of American Legacy Fine Arts, Pasadena

The Art of TRAC2019

Alexandra Manukyan

Gaea’s First Movement Oil on Belgian Linen 50” x 30” 2018

The Art of TRAC2019

Alexandra Manukyan

To Live a Life Beneath Oil on Belgian linen 48” x 36” 2018

The Art of TRAC2019

Andrea Mosley

Brevity Oil and gold leaf on canvas 8” x 10”

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Andrea Mosley

Crimson Tide Oil on canvas 33” x 44”

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Alexey Steele

Mrs. O’Neal (Love My Neighbor Series) Sepia on paper 29” x 22”

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Benjamin Anderson

Waterbeetle 2 Oil on linen 48” x 48” 2017

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Elizabeth McGhee

Hebe Oil on panel 24” x 12” 2018

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Elizabeth McGhee

Like Oil and Vinegar Oil on panel 16” x 20” 2018

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Christopher Slatoff

Canto XXX (Dante and Virgil) Cold cast bronze 15â&#x20AC;? height 2018

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Gail Faulkner

Blue Dragon Watercolor on paper 21” x 28” 2016

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Jeff Mann

Aquarium of Marvels Graphite on Arches watercolor paper 26” x 42” 2017

The Art of TRAC2019

Jeff Mann

Devils Mantis Graphite on Arches watercolor paper 26” x 41” 2018

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Jennifer Moses

Fire and Ice Oil and canvas 18” x 18” 2014 Courtesy of American Legacy Fine Arts, Pasadena

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Lani Emanuel

Imaginary Friend Oil on canvas 60” x 30” 2017

The Art of TRAC2019

Nikita Budkov

Eclipse Oil on panel 16” x 12” 2017

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Sherry Loehr

Pomegranate Study

Oil and silkscreen on board 20” x 24” 2017

The Art of TRAC2019

Paul Pitsker

Change Watercolor on paper 25” x 18.5” 2018

The Art of TRAC2019

Paul Pitsker

Signals Watercolor on paper 20.5” x 16” 2019

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Peter Adams

Philosopher’s Wall; Shasta Caves Oil on panel 20” x 16” 2006 Courtesy of American Legacy Fine Arts, Pasadena

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Peter Adams

Brunhilde and Siegried Oil on panel 20” x 24” 2010 Courtesy of American Legacy Fine Arts, Pasadena

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Stephanie Elise

Silver Rain Oil and silver leaf on canvas 30” x 40”

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Stephanie Elise

Thai Dancer in Metamorphosis Oil on canvas 24” x 26”

The Art of TRAC2019

William Stout

The Flame Bird Ink and watercolor 24.5” x 19.5” 2001 Courtesy of American Legacy Fine Arts, Pasadena

The Art of TRAC2019

William Stout

The Faun Ink and watercolor 22.5” x 18.5” 2001 Courtesy of American Legacy Fine Arts, Pasadena

The Art of TRAC2019

Vanessa Lemen

The Mage of Candor Oil on panel 9” x 12”

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The Illusionists Blackboard Galllery Studio Channel Islands March 30-Macy 18, 2019 Featuring works by: Julie Bell Roger Dean Kathiucia Diaz Mark Gleason F. Scott Hess Kenna Houtz Regina Jacobson Guy Kinnear Brad Kunkle Bryan Larsen Richard MacDonald Cyn McCurry Vince Natale Mark Poole Boris Vallejo Conor Walton Pamela Wilson Sandra Yagi Curated by Michael Pearce

Studio Channel Islands 2222 E. Ventura Blvd. Camarillo, CA 93010 studiochannelislands.org 93

The Art of TRAC2019

Imaginative realism in the 21st Century. Imaginative Realist painters and sculptors use traditional realist techniques to create pictures of things that are not real. Their work is founded on practices that have been in use since humans first painted animals on cave walls. It is deeply rooted in imagination. The works are romantic, and alluring, and fascinating because although they are painted using methodologies that are typically used to create traditional landscapes and figurative imagery, the scenes they describe are unfamiliar, unreal and other-worldly. A continuing preference for mythical imagery pervades American culture, with a seemingly never-ending flow of Marvel Comics superhero movies, the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings movies, and HBO’s wildly popular Game of Thrones small screen franchise maintaining a dominant position in the filmed narratives that characterize the arts of our time. At first glance, Imaginative Realist paintings fit comfortably within the public’s obsession with movie themes like these, and the world of these paintings could be viewed as a sideshow to the far greater financial impact of Hollywood productions. They, too, have a sense of being set within an imagined but orderly other-universe. They, too, follow an internal, speculative logic. But there is an additional depth to the paintings that provides them with a gravity that is missing in motion pictures. This is the depth that time offers us. Paintings are slow. They allow an almost meditative process of enjoyment, in which viewers get to know single images, which can tell surprisingly detailed stories. This slowness is in direct contrast to the rapid cutting and tumultuous cascade of imagery that characterizes superhero films. In addition, the solid reality of a painting or sculpture offers an experience quite different from the transience of film or video imagery, which flits before us, untouchable and immaterial. When we look at a painting we are keenly aware that it is made of colored pigments, and aware of the skilled hand of the artist that made it — but when we step beyond the truth that the painting is goo, cleverly moved around with a stick, we enjoy the wonderful moment when we accept the image as a moment of reality. Paintings and sculptures are a deception, but they tell a beautiful lie, and we love to be seduced into the other world of their creator’s invention.

The Illusionists

By Michael J. Pearce, Ph.D.

The Art of TRAC2019

Although Imaginative Realism was treated harshly by 20th Century critics with a deeply ingrained hatred for popular painting and sculpture, it has a long historical pedigree bound together by two particularly important strands. First, its technical excellence comes from studio practices that

have been used for centuries to produce the masterpieces of art history we admire as our cultural heritage. Second, its subject matter is sourced in imagery and literature dating from prehistory, to Greek antiquity, to the present, using motifs that appear throughout the canon of art. The cultural impact of imaginative realism in the 20th Century was already immense before the horror of 9–11 turned the millennium upon its awful axis, but its products were treated with contempt by the avant-gardist academy and by Yankee art critics who were supposed to comment upon culture with insight, but instead served the interests of American propagandists at the expense of the art of the people. The avant-gardist theorists of the 20th Century condemned sentiment as the antithesis of the un-ornamented abstraction that they believed symbolized a new, enlighted post-war world. In large part, their iconoclastic condemnation of sentiment resulted from an awareness of its use as a manipulative tool of the propagandists employed by Stalin and Hitler. But rather obviously, not all imagery that appeals to us at an emotional level is crafted as propaganda for tyrannical dictatorships. Clearly, imagery that has a sentimental element is not always politically motivated. Experiencing sentiment is an inherent part of human life. Without it and without our emotional responses to the incidents of daily life, we would be machines. Even the most severe avantgardist’s home had pictures of the kids in it somewhere. The avant-gardists’ snobbish disdain for figurative painting was guided by elitism, and their hatred of art which had any scent of sentiment was impressively vitriolic. They were wrong to poison the continuing tradition of thousands of years of image-making. Thankfully the avant-garde century is over, and fully-formed postmodernism has released imaginative realism. Sentiment is only one of its ingredients. Richard MacDonald’s sculptures evoke a deeply sensual response. His work is tremendously well-crafted, and he has a remarkable eye for the physical form of human anatomy at peak performance. His Blind Faith is a good example of how his imagination takes his work a step beyond reality, into the unlimited world of potential. His models are acrobats from Cirque du Soleil, the famous spectacular performance troupe that revolutionized circus and turned their shows into themed experiences of staged wonderlands populated by extraordinary people and phenomena. And MacDonald’s sculptures occupy the same psychic space as Cirque entertainments — his figures are dream-like, captured in moments of perfect balance, poised at the point of floating. They are theatrical, frozen moments of rich narratives. These strange people in

The Art of TRAC2019

fine, unearthly costumes are caught in a strange story that begs for completion in the viewer’s inquisitive mind. They live in another world and another time, where gravity no longer pulls their perfect bodies to the earth. The characteristics of Imaginative Realism are not limited to sentiment and excellent technique. Powerful respect for ancient mythology provides rich source material. Julie Bell’s painting If Wishes Were Horses reimagines Pegasus, the flying horse of Greek myth. Pegasus was born from the blood flowing from Medusa’s neck when Perseus struck the gorgon’s snake-haired head from her shoulders while she slept. An abbreviated version of the story is in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and other classical texts, but Pegasus has had a life in the visual arts far greater than the fragments about him that are to be found in the literature — artists have loved painting images of the fantastic winged horse for more than two millennia. Bell places her Pegasus pony in an arcadian Autumnal woodland, where a beautiful woman, a priestess dressed in white, wearing gold jewelry, stands beside him. Bell told me that the priestess’ eyes are closed and she is imagining the flying horse that we see before her — begging the question of whether Pegasus will remain there or not after the priestess opens her eyes. If he does, will he mature into the full-blooded stallion of the myth, and fly to Mount Olympus? The painting captures a deep desire for an imagined world to be made manifest before us, a wish for a different world, where the power of myth is real.

John William Waterhouse — The Lady of Shalott

Bell clearly admires the paintings of J. W. Waterhouse — If Wishes Were Horses is a direct homage to his magnificent Lady of Shalott, which hangs in the Tate Britain. When we compare the two paintings the similarities are selfevident — the loose brushwork of the pastoral landscape, the lovingly rendered white dress and gold jewelry, the careful detail of the central figure, the color palette. Bell has clearly been careful to look closely at Waterhouse’s technique as she produced her painting. This delight in the Pre-Raphaelite’s work is consistent with the conservative care and attention to the foundations of Western painting found in much Imaginative Realism, both in the sources of the imagery and in the techniques used to paint them. This is a manifestation of a desire to reaffirm the foundations of Western culture. That Bell’s earlier work was profoundly influenced by Boris Vallejo should not be surprising, for the two painters are a married couple. Vallejo is famous for his sword and sorcery images of muscular heroes and heroines battling against awesome beasts. He too has begun crafting pictures that re-imagine classical mythology. Here is his Amaryllis Embrace, a painting of Lamia as a fairy-like winged being, clinging to the stem of a beautiful flower.

of an imaginary artifact memorializing the archaeology of horror; the skeletal remains of a weird little monster, collected and venerated by some insane antiquarian with a love for the sublime, shadowy objects from the places in our minds where we enjoy fear. This heterogeneous painting of an imaginary beast may inspire thoughts of horror movies, but actually, the sources for such imagery are very old. They are part of the great lineage of Imaginary Realism, with roots found in Christian mythological art in graphic apocalyptic murals, or in the work of Hieronymous Bosch or Pieter Brueghel the Elder. Brueghel’s Fall of the Rebel Angels and his other painted depictions of extraordinary spectacles were produced in the 16th Century, as European culture experienced the crisis of the Protestant Reformation, against a background of the new humanist thought that began to undermine the Catholic church’s religious authority. His remarkable imagination produced strange creatures, weird costumes and demonic figures in a crowded landscape almost completely concealed by the mass of bizarre characters. What Natale has done is to imagine the skeleton of a beast like one of Brueghel’s in an occult ossuary, and painted its impossible skull like a still-life.

Lamia was a beautiful woman beloved by Zeus. Zeus’ jealous wife Hera took revenge on her by killing all her children, causing her such anguish that she was transformed into half-woman, half-snake. Tortured by her loss, Lamia hunts down children to devour them so that others might suffer as she did. The painting is unexpectedly sensitive to the classical story. Lamia has a severity of expression that belies the triviality of her faux faerie rainbow wings. Despite the iridescent eye-candy of the wings, this is not a picture for children, but an interpretation of a character from the canon of classical mythology — an imaginative Freudian expansion upon the ancient character. Like Bell’s Pegasus, Vallejo’s muscular painting of Lamia has deep roots in his appreciation of Western Art History, but he has reimagined the classical character within a new context. An erotic painter, perhaps he too was inspired by Waterhouse, who painted two sensual 19th Century images of Lamia. Sometimes imaginative realists produce strange hybrids of things that dwell outside of the realm of classical mythology, raising them from dark recesses of the mind. Vince Natale’s exquisite Falco Luciferus II resembles a classical atelier painting of the skull of a bird of prey, laid in a bed of red rose petals, but more careful examination reveals that this is no natural creature — it is a painting

The Art of TRAC2019

Pieter Brueghel the Elder, The Fall of the Rebel Angels

Imaginative Realist Sandra Yagi paints wonderful pictures of diminutive skeletons that belong in a 21st Century cabinet of curiosities. Her paintings present hybrid creatures that are based on real things, but she places them in wonderful combinations that inspire careful examination. Her little skeletons fly, play music and perform, in a celebration of impossible life. The bones

of her hybrid twins dance together as part of the mad merrymaking of the dead. Such objects would be very comfortable in the “Cabinets of Curiosity” that preceded our present-day museums. These were collections made by antiquarians who were fascinated both by history, which was being rediscovered during the Renaissance and also by the practices of early science, known as alchemy, which was beginning to reveal the secrets of nature, cracked open by the invention of distillation. The scent of miraculous divine intercession hung about these collections, which owed much to the reliquaries of the Medieval churches, and the antiquarians emphasized the Platonic principle “as above, so below” — the idea that earthly things mirrored heavenly things. Athanasius Kircher, the father of Egyptology, decorated the ceiling of his spectacular cabinet of curiosities with the inscription: “Whosoever perceives the chain that binds the world below to the world above will know the mysteries of nature and achieve miracles.”

book of nature, the woman communes with the crows, the birds of Odin, but introduces a red robin to their dark haunts. It’s a pretty, but ominous scene, which reminds us that the forces of nature can be dark and potent and that sometimes, delicate, carefully bred things that produce beauty may be safer in the gilded cage. In other paintings, she suspends women within a magic circle, confining them in the protective ritual space where they can examine themselves in their nakedness before the mirror that reveals the artifice of costume and make-up. These rites of sacred space and traditional story-telling are sourced from deep cultural wells.

This is an allegorical way of thinking. Unusual objects that challenged expectations were particularly desirable to antiquarians and were thought of as revelations that might lead to a more enlightened understanding of the working of the creation. Consequently, in these early days of collecting for the sake of public edification, we find a special focus upon freaks, hybrids and weird things as centers of interest. Kircher’s cabinet collection included a mermaid’s tail, a giant’s bones, and optical illusions that amazed his visitors. Cabinets of Curiosity were intended to increase our sense of wonder, to open the possibilities of imagination. Allegorical imagery is among the oldest historical sources of 21st Century imaginative realism. A deeply allegorical painter, whose paintings are carefully loaded with multiple layers of interpretive symbolism, Regina Jacobson offers a psychological approach to her imaginative subject matter, concealing allegorical meanings within an approach to stories that is the visual equivalent to Anne Sexton’s Transformations, a collection of poems based on the Grimm brothers’ macabre tales, or Angela Carter’s rich and unearthly narrative writing in her Bloody Chamber, pulling its darkly erotic stories from Grimm’s and reimagining them from a woman’s point of view. In her Friend or Fowler Jacobson sends her modern character into the ancient nemetons deep in the woods, where the druids’ clearings are the traditional place of sacrificial bloodshed. Like the druids who prognosticated from the flights of birds, reading their murmurations as the

The Art of TRAC2019

Gentile da Fabriano (Italian, about 1370–1427) Coronation of the Virgin, about 1420, Tempera and gold leaf on panel 93 × 64.1 cm (36 5/8 × 25 1/4 in.), 77.PB.92 The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

What is tradition? It is not only with the rarified atmosphere of the Apollonian heights that the past feeds the present — for tradition includes the ancient rituals practiced by the ancestors who worked the land, fought for it, traded

and made their people prosperous. As Roger Scruton has said, the people of the present have a contract with the people of the past and the people of the future, an agreement to maintain the traditions that have brought culture this far. Without the decisions and practices of our ancestors, our culture would not exist. But this honoring of the atavistic contract does not mean that culture should stagnate in a sort of endless reproduction, or that we should attempt to duplicate the circumstances of the past, instead, it is an agreement that we should emulate our ancestors’ work. Emulation is not imitation, but a building upon the work of past masters, a surpassing of the work already done. F. Scott Hess’ extraordinary painting The Dream of Art History describes the tragic break in the lineage of tradition beautifully. A spiral of imagery swirls into a diminutive toilet in the house top left, a whirling cascade of famous images ranging from an Elizabethan portrait to Millet’s Gleaners in the first two arcs, then, with more detail starting at the bottom left with Matisse’s Dance, a Mondrian Composition, Malevich’s Black Square — then shockingly, the front grill of a pickup smashes the spiral just above Magritte’s famous painting of the man in a bowler hat with his face covered by an apple, The Son of Man, and Salvador Dali’s melting clock in The Persistence of Memory.

it as a sign of his patron’s devotion to his God, for the materials and the amount of time dedicated to the piece are extravagant symbols of wealth. This craftsmanship was emulated by Gustav Klimt in his Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, which built upon the tradition to create a new kind of icon, dedicated to the bourgeoisie instead of the church. The painting has the same degree of painstaking detail, and is made from the same rich materials, but the patterns refer to a fluid symbolic design of rectangles, spirals and circles similar to the Neolithic solar designs found at Newgrange, dating to five thousand years before Christ’s birth. It acknowledges our very ancient obligation to our ancestors, and brings the emulative contract into the present, while also referencing our debt to the church. The same kind of craftsmanship is important to Imaginative Realists, who are thoroughly immersed in the long history of traditional studio technique. These are craftsmen and craftswomen — technicians of the imagination.

The three graces swoop in ahead of the truck to warn Hess of the catastrophe, alarmed by the skeletal form of death, which is poised to leap upon the artist. The spiral narrative of the paintings continues above the pickup’s interruption of the flow of representational pictures, with Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup, a Lichtenstein, Chuck Close’s self-portrait and a Fischl cake. Then, in the final curve of the stream, a flow of images by living painters including an Adam Miller, an Aleah Chapin, and surprisingly, a Loony Tunes Bugs Bunny. Then the pictures become a blur as the spiral runs into the future, which no-one knows. It’s a brilliant allegorical painting about the 20th Century disruption of tradition, but it is also an optimistic painting because the living painters have continued with the inheritance despite the terrible damage to their rich lineage. Christian icon paintings can be spectacular revelations of the value Medieval Christians placed in their faith. Gentile da Fabriano’s Coronation of the Virgin is an exemplar of the ultimate in iconic panel making — it is richly decorated in embossed gold leaf and exceptionally detailed decorative pattern painting. The craftsman who made it fashioned

The Art of TRAC2019

Gustav Klimt — Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I

Brad Kunkle refers to icons, Klimt, and optical illusions in his paintings. He is delighted by nature and renders homage to it by using precious metals in a painterly way, in much the same way that the icon painters placed the Virgin in an eternal, golden, celestial sky. The foliage in the foreground is painted by using brown paint over silver leaf, lifting the pigment to reveal the shining metal beneath. He

plays with the two-dimensional nature of the picture plane panel by painting shadows of the flitting swallows as if they are inches away from the surface of the panel, creating that cognitive dissonance we enjoy when witnessing an optical illusion. One moment the silver background is the sky above the landscape, the next it suddenly becomes a wall behind the birds. His interest in the flattened patterns of icons and Klimt’s work is evident in his use of the striped shirt and the peacock-like fan of gold and silver spread about the waist of the model. Imaginative Realism is not a superficial style lacking cultural relevance or depth, but a vibrant, long-lived form that has developed over the span of millennia. And the debt imaginative realists owe to the past is not limited to the history of European painting. Roger Dean’s landscapes are clearly inspired by Chinese landscape paintings made during and after the Song Dynasty, which isolated dramatic features from each other, suspending amazing rock formations in clouds, and elongating and exaggerating the proportions of the landscape to emphasize a dreamy other-worldly quality.

Dean is in the habit of carrying a sketchbook with him when he travels, allowing him to capture dramatic scenes that may be useful to him in his studio. His famous arches of stone in Elbow Rock are based on scenes he sketched in the Utah desert. Dragon’s Garden, and The Watchtower — both iconic paintings of trees clinging to floating islands — are based on weather-shaped Monterey cypresses he drew while visiting the Californian peninsula. A tree uprooted by a storm near his home became the basis for the twisted branches in his Arches Mist. He is a landscape painter who takes his observations of reality and transforms them by asking “What if…?” Dean hates the words “fantasy art.” He’s right to resent them. “Fantasy art” evokes thoughts of fey children’s stories, fairy tales, and conjures images of whimsical elegies, and immediately positions paintings and drawings in the forbidden world of sentiment. “Fantasy art” is a pejorative term used by art elitists to belittle people who love imaginative realism.

Sandro Botticelli — The Birth of Venus

Ma Yuan — Dancing and Singing (Peasants Returning from Work)

The Art of TRAC2019

After the ancient Classical and Christian sources, precedents for imaginative realism may be found in Renaissance paintings like those of Sandro Botticelli, in Victorian illustrations of gothic horror and early science fiction; in the Pre-Raphaelite paintings of Burne-Jones and Waterhouse; in the delightful paintings and posters of Art Nouveau and the Vienna Secession; and later in popular 20th Century posters and album covers. Often stories led the way to the imagery. The successful literature of 19th Century writers like Edgar Allen Poe and Baudelaire laid the foundations for 20th Century authors like H. P. Lovecraft and H.G. Wells to imagine fabulous worlds, and artists responded by producing illustrative imagery to accompany

the texts. The history of imaginative realism has largely been neglected by art historians, who have been slow to respond to its immense popularity, but sometimes cultural changes are recognized well after their ascent — the Renaissance was one of the most significant periods of art history, but it wasn’t given its name until a century and a half after it had begun. By the 21st Century, Imaginative Realist painting, sculpture, film, and literature had become extraordinarily pervasive, yet it was overlooked as a tremendously significant cultural movement. Mark Gleason channels Poe, with his dark but mischievous paintings of theatrical moments played out at dusk and into the night. His characters are busy with strange acts that might turn nasty — a woman clutches a sledgehammer behind her back. A foolish man wearing a paper crown beholds a giant cockroach in the palm of his outstretched, open hand. These are strange visions, with the threat of violence lurking within them, but here too we find the ancient roots of the Judeo-Christian myth, in a fabulous painting of a fearsome man wielding the jawbone of an ass. Here is Samson of biblical fame in Gleason’s painting Arguing Still, capturing a moment from Judges 15.14. “…the Spirit of the LORD came mightily upon him, and the cords that were upon his arms became as flax that was burnt with fire, and his bands loosed from off his hands. And he found a new jawbone of an ass, and put forth his hand, and took it, and slew a thousand men therewith.” That Gleason’s shrieking Samson swings the jawbone among a field of poppies is surely not an accident — poppies are an ancient symbol of sleep and forgetfulness because of the opium they produce. And the painting also recalls memories of Kubrick’s magnificent 2001, A Space Odyssey, when the ape crushes the skull of his enemy and hurls the bone into the sky, where it transforms into a spinning space station. Using a biblical source is unusual in Gleason’s body of work, and he prefers to paint dramatic, dark images of frightening scenes, in which knives, snakes and black horses stand in as figures of fear, symbols cut from the same species of melancholy as the poetry in Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil. Mark Poole deliberately mines the iconography of science fiction to imagine a world after the fall of an imaginary civilization, creating images of a distant future legend. His paintings invent a story of human life set after the end of a strangely alien mechanical age. The giant, rusted cogs he paints are set within beautiful untouched landscapes — they are archaic, steampunk artifacts,

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alluding to the failure of a mechanical society which nature has overtaken. We are strangers in a strange land in Poole’s world, which imagines a far future. In Bryan Larsen’s work, we are much closer to home, even though he sets his work in outer space. From the lineage of science fiction imagery, blended with 19th Century studio technique, Larsen imagines scenes from a utopian technological future, placing spacecraft into traditionally painted landscapes. His figurative painting A Guest in the Garden resembles some of Bouguereau’s delightful images of children, but stretches far beyond the French master’s sometimes predictable subject matter, for Larsen chooses to place the people in his paintings in space stations or preparing to go outside to play in an alien landscape. Sentiment draws us into A Guest in the Garden as we recognize the wonder and curiosity of the children as they gaze, fascinated, at a butterfly that lives within the fragile ecosystem of a starship that will one day deliver them to some far-off planet. These children are the future of humankind. Sentiment and hope are tied together here with a vision of our destiny in the stars. This is a vision of possibility. Larsen’s paintings are also reminiscent of the lofty work of Laurence Alma-Tadema, whose elegies to classical antiquity share the same sense of wonder at the scale of human achievement that Larsen puts into his work. Both artists are fascinated by height, placing figures in languid poses high up on architectural outcrops overlooking big landscapes, creating a powerful sense of the sublime as it is made accessible to people. Caspar Friedrich’s Wanderer above the Sea of Fog offered a sense of man’s intellectual superiority over nature as its Kantian protagonist surveys the mountaintop view, but Larsen and Alma-Tadema show us how humans participate within the sublime landscape and become equal to it, or even transcend it through our collective scientific and cultural achievements. There is a subtle sense of danger in their work, a lurking caution against hubris — reminding us of the biblical warning against building great unifying towers of Babel for fear of provoking the anger of God. Nor has the Baroque has been neglected as a source for Imaginative Realism. Here is Guy Kinnear’s Assumption of Maggie, which resembles ecstatic works like Giovanni Lanfranco’s Magdaline Raised by Angels painted in the Neopolitan Counter-Reformation. Kinnear is not mocking or trivializing Christian art in his work, although he uses the visual language of transcendence. He has a deep interest in exploring ideas

about form in the natural world. The paper and cloth dolls in his paintings allude to the mannequins of Pietro Annigolini, and occupy the same pictorial spaces as still life and 19th Century landscape paintings. They are made by his family and placed outside in the landscape around his home, where he lives off-the-grid. Kinnear is interested in the relationship between these dolls and academic plaster casts, which were used to train salon artists — while the casts are several steps removed from the human form, and deeply artificial, his little mannequins are sincere symbols of Kinnear’s detachment from technology. Placed in the natural world, their home-made quality is completely unpretentious. His low point of view makes his still-life dolls appear portentous and significant, the bringers of messages, and they are lit by natural, divine light like the golden sun that illuminates the sublime landscapes of the Hudson River School. By these clever devices, they are transformed into giant golems, whose huge alien forms stagger across the landscape like imaginary creatures from Dr. Frankenstein’s dreams. His paintings are reminiscent of surrealist works, but he is not making any attempt to unlock his own subconscious, preferring to work at understanding the world around him. While surrealists looked inward at the subconscious to attempt to understand themselves, Kinnear looks at juxtapositions of strange, but prosaic objects and natural landscapes, creating dream-like imagery from the reality he sees. Something fresh is brewing in Western painting and sculpture. A large community of exceptional craftsmen and craftswomen is producing beautiful Imaginative Realist imagery that is firmly grounded in excellent traditional studio technique and has solid foundations in art history, yet clearly belongs to our time. They are the Illusionists. –MP

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Boris Vallejo

Amaryllis Embrace Oil on Canvas

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Brad Kunkle

The History Of Nature Oil on Canvas

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F. Scott Hess

The Dream of Art History Oil on Canvas 54” x 96”

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Guy Kinnear

Paper Archer at Dawn Oil on Panel 21” x 11¾”

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Guy Kinnear

Assumption of Maggie Oil on Panel 25½” x 48”

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Guy Kinnear

Paper Colossus at Dawn Oil on Panel 21” x 11¾”

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Guy Kinnear

The Second Chapter of Eden Oil on Panel 72” x 45”

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Guy Kinnear

Hanging Paper Man Oil on Panel 21” x 11¾”

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Guy Kinnear

Paper Leap at Daybreak Oil on Panel 11¾” x 21”

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Guy Kinnear

Mary Faith Oil on Panel 48” x 24”

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Guy Kinnear

Putto With Paper Wings Oil on Panel 48” x 24”

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Guy Kinnear

Paper Torch and Blood Moon Oil on Panel 21 1/3” X 12”

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Julie Bell

If Wishes Were Horses Oil on Canvas 25” x 30”

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Mark Gleason

Arguing Still Oil on Panel 35” x 35”

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Mark Gleason

Border Oil on Panel 30” x 30”

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Mark Gleason

Certitude Oil on Panel 30” x 30”

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Mark Gleason

Kingdom of What Oil on Panel 34” x 34”

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Mark Gleason

Luna Oil on Panel 32” x 32”

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Mark Gleason

Absurde Oil on Panel 30” x 30”

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Mark Gleason

Unbalanced Oil on Panel 34” x 34”

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Mark Gleason

Guy

Oil on panel 30” x 30”

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Mark Poole

Remnant

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Mark Poole

Reckonings

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Regina Jacobson

Adoration of Saint Valentino Mixed media 61” x 47”

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Regina Jacobson

The Queen’s Dominion Diptych Left:

Garden of Eden Oil on Canvas 70” x 40” Right:

Tower of Babel Oil on Canvas 70” x 40”

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Regina Jacobson

McQueen of Hearts Mixed media 76” x 53½”

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Regina Jacobson

Friend or Fowler Oil on canvas 44” x 64”

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Regina Jacobson

Measured Reflections Oil on canvas 58” x 46” 2013

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Regina Jacobson

Cult of Beauty Altar Piece triptych Oil on canvas 84” x 129” 2013

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Richard MacDonald

Aurora Bronze

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Richard MacDonald

Blind Faith Bronze

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Richard MacDonald

Nightfall Bronze

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Roger Dean

Ash & Waterfall Acrylic on canvas

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Roger Dean

Birdsongs of the Mesozoic Acrylic on canvas 48” x 72”

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Roger Dean

Blind Owl

Acrylic on canvas

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Roger Dean

Green Parrot Island S Acrylic on canvas

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Sandra Yagi

Skull with Hamster Wheel Oil on panel 24” x 24” 2016

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Sandra Yagi

The Last Rhinoceros Oil on panel 20” x 24” 2014

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Sandra Yagi

Metamorphosis Oil on panel 20” x 24”

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Sandra Yagi

Hatching Death Oil on panel 12” x 16” 2018

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Sandra Yagi

The Release Oil on panel 24” x 18” 2014

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Sandra Yagi

The Last Harvest Oil on panel 20” x 24” 2016

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Sandra Yagi

Dancing with the Stars #8 Oil on panel 12” x 9” 2019

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Sandra Yagi

Dancing with the Stars #7 Oil on panel 12” x 12” 2019

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Sandra Yagi

Skull with Boxing Twins Oil on panel 20” x 20” 2016

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Vince Natale

Dreameater Oil on Canvas 10” x 8”

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Vince Natale

Falco Luciferus II Oil on Panel 15” x 15”

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Artist List Peter Adams Michael Lynn Adams Benjamin Anderson Cici Artemisia Julie Bell Carole Belliveau Nikita Budkov Roger Dean Stephanie Elise Lani Emanuel Gail Faulkner Mark Gleason Rigoberto Alonso Gonzalez Ray Harris F. Scott Hess Carol Heyer Regina Jacobson Adonna Khare Guy Kinnear Kathy Kleinsteiber Brad Kunkle Vanessa Lemen Sherry Loehr Richard MacDonald Jeff Mann Alexandra Manukyan Elizabeth McGhee Jennifer Moses David Molesky Andrea Mosley Ricky Mujica

Vince Natale Michael Obermeyer Michael Pearce Mica Pillemer Paul Pitsker Mark Poole Catherine Prescott Ana Schmidt Christopher Slatoff Theresa Spehar-Fahey Alexey Steele Adrienne Stein William Stout Oceana Rain Stuart Cynda Valle Boris Vallejo Veronica Winters Sandra Yagi Gerald Zwers

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City of Ventura Proudly supports the arts in Ventura County, and congratulates

California Lutheran University Thank you very much for your support of

Visit our Municipal Gallery located in the historic City Hall 501 Poli Street, in downtown Ventura

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The Representational Art Conference and all of our students in the arts at CLU

Terry Spehar-Fahey

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omePaint in C armel

2019 Workshops Brian Booth Craig (Figure–Sculpture) March

David Lobenberg (Portrait–Watercolor) July

Ray Roberts (Seascape) April

Peter Adams (Plein Air–Pastel/Oil) July

Albert Handell (Studio & Plein Air) April

Jim McVicker (Plein Air) Aug

Patti Mollica (Still-life–Acrylic) April

Aaron Schuerr (Plein Air–Pastel) Aug

Michael Reardon (Watercolor) May

Steven Assael (Figurative) Sept

Marc Dalessio (Plein Air) May

Paul Kratter (Plein Air) Sept

Huihan Liu (Figurative) May

Kim Lordier (Plein Air–Pastel) Oct

Mike Hernandez (Plein Air–Gouache) June

Dan Graziano (Studio/Plein Air) Oct

Robert Lemler (Figurative) June

Randall Sexton (Plein Air/Figure) Oct

Carmel Visual Arts, Carmel, CA

http://carmelvisualarts.com

Rich Brimer, Director 831.620.2955

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The Art of TRAC2019: Art exhibitions in association with The Representational Art Conference 2019

The Representational Art Conference 2019 (TRAC2019) is the premier international art conference focused on the philosophical underpinnings of representational art in the 21st Century.

The Art of 2019

The catalogue of art exhibitions in association with The Representational Art Conference 2019, presented by the California Lutheran University Arts Initiative

TRAC2019 Invitational William Rolland Gallery of Fine Art

CLU

Kwan Fong Gallery of Art and Culture Carnegie Art Museum Blackboard Gallery at Studio Channel Islands