John Seed, Art Writer

At the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, painter Israel Hershberg is currently showing four landscape paintings: two Umbrian landscapes, a view of Tel Kakun in Israel's Hefer Valley, and a small preparatory work done in the Roman Campagna this past summer. The result of painstaking study and observation, Hershberg's landscapes are scrupulous and refined. One of Hershberg's artistic aims is to remove "himself" from his work, an approach that mirrors the thinking of Italian Renaissance masters of the 15th century. "He is watching and looking hard," comments his friend and fellow artist Kyle Staver. "I feel his tenacity and resolution in every move. The work is present and uncompromising: it is absolutely convincing."

DETAIL: Aria Umbra I, 2003 - 2004, oil on linen, 119 x 250.5 cm. Collection: Israel MuseumImage courtesy of Marlborough Gallery, New York Hershberg was educated in the United States: at the Brooklyn Museum School, The Pratt Institute and the State University of New York at Albany. Between 1973 and 1984 he taught painting and drawing at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and also briefly taught at the New York Academy of Art before moving to Israel in 1984.

In 1998 he founded the Jerusalem Studio School, the first school in Israel to focus on figurative painting. The school's core program is a four year Master Class comprised of 40 students and focuses on the primacy of painting and drawing from observation, the human figure and in depth study and research after old and modern masters. Its stress on classical as well as modernist values distinguishes it from the neo-classical realist ateliers more common today.

I recently interviewed Israel Hershberg and asked him about his approach to painting, his show in Jerusalem, and about the Jerusalem Studio School.

John Seed Interviews Israel Hershberg

Israel Hershberg JS: Israel, is it fair to say that your paintings are grounded in your experience of the real world?

IH: There is a quality, an essential concrete experience that I wish very much to transmit, but in its various formational stages I take whatever liberties are necessary for the painting. My finished pictures are not a document of the thing observed. I'd like them to be a new nature, a registration, if you will, of experience as opposed to record. They must be first and foremost, paintings. When I am painting a landscape it's not the nature which captivates me. When looking at a landscape I consider it just as I would any other motif; it's seen through an imposed particularized lens, an accumulated corpus of painterly pictorial desires I have amassed, like the amassing of barnacles on an old ship's hull, it becomes an archetype and one with its own eco-system. One of the reasons I am seduced by the Italian landscape is that it's impossible for me to consider it outside that historical lens of painting, whether imagined or empiric. Seeing the concrete as such becomes canonical, and painting, fertile, pregnant and full of potential.

Aria Umbra I, 2003 - 2004, oil on linen, 119 x 250.5 cm. Collection: Israel MuseumImage courtesy of Marlborough Gallery, New York JS: So, the paintings you have on display at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem should not be seen as plein air paintings, right?

IH: I don't see myself as a plein air painter. Actually, I'm appalled by what is called plein air painting today. It's been hijacked by an ever expanding group of hobbyists who have turned it into something between a fundamentalist religion and an outdoor sport. Their mantra: A painting is to be done en plein air from start to finish and not one stroke away from the nature! That approach was never the practice or intent of the great landscape painters, not Corot's, not anybody's. All landscape painting, all painting, is studio painting if pondered, whether done on site or in inside a sensory deprivation tank for that matter - painting is the expression of the experience of painting. That said, I am very concerned with maintaining what I think of as the plein air impulse: the stuff I try to nail down in the smaller preparatory works I start on site before embarking on the large pieces and precisely because I do covet the incidental, empiric, the random as important values.

Tel Kakun, 2005 - 2007 oil on linen, 68.6 x 250.5 cm. Private Collection. Image courtesy of Marlborough Gallery, New York JS: You are showing two paintings of Italy alongside a painting of a landscape in Israel. How do the landscapes work together?

IH: There is a lot of overlap. People here, at first glance, have thought that the Italy paintings were done here in the north. Israel is after all in the Mediterranean basin: there are a lot of cypress trees, olive, date, and figs trees. There are pockets here, without manmade structures to give it away, nestled into the hills surrounding Jerusalem that could make you think you are in Italy. Also, I have always been fascinated by the historical connections, relationships and exchanges between ancient Rome and Jerusalem.

Aria Umbra II, 2007 - 09, oil on linen, 93 x 250.5 cm. Collection: National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada Jerusalem, Israel Image courtesy of Marlborough Gallery, New York JS: It must be very exciting to be the founder of the Jerusalem Studio School, and to feel that you are taking part in the creation of a new set of artistic traditions in what is still a relatively young country.

IH: It is pretty amazing. Amazing that the consensus here, and elsewhere, is that the school has changed the face of Israeli art. When the state of Israel was born there was this kind of muddled connection to modernism with no real or complex conversation, no memory of anything earlier. That one can't really start there even un-muddled, was and still is in some sectors, anathema. Even those unhappy with such a school in their midst acknowledge that the Jerusalem Studio School has changed the face of Israeli art, as was recently stated in the Israel Museum's latest quarterly. We are putting out some remarkable young artists, ambitious and with a serious hunger for visual culture, and significant notice is being taken both abroad and in Israel.

From Soratte - Study, 2012, oil on linen mounted on wood, 15.5 x 60 cm, Private CollectionImage courtesy of Marlborough Gallery, New York JS: I understand that you spend part of the each summer in Italy with students from the JSS. Can you tell me more about the program you run there?

IH: The school, in general, and its Italy summer program, more specifically, were established to address a troubling paucity of necessary artistic archetypes I observed in both young and mature artists in Israel when first coming here. With the dearth in Israel of significant collections, I mean the direct unmediated experience of live pivotal and transformative masterworks one needs to acquire such artistic archetypes, an Italy summer program seemed the perfect way of both surmounting and illuminating what I saw as the dark zones. Frankly, I believe that such a program is an artistic imperative even where such a dearth is not so much in evidence!

Out of the school's alternative and immersive pedagogical approach the JSS in Civita Italy summer program evolved and is now attracting serious artists from around the world.

The program is located in Civita Castellana, less than an hour's ride north from Rome in the Lazio region of Italy. The area, town and the imposing presence of the legendary Monte Soratte were the epicenter of open air landscape painting for artists sojourning through the Roman Campagna. So many eminences have worked here: Corot, Ingres, Turner, a list too long to get into here... This summer we have added a whole new dimension to our program: the Terrano Studio Center is just a spectacular studio, classroom, lecture hall and gallery facility in a former WWI-era factory building with gorgeous north windows. In addition we are accepting application for Residencies anywhere from two to ten weeks between June 24th and September 2nd. It all makes for the best community of artists I've seen anywhere in Italy.

Exhibition View: Fields of Vision -- Photo by Elie Posner, The Israel Museum JS: When someone visits your Jerusalem show, what kind of experience do you hope that they will have?

IH: It is a show of only four works: not a lot of paintings but certainly a lot of painting. I would hope people would stop and embark on a journey of another kind, one that allows for exploration and discovery via a hungry eye. I would hope my paintings slow things down a bit, slow looking. In a very fast everything world, I want the paintings to seduce. I was a little pessimistic about whether my paintings could do this to someone, but I have watched from the museum café which is separated by a large cathedral-like space across from the nave-like space my work now occupies, and watched visitors to the museum just sit for long periods to ponder the paintings. Not all of course, but far more than I'd ever thought. It moved me.

Fields of Vision - Landscapes by Israel Hershberg
The Israel Museum, Jerusalem
Through Feb 9, 2013

The Weinstein Gallery in San Francisco is currently exhibiting some 45 paintings and works on paper by Hassel Smith (1915-2007), an artist whose mercurial six decade long career has been described by his stepson Mark Harrington as "a sustained high-wire endeavor." The exhibition -- the first major Bay Area show of the artist's work in over 30 years -- is timed to compliment the recent publication of the first comprehensive monograph on the artist: Hassel Smith: Paintings 1937-1997.

Hassel Smith: Paintings (1937-1997), Edited by Petra Giloy-Hirtz, Prestel, 2012, 212 pages Featuring major contributions by Paul J. Karlstrom and Susan Landauer, along with essays by Peter Selz, Robert C. Morgan, Petra Giloy-Hirtz and the late critic Allan Temko, the monograph makes a compelling argument that Smith's oeuvre deserves re-assessment. Smith would have appreciated the very talented group of writers who have come together to tell his story so completely.

Because Smith's work changed quite dramatically over time, evolving through roughly six distinctive styles, looking though the newly published text is a stimulating and revelatory experience. "I believe that people will be surprised at the breadth of Hassel's work," reports his wife Donna. "I think that those who can look at it with curiosity will appreciate what he did. In the book, as in the exhibition, there is much wonderful work that even people who knew Hassel well had little or no awareness of."

Hassel Smith, circa 1941-41, photo: The Estate of Hassel Smith Smith first gained notice as a representational painter in the 1940s: his works from that period have an energy and graphic insistence that predicts some of the qualities of the Bay Area Figurative style that his friend David Park would pioneer a few years later. In the 50's Smith -- who was very close to Clyfford Still -- developed the feisty calligraphic abstract paintings that earned him his reputation as an "underground legend." He reached the apex of his career in the late 50s and early 60s when his work was shown in Los Angeles at the Ferus and David Stuart galleries, and when he also briefly taught at UCLA.

Then, the cultural tsunami of the Pop Art movement changed the landscape of the art world, and Smith's career lost some of its momentum. Interestingly, several of Smith's superb abstractions from 1960 and 1961 are still in the collection of Irving Blum, the Los Angeles dealer who famously showed Andy Warhol's soup cans in 1962.

The peripatetic life that followed after Smith left Los Angeles -- he was back and forth between California and England for many years -- combined with his constant stylistic tinkering, meant that the art world never quite managed to get a read on Smith during his lifetime. Dr. David Anfam, a British curator and scholar feels that Smith's mutability was actually part of artistic and personal strength: "There is something wonderful about Hassel Smith's refusal to stay put in an Abstract Expressionist hold. Like Clyfford Still -- but in a completely different way -- he always seems to have been his own man."

During his first year in England Smith painted narrative paintings that Paul Karlstrom describes as "playful, filled with humor, jokes and sometimes sarcasm." More representational paintings, especially of women, appeared in the late 60s, but Karlstrom says that for Smith "it was not a question of a 'representational' or 'abstract' worldview." Smith did what he wanted, the way he wanted, when he felt like it.

The fact that Smith had harsh opinions about many artists, dealers and critics -- and that he didn't keep them to himself -- has been cited as a reason that his reputation stalled in the 60s and 70s. "He did turn his back to some extent, on the art world," says Donna Smith "and to some extent, it turned its back on him. But he was a painter's painter, and did not easily play the game with critics or art functions, etc. I think the cantankerous side of him has been over-played."

As the new monograph makes clear, Smith had some very faithful friends and supporters. Allan Temko, the Pulitzer prize winning art critic of the San Francisco Chronicle, was a true believer. In 1975 he opened his essay for Smith's 1975 SFMOMA retrospective, which is included in the book, with these words:

"In an age which exalts not only mediocrity, but outright mindlessness, Hassel Smith's paintings are extraordinary acts of intelligence."

Hassel Smith, "Self Portrait," 1995 Acrylic on board 19 ¾ x 16 inches
Although Smith mainly painted abstractions in his final decades, one of the highlights of the show at Weinstein is an acrylic self portrait from 1995. In it's congested, sweeping brushwork there is a ferocity and vitality that shows just what Smith had retained after more than 50 years of painting: his conviction. As Donna Smith explains, it was painted just two years before he was forced to put down his brushes:

"Hassel had a long and debilitating illness and it caused his death. More than that, he couldn't draw or paint after the end of 1997. He was in that condition for nine years. Sometimes I would see him draw in the air, but he could not control a pencil. I think it is a testament to his big spirit that he could live for so many years without practicing his art."

HASSEL SMITH RETROSPECTIVE
Weinstein Gallery
291 Geary Street, 2nd Floor
San Francisco, 94704
Through February 7, 2013

For many years painter Kyle Staver has crafted warm-hearted paintings that gracefully recall private moments tinged with joie de vivre. Domesticated couples appear as broadly brushed nudes in connubial situations. Other figures, often modeled on friends and family, are rendered with affection. Intimacy and nostalgia pervade Staver's settings: they are the bedrooms, gardens and seashores of her memory. Her friend and fellow artist Thomas Wharton has this to say about Staver's paintings: "They contain the joy of being alive."

Feeding the Cockatoo, 2009 oil on linen 48 x 56 inches
In a small exhibition of recent paintings and reliefs at the John Davis Gallery in New York striking new developments are apparent. The joy in Staver's work is still there, but it has been overshadowed by fresh ingredients: mythological storylines and tragic overtones. To put it another way, her work has broadened tremendously and taken on universal themes. "I want to talk about everything now," Staver told me during a recent phone interview, "absolutely everything."

Kyle Staver: photo by Janice Nowinski
The darkening of Staver's tone has come gradually. Grief appeared as a key ingredient in the 2007 triptych Staver dedicated to her late biker brother, and the young hunters of her 2009 "Christmas Lake Turtle Hunt" have an unmistakable masculine menace about them. As Staver acknowledges, maturity and experience have challenged her. "As a child I thought nothing bad could ever happen," Staver comments. "Over time we get disavowed of that."

Along with permissioning herself to take on darker material, Staver also decided to begin with much broader, more durable subject matter: mythology. "When I started painting," Staver explains, "I would try and take something unique and personal and turn it into myth. I would go from the specific to the universal. Now I am starting directly with myth: I have flipped it."

The centerpiece of the Davis Gallery exhibition is "Diana and Actaeon," a triptych based on a Greek myth from Ovid's "Metamorphoses." In a sequence of three canvasses - meant to be read from left to right - the triptych narrates the harrowing tale of a young hunter who accidentally comes across the goddess of the hunt as she bathes in the forest. What happens next is both grim and inevitable.

Diane & Actaeon, 2012, oil on linen, 68 x 154 inches (detail) In the left panel of the triptych Actaeon appears on horseback, an intent figure who has the blonde hair and ruffled shirtsleeves of a Disney prince. "I'm a grown up girl," Staver explains, "and creating fairy tales give us the ability to fulfill our fantasies. As I painted Actaeon I asked myself: who would he be?" Mounted on a dark stallion and surrounded by his loyal dogs, Actaeon just has been stopped in his tracks by the accidental revelation of Diana's beauty. He is part hero, part tragic figure, part cliché.

Diane & Actaeon, 2012, oil on linen, 68 x 154 inches (detail)
In the central panel Diana, a cubist bombshell with a well-lit and prominent ass, perches on a leopard skin as a frightened nymph cowers beneath her. She isn't pleased about having her nudity revealed to a stranger, but it is still apparent that she is in control of the situation. Female subjects like Diana are rich material for Staver, as they allow her to re-investigate myths from a woman's point of view. Diana activates this painting: a job she shares with the woman who painted her.

Diane & Actaeon, 2012, oil on linen, 68 x 154 inches (detail) In the third and final image, Actaeon -- now transformed into a stag with one splash of Diana's bathwater -- is torn to shreds by his own dogs. It is the most abstract and ambiguous of the three scenes. Since Staver feels that humor is a necessary element that can be mixed with tragedy, the image is also just a bit funny. The dogs, who have morphed from loyal hounds in the first panel to snarling assassins in the third are intentionally cartoony, even absurd. "For me," Staver notes, "there are even elements of humor in Picasso's Guernica."

As she worked on the triptych Staver was certainly aware that she was dealing with a subject that the Venetian master Titian once painted, but her painting handling is distinctly contemporary. In a 2010 review, Roberta Smith commented that there is "more than a hint of Wallace and Gromit in her (Staver's) slightly rubbery figures." In fact, it is exactly that idiosyncratic and humorous sense of stylization that adds oxygen to Staver's art.

Diane & Actaeon 1, 2012, ceramic 14 x 10 inches Since Roberta Smith has compared Staver's figures to claymation characters it is interesting to find that Staver actually does build ceramic maquettes for her paintings: they help her work out compositional problems and plan lighting. The models for "Diana and Actaeon" are on display at the Davis Gallery, and they are very revealing and charming on their own terms.

By making the decision to flip into the mythological zone, Staver has joined a long list of artists -- Rembrandt and Titian for example -- whose mid-career work took on the universal and attempted to personalize and particularize. By taking on tragic themes -- as in her triptychs -- Staver says she is attempting to "up the ante" for herself as an artist. "Every once in a awhile I get in that trouble," she explains. If anything, the "trouble" seems to be that the joie de vivre in her work has been kicked up a notch, and her fantasy id has been unleashed.

In other recent canvasses there are other mesmerizing, powerful nude women along the lines of Diana: Lady Godiva on her horse, and Europa on her bull for example. Actaeon isn't the only man in harm's way: Staver's 2012 canvas "Prometheus" shows the Greek Titan splayed over a rock as Zeus -- in the form of an eagle -- swoops in to peck at his liver. Staver's mythological actors are completely outside the domestic zone of safety that characterized her earlier paintings. Removed from the womb-like protection of their homes, Staver's women use their allure to control, and her men literally get chewed to pieces. The mythological zone is a very tough place, a very bad neighborhood.

When I asked Staver if her recent paintings were in any way commentaries on the times we live in, she had this to say: "Everybody -- every culture -- has some story about where we come from. These are lessons. I want to reflect more and more of these lessons in my paintings as a form of exploration. I think I use the triptych format to get myself into trouble: to bite off more than I can chew. We live in dangerous times and I want my work to reflect that anxiety."

Kyle Staver, Paintings, Prints, Reliefs
Jan 31 - Feb 24, 2013
John Davis Gallery 362 1/2 Warren Street
Hudson, New York 12534

At Lora Schlesinger Gallery in Santa Monica painter/teacher/critic Lawrence Gipe is currently exhibiting thirty small paintings that simultaneously reflect both his interest in history and his ability to evoke emotion. Working from archival images that channel 20th century themes -- progress, industry, and ideology -- Gipe's subtle and somewhat abstract handling of paint adds the gleam and gloss of Romanticism. Paradoxically old and new, Lawrence Gipe's paintings have an alchemical ability to make what might be considered mundane or outdated subject matter come alive and raise new questions. I recently interviewed Gipe and asked him about his background, his work, and his future plans.

John Seed Interviews Lawrence Gipe:

Lawrence Gipe JS: Lawrence, can you tell me about your background, and about how you evolved into a representational artist?

LG: I went to undergraduate school in Richmond, VA at Virginia Commonwealth University (1980-84). My instructors -- many of who had been educated by Hans Hofmann in Provincetown -- taught me how to paint through abstraction. I was pushing and pulling with the best of them. The idea that color -- and juxtapositions of color alone -- could create depth, was essential to this education. It was only in my last year of graduate school at Otis (1984-6) that I decided to "convert" to imagery. Today, the lessons of Hofmann's retinal process are still behind each painting. I'm always working warm-cold, Phthalo Blue vs. Van Dyke Brown, layering transparent glazes against each other.

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Lawrence Gipe, Panel No. 22 from Salon (Korea, 1950), 2012, oil on panel, 9" x 12" My MFA studies at Otis Art Institute had a much less rigor than VCU -- there was Mike Kelley hanging around, Scott Grieger -- they were imagists as well as conceptual artists. I went to critiques at CalARTS, and, Michael Asher notwithstanding, there was a hunger for images (or at least an obsession with them), from Baldessari to Kruger. LA was an "image" city to me and I never turned back to abstraction once I hit the West Coast. A few of the instructors at Otis were swept up by the Derrida-Foucaultian revolution that was being used as critical cannon fodder at the time. I didn't see the use in much of it outside of Foucault - who I regarded highly. His identification of authoritarian structures took on a narrative power in my mind and informed my early work.

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Lawrence Gipe, Panel No. 20 from Salon (Leica-Amateurs, 1937), 2012, oil on panel, 24" x 36" JS: Nostalgia is a recurring theme in your work: how did that come about?

LG: I arrived in LA originally because my father was writing movies; he wrote a few films with Steve Martin including "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid" -- a parody of film noir that spliced the comedian into old classics like "Double Indemnity" to make a new comedic narrative. I think a lot of my ideas surrounding the notion of "nostalgia" started to get formed then. My father -- who died at age 52 in 1986 -- lived in the past - and my primary intimacy with him was watching late-night 1930's Warner Bros. movies - which became my nostalgia as well. The highlights of his childhood became my childhood: that compression, that transparency of time and visual culture, became my own generative fiction. I'm interested in how other artists have dealt with the notion of nostalgia and have a small blog dedicated to it.

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Lawrence Gipe, Panel No. 11 from Salon (New York, 1929), 2012, oil on panel, 18" x 24" JS: Tell me about the themes of progress and industry that have been appearing in your paintings.

LG: I think my obsession with industrial images and what I call the "Cult of Progress" was inspired by my early surroundings (Baltimore) and contact with an older generation that regarded the United States as an unflawed land of opportunity. I was in a "cusp" generation: still proud of the past but anxious about the present. By the time I was growing up in the late-70's the optimism bubble had burst: gas lines, the end of the Vietnam War - it wasn't pretty! The same factories portrayed in the WPA-era, for instance, looked much less attractive in the 70's. To me, a line of towering smokestacks belching into the clouds was a very ambivalent image; it meant people were working, but it also illustrated how the filthy end of the industrial revolution was coming to roost for my generation to clean up. Industry is glorious - and horrible. I'm always attracted to themes like that.

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Lawrence Gipe, Panel No. 23 from Salon (Sicily, 1944), 2012, oil on panel, 11" x 44" JS: Although you have a strong intellectual bent -- and also an interest in history -- your work also has an overlay of emotion and romanticism, right?

LG: A typical painting that straddles emotions, and a favorite image of mine from the current show, is "Sicily, 1944". Through my research, I found a book called "Flight to Everywhere", published in 1944 by Life magazine in cooperation with the War Office. Essentially, it documented a propaganda stunt: to show the public that, despite the war, the US still had dominion over the entire world. In it, a plane circumnavigated the globe, stopping in Allied air bases all along the way. Near the end of the journey, they made a stop in Sicily, which had just been secured by the US Army. That evening, the Nazis returned at night for a retaliatory raid, bombing the harbor of Palermo.

In the morning, when the photographer went out to look, he saw a golden dawn and an ominous cloud of ash hovering over the harbor. It was beautiful and tragic all at once -- so, for me, perfect. And, I think painting is the best medium to capture that couplet, as the layer of romance a painter can add complicates matters more than a photograph. It's really OK to have two different feelings about an image simultaneously. I always say, if you don't risk being misunderstood, it's not worth doing.

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Lawrence Gipe, Panel No. 4 from Salon (London, 1940), 2012, oil on panel, 12" x 16" JS: The exhibition at Schlesinger is titled "Salon," and it includes a selection works by your students. How did the show develop that way?

LG: I kind of meant for this current "Salon" exhibition to be like a "greatest hits" record - I didn't want to tuck all the work under a specific theme, like I usually do. Most of the pieces took less than a week to make, so I was able to say to myself: "paint whatever pleases you today". I was on a sabbatical from the University of Arizona and I had the time to fail and discard, without getting nervous. The two drawings in the show of the riot police were executed last summer - they took as long as ten paintings. After the buoyant, color world presented by the paintings, I wanted the viewer to be grounded back in reality by the starkness of the drawings.

In regards to the student exhibition, that was in response to an offer by my dealer, Lora Schlesinger, for me to curate the back gallery. I thought showing my current students and recent alumni would be fun. In terms of my teaching style, I don't create "acolytes" -- only one of the artists in the show deals with issues that are related to mine. I encourage abstraction in my classes, in fact, but my only interest is to find out what interests them and help them manifest that in art.

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Lawrence Gipe, Panel No. 15 from Salon (Divers, 1936), 2012, oil on panel, 12" x 16" JS: In addition to painting and teaching, you are active as a critic. Do you find that writing informs your painting, or do you try to keep criticism and studio practice separate?

LG: I love writing about art -- in the short form. I write reviews -- 250-400 words -- that's how I'm most efficient. As far as writing informing my painting, I feel like own practice is a truculent beast that isn't much affected by my journalistic ventures, especially since I tend to choose sculpture or installations to write about. More than anything, I like research. A musty stack of post- war Soviet magazines gets me really excited! I'm always attracted to what a recent lecture at the Wende Museum called "The Politics of Happiness". I'm fascinated by how artists have collaborated with and visualized totalitarianism: the perfect, monolithic worlds they portray. I think a clandestine poster collecting tour to North Korea would be my dream trip.

Lawrence Gipe, Salon No. 2, 2012, oil on panel, 20" x 29" JS: What is next for your work?

LG: Right now, my work is going in 4-5 different directions. I realize this is detrimental to my career: I can't "brand" myself the way a lot of artists do. Yes, if you see an image of a train blasting out of a station, you can guess it's me. But, I'd just as soon paint portraits, a still life, a landscape with placid birches. All that's important is where from where the image is derived. And, with me, you can only be sure it's from a sinister context -- if those are birch trees, they're Soviet birch trees! Images like these - these kind of banal images -- are interesting to me because they seem familiar, but in fact they've come from obscure and forgotten contexts.

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Lawrence Gipe, Panel No. 18 from Salon (USSR, 1962), 2012, oil on panel, 14" x 11" I usually paint, but I also love drawing and seek out projects where it can be used autonomously and relevantly. I'm currently engaged in an on-going series about Operation Streamline, a federal policy enthusiastically endorsed by the Arizona court system that dispatches 70 illegal immigrants per day back across the border. The series utilizes only drawing -- and that is the only means available to document the proceedings of Operation Streamline (photography is prohibited in the court). It's a sad spectacle -- they are captured and thrown into court unwashed and shackled -- they shuffle into court after being advised to waive their rights and plead guilty. Incensed by this practice, graduate students in the UA Journalism department proposed collaborating with me to sketch the deportees as they waited in the dock. An exhibition is in the works, combining video, the oral histories collected by the journalist students, and my drawings.

Lawrence Gipe Salon
Lora Schlesinger Gallery
January 12 - February 23, 2013

In the East Gallery: Emerging Artists curated by Lawrence Gipe: Nidaa Aboulhosn, Karen deClouet, Mena Ganey, Bobbi Gentry, Yubitza McCombs, Chris McGinnis

To Whom It May Concern,

I have been writing about art and artists for the HuffingtonPost for almost three years now, and am increasingly finding myself in a pretty great situation: I am regularly hearing from artists, galleries and museums who would like to blog about their work or an exhibition. Honestly, I am flattered by the requests, and wish I had been this popular in high school.

So that anyone interested in my writing can understand how I operate, and how I decide what to blog about, here is an "FAQ" style set of questions and answers that I hope you will find helpful. - John Seed

John Seed Arts Blogger: Frequently Asked Questions:

Q: Will you write about my work?

A: The best answer I can give is "maybe." I try to read the press releases that come to my email box, and also do follow links to visit websites and look over the images you send.

My rule of thumb is that I have to feel very, very positive about any work I choose to write about. I write best about representational painting, although every now and then I do write about other forms of art.

Please don't be offended if I don't respond directly to your request, or if I don't end up blogging about your work. My choices are personal, and quite often I choose not to write about an exhibition simply because I am busy or feel that I am not the right person to interpret or discuss the work with authority.

Q: Do you write reviews?

A: I am not an art critic, although more and more people want to call me one, which they can do if they like. I prefer "art writer" or "arts blogger" because I rarely write criticism. My preference is to write profiles of artists, essays that illuminate or explain an exhibition or work of art, and also to write interviews.

Q: Can you and/or the HuffingtonPost help get the word out about my art world event?

A: The HuffingtonPost has an Arts and Culture desk in New York, and I can send your item forward to them. They do not post press releases and only post a very limited number of news items at their discretion.

Q: How do you find art and topics to write about?

JS: I listen to the opinions of a few trusted friends, visit exhibitions and watch the art that shows up on Facebook.

Q: Do you accept paid work?

JS: Yes, I do, but with one exception: please do not offer to pay me for posting a blog on HuffingtonPost. I try to keep what I post there "pure" and am not paid for it by the HuffPost and don't want to be paid by you either.

I am happy to write catalog essays, web content, and magazine articles for you: e-mail me and we can talk about it, and I will also send you my full vitae.

Q: Can your HuffingtonPost blogs be re-published?

A: Yes: I own the rights to them, but in most cases will need permission from artists to repost images of their art. If you would like to license one of my blogs for us on your blog, or in any other form of publication, please email me.

Q: Can I put you on my mailing list and/or e-mail list so that you receive notices about my work?

A: Of course!

Contact Information: johnseed@gmail.com

At Craig Krull Gallery in Santa Monica, Astrid Preston's exhibition "New Territory" stands out for a very simple reason: the show is unapologetically beautiful. Representing two years of work, Preston's paintings on wood panels and linen fuse Japanese and Western aesthetic values masterfully. Subtle, varied, respectful of nature while somehow beyond nature, Preston's recent paintings have been on the receiving end of some well-deserved praise. In a blog posted on Forbes.com,writer and ecologist Michael Charles Tobias offered this kudos:

"Her (Preston's) work has consistently taken technical and philosophical risks, achieved unique depth, and established Ms. Preston as one of America's most important contemporary landscape painters."

Astrid Preston: photo by Jon Fauer
I recently interviewed Preston and spoke with her about her exhibition, her work, and her artistic direction.

John Seed Interviews Astrid Preston

JS: I understand that in preparation for your current show you have photographed hundreds of trees, many of them in Japan. Have you ever considered showing your photographs? How do you use your photos to inspire paintings?

AP: My son lives and works in Tokyo, so before our last visit, I ordered canvas, linen and wood panels, my height: 66" and then 33" wide. I had planned on doing tree portraits on these surfaces. So while I was in Japan I photographed any tree or cluster of trees that speak to me. The black pines there are especially striking.

Astrid Preston, "Black Pine Ginkaku-Ji," 2012, oil on panel, 66" x 132"
I do use the photographs as a tool and inspiration for my paintings. I take images that interest me, but I don't see like a photographer. I only see what I want to use. I have photographer friends and they see what is actually there and framing is important. Some of my photographs are of that level, but I don't enjoy the technical aspects of computers, so getting the color and contrast right on a digital print would not give me pleasure.

JS: Many of your current paintings are on hardwood. Can you tell me how you choose and prepare the wood, and also about how the color and grain of the wood influence your paintings?

AP: I enjoy a certain amount of chance in the actual wood surface. I order by size and never specify what kind of wood. Then the wood color and grain pattern provide limitations and inspiration. Since I usually have many photographs I want to work from, I see which images would be best with the given panel. I had not worked on wood before these paintings.

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2013-02-14-Toward_Hiroshima_2012_oil_on_wood_panel_16x16_inches.jpg

Astrid Preston, "Toward Hiroshima," 2012, oil on wood panel, 16" x 16"
The first portrait on wood was of red pine trees. The wood was so beautiful, that I realized I'd better do some studies before I proceeded, so I ordered some small 16x16 inch wood panels to use for studies. Some of those are in the show. For the first one I tried, I used a wash, and had already decided to make the trees red, so I did the wash in blue. I loved it and kept the background simple. With the trees I used the grain in a vertical direction to repeat the direction of the portrait (full body). I don't do any preparation on the wood. I was asked to do a fund-raising project for the Santa Monica Museum just after this, and I proceeded to paint over 100 small tree paintings on wood veneer (called wood paper).

This is when I discovered how some of the wood grain looks a lot like water. For this last trip -- the month after the big earthquake and tsunami -- my son wanted to visit as many islands as possible, but he only had a week of vacation, so we traveled around the Inland Sea. I have always liked the 16" x16" inch size, so I ordered more and more wood panels and started the small water paintings that are in this exhibition.

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2013-02-14-Little_Rock_Little_Pond_2012_oil_on_wood_panel_16x16_inches.jpg

Astrid Preston, "Little Rock Little Pond," 2012, oil on wood panel, 16" x 16"
JS: How have Hiroshige and other Japanese artists influenced your art? AP: While I have limited myself to nature painting my two loves have been Renaissance art -- Durer, Vermeer, etc -- and Chinese/Japanese, landscapes on silk or paper. I love the magic of the illusionistic, glazed painting of Europe and the detail and delicacy and lack of perspective in the Chinese/Japanese.

Astrid Preston, "Black Pine in Ritsuren-koen," 2011, oil on canvas, 66" x 33"
JS: To what degree do you depict nature literally, and to what degree do you alter it as you paint?

AP: All of my paintings are primarily internal landscapes. I start with some image, scene, or detail that speaks to me and paint it in some way, color that seems to be right. I like to start with the literal so that I don't get stylized or make the same image repeatedly. Most of the images in this show are very simplified from the complexity of the photos. I paint and change until I capture something that surprises me, feels emotionally and visually "right", often it has changed dramatically from the original vision.

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2013-02-14-Thirsty_Sun_2012_oil_on_wood_panel_16x16_inches.jpg

Astrid Preston, "Thirsty Sun," 2012, oil on wood panel, 16" x 16"
One painting that didn't change much is the most abstract in the show. For "Thirsty Sun" I had put some washes on the wood veneer, to create the feeling of a small pond. The pond photo I was looking at had a glare of the sun in it. I had already started using the palette knife to build up surface on some of the paintings and had a real need for yellow, so I had the idea to make more of a feeling of the sun than just a white smooth glow on the illusionistic pond. This is one of my favorite paintings in the show. I added the ripples at the bottom to have an illusionistic reference to reality. It was a big leap for me. None of the paintings are nonrepresentational.

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2013-02-14-Preston_Early_Spring_on_Naoshima_2012_oi_on_linen_66x132_inches.jpg

Astrid Preston, "Early Spring on Naoshima," 2012, oil on linen, 66" x 132"
JS: There is tremendous delicacy in your work: how did that develop? Have you always been such a patient artist?

AP: Before painting became my dominant medium, I drew. I drew almost exclusively for ten years. Fine lines and mark making were my main interest, so as I learned to paint better, I included more fine painted lines.

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2013-02-14-Trio_2012_oil_on_wood_panel_16x16_inches.jpg

Astrid Preston, "Trio," 2012, oil on wood panel, 16" x 16"
JS: What direction do you think your work is going next?

AP: I want to explore the new possibilities of mark making that I have started here, but on a larger scale. I don't know what that will entail, but more complexity for sure.

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2013-02-14-Blossoms_2012_oil_on_wood_panel_16x16_inches.jpg

Astrid Preston, "Blossoms," 2012, oil on wood panel, 16" x 16"
JS: You have a fantastic garden in Santa Monica. Do you paint there?

AP: I can only paint in the studio, there are too many distractions in the garden. I do draw there though. I have a fantastic view out my windows, so I have painted that scene before, but I find it easier to take a photo and work from that. As I said, they are internal landscapes.

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2013-02-14-Imperial_Pine_2012_oil_on_wood_panel_66x33_inches.jpg

Astrid Preston, "Imperial Pine," 2012, oil on wood panel, 66" x 33"
JS: Is there anything else you would like to say about your work and your artistic practice?

AP: Here are some thoughts I wrote down before a recent talk I gave:

I am always trying to find the new in the familiar.

I am trying to create a more complex visual vocabulary for myself.

I like to have a tension between figuration and abstraction in these works.

I use a different strategy in each painting.

Also, in the talk, the nature of artifice came up. Most of my images are from gardens, so the human presence is there in altered wildness, recreating man's concept of paradise, and then again in my translation.

Astrid Preston
New Territory
Craig Krull Gallery
2525 Michigan Avenue, Building B-3
Santa Monica, California 90404
January 26 - March 2, 2013

I have recently been in touch with Orkideh Daroodi, a native of Iran who returned home several years ago after attending high school and college in California. Orkideh serves as the gallery manager of the Assar Gallery, one of Tehran's leading galleries in the field of contemporary art. I was surprised to learn -- among other things -- that there are some 150 galleries in Tehran that show the work of living Iranian artists. In my correspondence with her, Orkideh has opened my eyes to the vitality of Iran's contemporary art scene.

John Seed Interviews Orkideh Daroodi of the Assar Gallery

Orkideh Daroodi
JS: What can you tell me about the Assar Gallery? How did you become involved with the gallery?

OD: The Assar Gallery first opened in 1999 under the direction of its current owner and director, Omid Tehrani. The gallery's mission has always been to promote the art of Iranian artists through a wide program of national and international exhibitions and fairs, collaborative projects and publications.

Installation view of Assar Gallery, Tehran, Iran
As for me, when I started 3 1/2 years ago, I didn't know anything about contemporary Iranian art. My involvement with the gallery sort of just happened, at first as an assistant, then as the auctions coordinator and now as the gallery manager. So it's been a journey, a learning experience in fact and there have been plenty of hills to climb but I was hooked the moment I found myself inside the gallery space on the day of the set up of an exhibition.

The simple idea that you are entrusted with somebody's creation: that you are to install, show and sell works of art. Well, I decided to make this my profession in hopes that one day I would open my own gallery (fingers crossed!). It's just a very evolving profession and there are many intriguing factors: everything that goes on even before a show, in terms of studio visits, talks, advertisements, press, cataloging etc., are all truly fascinating.

I didn't study art in university but with my BA degree from UC Davis' Department of Letters and Arts, I feel that I was always somehow connected and now appreciate my background in literature.

The Assar Gallery, Tehran, Iran
JS: Are there many art galleries in Tehran?

OD: I think you'd be surprised to know that there are many, many galleries in Iran, though mostly concentrated in the capital, Tehran. There are about 150 licensed art galleries in Tehran alone and of those 30 are very active in finding new talents and holding regular exhibitions of contemporary Iranian art. Of those, I would say there are ten that are considered to be the most professional on an international scale. To name them: Assar, Aaran, Etemad, Khak, Shirin, Tarahan-e Azad, Mah, Mohsen, Silk Road and Seyhoun galleries which can each be accessed over their websites for more information regarding the kind of art and the artists that each represent.

Babak Roshaninejad, "What Are You Doing Here At This Time of Night No.1," from the "Personae" series, oil on canvas, 200x140 cm, 2011
JS: I notice that you attend art fairs in Istanbul and Dubai. At those fairs, are you finding that there is international interest in the artists that you represent?

OD: We've attended Paris Photo, Art Dubai, Contemporary Istanbul and Art Moscow. The reception by the international audience has always been very positive and welcoming. Honestly, people are in awe of what they see. The exotic factor that we are from Iran of course adds to it, but overall we've been able to establish great connections and have been successful in placing works by our artists in prominent international collections.

What’s noteworthy is that collectors are becoming more and more international and more interested in the art of Iran especially. Because of its standing, it’s attracting more and more attention each year and also its growth in the market has been extraordinary. So whereas before where we only sold to Iranian and regional collectors, these days we are seeing more and more international collectors.

So far, we've mainly focused on regional art fairs but we think that it's time to try for an even wider audience through European fairs. Maryam Majd, who is in charge of our international affairs, is considering Frieze and Art Basel for the near future.

Babak Roshaninejad"No.2 from the No! The History Is Not Written by the Victors, I Write the Damn Thing" series, oil on canvas, triptych, 200x420 cm overall, 200x140 cm each panel, 2010
JS: What are some of the most prominent themes that your artists address in their work?

OD: Currently, we are representing twelve artists: nine painters, one sculptor, one sculptor/painter and one photographer. And they address a varied series of subjects in their works. They are twelve individuals with twelve very different creative minds so I can't really categorize them.

Babak Roshaninejad, "No.9," from the "Interlude" series, oil on canvas, 140x200 cm, 2011
JS: Can you single out an artist whose work you feel is particularly outstanding and tell me a bit more about his work?

OD: Well there are two: Babak Roshaninejad and Alireza Adambakan are two of my favorite artists. Babak's large-scale oil paintings of portraits, newspaper headlines, barcodes, tanks and bulldozers, tractors and cars are representative of his unique painterly skills. The texture and compositing that he creates by applying thick and dense amounts of oil paint create a visual quality that goes beyond the subjects he chooses.

Alireza Adambakan, "No.7," from the "My Icons" series, mixed media on cardboard, 90x120 cm, 2011
And as for Alireza, his painting is much more personal. Working on different series, ranging from large-scale figurative to medium-scale urban and cityscapes, he uses a bold, intense and varied palette to express his critical attitude of the clash between tradition and modernity.

Alireza Adambakan, "No. 5," from the "My Icons" series, mixed media on cardboard, 90x120 cm, 2010
JS: What are you hopes and dreams for Iran's artists?

OD: For Iranian artists to be able to compete on a larger international scale and stand alongside artists from Europe and America. For more critics, collectors, curators and all involved in the art world to further welcome and recognize their work. And for them to create the kind of art that involves you; stops you and changes you; you and the world perhaps. To quote Jeremy Deller "Art isn't about what you make but what you make happen." So, I hope for Iranian artists to make a lot of things happen!

Alireza Adambakan, "Free Me" from the "Water from the Haftad-o Du Tan" series, mixed media on canvas, 200x150 cm, 2010
JS: Who are some of the artists out of Iran that you admire?

OD: There are some Iranian artists who reside abroad and are doing absolutely amazing works but to embrace some non-Iranian artists: Ai Weiwei is somebody whose work I follow pretty closely. My first encounter with his work was his Sunflower Seeds at the Tate Modern's Turbine Hall and I've been following his work ever since. Anish Kapoor is a favorite among all of us at the gallery. And from an older generation, Louise Bourgeois was an extraordinary artist and I respect her work very much. Last but not least, John Wesley, whose work I like because of its cartoon-like and flat quality, has always been a personal favorite.

JS: Please mention anything else about your gallery and/or artists that you would like my readers to know.

OD: First and foremost, I'd like to mention that Tehran's art scene is a lot different from what might normally be portrayed in the mass media. And I believe that Assar has especially been able to transform the concept of an art gallery in Iran. Basic principles such as representing a set of fixed artists, establishing a professional artist-gallery relationship, promotion of contemporary art through publications and participation in international art fairs all started at Assar Gallery and was fortunately followed by other galleries.

Also, I am excited to tell you that there is going to be a really great show of Iranian art, organized by Asia Society, in New York in September.

Can the internet be used by serious painters to consistently sell their work, build a reputation and connect with collectors without the help of a "brick and mortar" gallery? It is a question many artists have been asking for some time, but very few have real found that the answer is a clear "yes." Artist Duane Keiser is one of them.

Keiser realized early -- in 2004 -- that the internet was "going to fundamentally change the relationships between artists, galleries and collectors." He acted on that realization, and the result has been a practice that he calls a "Painting A Day." Now, more than 8 years later, he feels that eBay is a "natural way to sell art" and both his artistic practice and his bank account are in good shape. I recently interviewed Duane via email, and he took his time to give me a thoughtful, and inspiring interview.

Duane KeiserJohn Seed Interviews Duane Keiser:

JS: How did "painting a day" get started? When did it start?

DK: I have always made small, mostly premier-coup paintings of places I know and things I see. The "painting a day" concept developed when I started thinking about ways to present and sell some of my work outside of the gallery system. In the early 2000s, after years of showing my work in galleries, I decided to have a one-night show in my studio. I installed makeshift track lighting and hung one hundred of what I began calling my postcard paintings (postcard-sized oil sketches) priced at $100 each. It was a great night. We had lots of wine and a small band and it was really more of a party, but it turned out to be tremendously successful. Most of the paintings sold, my email list grew and most important, I got to know the people who bought my work.

Brushes and Coffee Filter, 1/7/2013

oil/paper (mounted) 7"x6"

After several more of these one-night shows, I started offering pieces for sale via email on a first-come, first-served basis. In 2004, I launched the blog. At the time, blogs were mostly associated with journalistic writing. But the simple, diary-like format seemed a perfect fit for what I was doing. I called it "A Painting a Day" and I arranged my life so that it was possible to make a painting every day (which I did for about a year and a half before slowing down.) I carried a cigar box easel wherever I went and when something caught my eye, I would stop in my tracks to paint it. It's one thing to paint every day. It's something else entirely to make a complete painting every day, despite travel, illness, holidays, etc. My family and friends got used to seeing me marked with paint or not seeing me at all.

Luck's Farm (no.12,) 1/12/2013 oil/paper (mounted) 6"x7" After a few posts, the excellent Boingboing.net did a small article about my project and almost overnight, I had an international following. I often tell the story about the morning I made a painting of an egg in my kitchen and posted it to my blog. Five minutes later, I received an email from a fellow in India telling me how much he liked it. The idea that I could paint a small vignette in Richmond, Virginia and almost instantaneously share it with someone on the other side of the globe was a miracle to me. At that moment, I realized the internet was going to fundamentally change the relationships between artists, galleries and collectors. Articles about me or about the idea began appearing in publications like USA Today and The New York Times. Other artists began to use the idea and link their projects to my blog. I learned first-hand what it meant to go viral.

Gesso Sleeping, 10/30/2012

oil/paper (mounted) 6"x5"

In 2005, Gregory Peterson, a friend and collector of my work, suggested I try online auctions. I eventually got the same advice from an eBay executive. I hesitated because at the time, eBay was considered an online yard sale--definitely not a marketplace anyone considered for selling fine art. After thinking about it more, I realized my collectors would see it for what it was, a simple and trustworthy meeting place for sellers and buyers. So I tried it. I can't tell you how strange it sounded when I told people I was selling my work on eBay, but as my prices began to rise, I realized it was working. The auction format allowed my collectors time to consider how much a painting was worth to them and whether or not they wanted it. My collectors liked the excitement of watching and participating in auctions. Now, eBay seems like a natural way to sell art.

Floating Lemon Wedge, 2/20/2013

oil/paper (mounted) 7"x6"

Looking back, I realize I was a small part of a growing movement of artists--mostly musicians--who decided to buck the traditional sales and marketing system and reach fans through the internet. Back then, artists of all varieties relied almost entirely on corporate entities (publishers, record companies, movie studios, galleries) to promote and sell their work. To do so any other way was risky. Now there seems to be a more mutually beneficial relationship between those traditional middlemen and artists who want to develop a direct relationship with their fans. The comedian Louis CK is a great example of this.

Crane Fly, 5/18/2012

oil/paper (mounted) 7"x6"

JS: Can you give me some stats for painting a day? How many years? How many paintings? How many sold? The top price? The lowest price?

DK: The blog was launched in 2004. I've posted about 1,300 daily paintings since then. All but a handful have sold. The highest selling price was around $1,500; the lowest was $79.

Bikes, 2/9/2013

oil/paper (mounted) 7"x6"

JS: How has your painting a day practice affected your development... and your other paintings?

DK: While it has certainly given me a degree of proficiency, the more I paint the harder it seems to get. The paintings I make for "A Painting a Day" are mostly premier-coup ("first strike") which means they are usually done in one sitting. I hesitate to use this term because I feel little kinship with the slickness I see in a lot the premier-coup and plein air painting being done these days. The ideal that I strive for is that of making a raw expression of a moment or sensation rather than a polished picture. I emphasize "strive" because it is a goal that is always a little beyond my grasp which is why I find this kind of painting so humbling and endlessly challenging.

Bookshelf, 12/23/2012

oil/paper (mounted) 7"x6"

A premier-coup painting often teeters on the edge of being something and being nothing-- the picture works and then, a few brush strokes later, it doesn't. It requires a kind of letting go; a reliance on instinct and intuition. My first painting classes with Raymond Berry began by making several small paintings on small sheets of paper taped to a board. The size and time restrictions forced us to be simple, direct and focused but also gave us license to experiment and make mistakes. If it didn't look right, we wiped it off (or he wiped it off for us) and we'd try again. We were learning how to start a painting. We were also being introduced to what Zen Buddhists call a beginner's mind: an openness to new possibilities. My daily painting keeps me moored to that sensibility. It informs all my work.

Japanese Maple, 11/15/2012

oil/paper (mounted) 6"x7"

JS: Tell me about the range of your subject matter. Do you have some recurring/favorite subjects?

DK: I've always been drawn to subjects that, though interesting or beautiful, tend not to illicit internal commentary or labeling because they are so fleeting, fragmentary or prosaic. I try to have what the photographer William Eggleston referred to as the "democratic way of looking around" and be open to whatever strikes me. As such, my subject matter varies wildly. I am also partial to subjects that naturally cross my path or enter my life rather than those I seek to paint. I suppose there is a kind of serendipity about that which I enjoy but it also keeps my paintings connected to the ebb and flow of my life. I view "A Painting a Day" as a single, ongoing work that, for me, has an underlying component of time; a sense of moments coming and going. This is one reason I accompany the title of each painting with the day it was finished.

Pool (no.6,) 7/30/2012

oil/paper (mounted) 7"x6

JS: How do people respond to painting a day? How important is it for you, and do you feel that it will continue a long time?

DK: Generally, people seem to understand and appreciate the idea behind PAD, even if the work isn't always their cup of tea. Certainly the notion of standing still and being aware of one's surroundings is viewed by most as a poetic respite from the technological bubble we spend much of our time in. In some ways I actually prefer to present this work online, rather than in a gallery, because it seems appropriate that paintings of the everyday be threaded into the everyday lives of my viewers via their computers, tablets and smartphones. While I do receive a lot of feedback at times (mostly positive, sometimes negative) by and large most people simply look and (hopefully) enjoy the work.

Red Coat Hanger, 1/29/2013

oil/paper (mounted) 7"x6"

JS: What is the social aspect of making so many paintings? A ton of friends? A ton of admirers? Imitators? Detractors?

DK: Yes, I do have a lot of admirers and collectors of my work-- certainly more than I ever thought I would. The people who follow my work have been tremendously kind and encouraging (as have my fellow painters) and I feel a tangible connection to them even if I do not know most of them personally. Obviously, part of this connection stems from the fact that I am sharing a constant stream of vignettes from my life, but it is also because they are, in essence, in my studio looking over my shoulder as I paint. They see my different approaches, the experimentation, the wrong turns, the small discoveries or breakthroughs etc. In PAD, a subscriber to my mailing list has a sense of how a particular painting came to be, good or bad, because he or she saw the fifty paintings that preceded it.

Coffee Mug and Books on Studio Chair, 2/18/2013

oil/paper (mounted) 7"x6"

And yes, there have been a lot of imitators of "A Painting a Day." In the beginning I encouraged other painters to try some version of the idea and adapt it to their own work. While I was happy to see the enthusiasm and success of painters starting to grasp the potential of the internet for themselves, I was also dismayed to see the movement become a kind of echo chamber of subject matter and styles, with painters looking within the small community of other daily painters for ideas rather than at what was around them. Indeed, some painters copied work almost verbatim.

There are a handful of painters who made the idea their own and whose work I truly admire, but for the most part daily painting, as a movement, is not something I follow much anymore. I certainly have detractors. I don't know how many. Their main criticism is that the subject matter is banal or that I don't paint it well enough to lift it above the level of being banal. Obviously, I don't agree that the subject matter is banal. I can understand the opinion that my painting may not be good enough because it's a criticism I direct at myself from time to time.

Red Kettle, 2/8/2013

oil/paper (mounted) 7'x6"

JS: Is there a philosophical and/or spiritual side to painting a day?

DK: For most of my adult life I've studied a strict and traditional form of karate (Shotokan Karate of America.) My understanding and philosophy of daily practice comes from the practice of Shotokan, which includes repeating a technique or kata many thousands of times and setting goals that seem beyond one's capabilities.

Winter Bouquet, 2/14/2013

oil/paper (mounted) 7'x6"

Daily painting is woven into my life and has become a kind meditation for me; a way to practice being in the moment and appreciative of what I have. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard has had a big influence on me. This passage in particular shaped the way I approach "A Painting a Day:"

There are lots of things to see, unwrapped gifts and free surprises. The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside from a generous hand. But -- and this is the point -- who gets excited by a mere penny? If you follow one arrow, if you crouch motionless on a bank to watch a tremulous ripple thrill on the water and are rewarded by the sight of a muskrat kit paddling from its den, will you count that sight a chip of copper only, and go your rueful way? It is dire poverty indeed when a man is so malnourished and fatigued that he won't stoop to pick up a penny. But if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days. It is that simple.What you see is what you get.

Studio Chair, 9/10/2012

oil/paper (mounted) 7"x6"

Links:

Duane Keiser's "Painting a Day" blog.

Veteran Los Angeles artist Dan McCleary is used to having his paintings -- which exude measured clarity and a sense of calm -- compared to those of Renaissance masters, especially to those of Piero della Francesca. As it turns out, McCleary is like a Renaissance artist in another way as well: he has been serving as a mentor to two young artists, Javier Carrillo and Emmanuel Galvez, whose works will be shown alongside his at the Craig Krull Gallery from March 9th through April 13th. McCleary's dedication to identifying, encouraging and educating a new generation of visual artists with traditional skills is yielding impressive results.

L to R: Javier Carrillo, Emmanuel Galvez and Dan McCleary at Art DivisionPhoto by Wayne Shimabukuro Javier Carrillo first met Dan about 8 years ago through an organization called "HOLA" (Heart of Los Angeles) an after school program where McCleary was teaching a drawing class. A high school student at the time, Javier didn't think of himself as an artist, but had done graffiti tagging: "It was something that I found for fun and to be cool in school," he recalls. Encouraged by Dan, Javier kept coming to class after he was told by his instructor that "he had a gift."

Carrillo then continued his art studies at Art Division, which McCleary had recently established in the Rampart District of Los Angeles, and which was specifically created to serve young people like Javier who had lost access to community-based arts programs after high school graduation. Over time Javier became the Operations Manager for Art Division, and now teaches printmaking there. His development as an artist and teacher has given Javier ambition and focus, even though it hasn't been easy for him to explain his new career to his parents and five siblings: "We came from Mexico, and they wanted me to go to school to be a doctor: something big. My family has lived in a poor community, and they didn't see art as a career. Now that I am much older they kind of get it."

Emmanuel Galvez also met Dan at HOLA, but not as a student. Galvez was serving as a drawing model and when he mentioned to Dan that it was his birthday McCleary responded by handing him a small gift: a pen. "That made an impact," Galvez recalls, "someone actually cared." Although he had drawn in middle school, when Emmanuel met Dan he had no inclination to become an artist, and was generally unsure of his future: "I didn't know where I was going, and in High School I was hanging out with the wrong people."

Before long Galvez was not only studying with McCleary, but also serving as a studio assistant. "One day I organized Dan's work and just looking at it made me want to be an artist," Galvez comments. "It was like WOW, if I could start now someday I could be like him." In 2010 Galvez also assisted Dan and Javier in working on a major commission: a set of three panels commissioned by the General Services Administration for the Federal courthouse in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

Javier and Emmanuel at work on the Las Cruces muralPhoto: James Fawcett

Dan McCleary, "The Jury," 2010, 3 panels, each 8' x 14' The Federal Courthouse, Las Cruces, New MexicoPhoto: James Fawcett Working with Dan on the murals and since, Javier and Emmanuel have found continued motivation to develop their individual artistic practices and also developed close friendships. "Since we all worked together with Maria (Javier's wife) on the Las Cruces paintings," Emmanuel states, "we are like family."

"Dan is the big influence," Javier says, "Be a Dan McCleary." Emmanuel says of Dan: "I see him as a father, because my relationship with my dad after I graduated from high school kind of ended. You have to meet Dan to see who he really is: he is an amazing person."

Emmanuel Galvez, "Ojo de Toro y Dos Conchas," 2013, oil on linen, 14" x 18" In the Craig Krull exhibition Emmanuel, who is now an instructor at HOLA, will be showing small still life paintings he calls "Pan Dulce." On the surface, the paintings depict the Mexican bakery goods he grew up eating, but they are more than that. "Painting is when I come from the inside," he acknowledges. With gentle humor, Emmanuel also says of his paintings that he "...purposely made them to be kind of juicy and a little sexy."

Javier Carrillo, "El Mojado," 2012, oil on paper, 24" x 36" Javier's works are based on playing cards use in a Latin American card game called "La Lotería." The crisply rendered figures on each card are connected to personal narratives: each one tells the story of an individual's struggle to cross the US/Mexico border. "My artwork is based on my community culture, on my life experiences, and where I came from," Javier explains. "Growing up in Los Angeles, not knowing English in the beginning was a struggle. Now, in my art I can communicate how I feel in my life."

Dan McCleary, "The Maniciure," 2013, oil on canvas, 56 1/2" x 51" When I asked Dan McCleary about his painting "The Manicure," which he was still tweaking just a few days before the Krull Gallery opening he described it in very simple terms: "I wanted to do a painting of two women in an intimate situation." He then added: "Let me know if that is enough."

Since McCleary's paintings have reached a masterful level of clarity, I think his description is more than enough. Characteristically, he had much more to say about his students than he did about himself or his own work.

Emmanuel's tenacity and diligence as a student and artist have been phenomenal to watch. He has learned not only from me but from his teachers at SMC and from his coworkers. He is thinking critically about his own artwork and the work of other artists in a very mature way. Javier has always had an incredibly sophisticated visual sense. He has also a natural ability to draw. The two are now joined by a knowledge of how to structure a painting with great intelligence and intuition.

When words like that are spoken by someone you admire, they can change your life.
Join Dan, Emmauel and Javier for a Gallery Talk on Saturday, March 16thRSVP to info@craigkrullgallery.com by March 12
Dan McCleary "New Paintings"Emmanuel Galvez "Pan Dulce" Javier Carrillo "La Lotería de la Vida"March 9 - April 13, 2013Craig Krull Gallery2525 Michigan Avenue, Building B-3Santa Monica, California 90404

A friend at work caught me by the drinking fountain a few days ago and mentioned something rather surprising: "I saw one of your paintings in a movie last night." Although I was sure he must be mistaken, my co-worker persisted and told me that it was a kind of "southwest looking landscape" and that my signature appeared clearly on the screen. Since I couldn't recall painting anything too "southwest" I assumed that a lucky Arizona painter named John Sneed must have had his work featured in a recent film.

To satisfy my curiosity I went home and found the movie in question -- a 2011 independent thriller called "Leave" -- and watched it on Netflix. About three minutes into the film an old painting of mine that I hadn't seen or thought about in 30 years flashed onto the screen. The painting, titled "The Woodcutter's Song," shows an axe wedged in the stump of pine tree at the edge of a brushy, expressionistic forest à la Edvard Munch. When I painted it my intention had been to make a zen painting inspired by a Japanese scroll painting of a monk who has a moment of realization when he hears the sound of his axe chopping down a tree. There was nothing "southwest" about it.

Of course, people rarely get the same meaning out of works of art that the artist intends. I vividly remember being a fly on the wall in a Los Angeles gallery many years ago while a woman psychoanalyzed me vis-à-vis the painting: "It is a violent image that reeks of castration anxiety and murder," is roughly what I remember her saying.

John Seed, "The Woodcutter's Song," 1983, oil on canvas, 66 x 54 inches After getting over the shock of recognition, I restarted the movie and watched it beginning to end. As it turns out, "Leave" is a very powerful film about a novelist who is haunted by a terrifying dream. My painting turns up in his therapist's office, lit by a lamp that seems perfectly positioned to highlight the embarrassingly large signature that I tended to use on my early paintings. I'm thinking that the movie's art director must have agreed with the woman who found the painting anxious because the scene it appears in is quite tense. So much for "zen."

Above: scenes from the film "Leave," 2011, courtesy of Visualeyes Productions As I watched more of the film, I recognized that it had been shot in the swank loft of a downtown Los Angeles art collector who had purchased a number of my paintings in the mid-80s. I now understood how the painting had re-surfaced, but had to wonder: shouldn't I have been asked permission before the painting was used? I crowd-sourced the question to my Facebook friends, and they told me "yes." My wife also asked some online friends, and one of them sagely observed "There is a reason that paintings are blurred out in reality shows."

I did a bit of research on the internet and confirmed that I owned the copyright to my painting: even when a work is sold, its creator retains the right of reproduction. A helpful webpage provided by photosecrets.com also confirmed that the display of my painting had been "substantial," meaning that it had been shown long enough and completely enough to justify a copyright claim.

By the next morning my artist friends had left numerous anecdotes on my Facebook status, describing the screen appearances of their works of art. It was entertaining and informative to read what they had to say. "I had several paintings in a David Mamet film, 'Lipservice,' commented Maureen O'Connor, an artist based in Boston. "I was told my name would appear in the credits (no royalty). Needless to say, my name didn't appear. All I have is a copy, a friend made off HBO."

Painter Kurt Moyer had better news. "John, I had a good experience a couple of years ago renting my work for a James L Brooks movie. They paid me a percentage of retail to rent the works." Kurt later told me that he had received a weekly rental fee -- 20% of each paintings retail value during the first week of the shoot and then 10% per week after that -- and that the production company ended up purchasing one of his paintings.

Artist Mitchell Johnson told me that he has had good luck renting both paintings and reproductions of his paintings for use in TV and movies including "The Holiday" and "Crazy Stupid Love." If you happen to have seen Oprah Winfrey's recent interview of Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg you saw one of Mitchell's paintings in the background. Mitchell has earned royalties not only from the use of his original works, but also by licensing high quality digital reproductions. He often works with Jennifer Long at Film Art LA a firm that rents copyright cleared reproductions of works of art for use on sets.

F. Scott Hess says he was paid well for the use -- and abuse -- of one of his works: "I had an 8 1/2 foot tall piece in Ridley Scott's 'Someone to Watch Over Me.' It was in a murder scene, filmed on the Queen Mary. And they poked a hole in it, so I got paid double to fix it."

Jon Swihart -- a Santa Monica painter with superlative technical skills -- has often been asked to create original paintings for movies. For example, he painted a portrait of Tom Hollander, Captain Jack Sparrow's nemesis, for "Pirates of the Caribbean," and seven paintings for the slapstick comedy "Mousehunt." Jon says he has been very well paid for movie work: "Mousehunt" provided the down payment for his house. He told me on the phone that working on feature films can be intense and even terrifying, as there are deadlines to meet and big money being spent. Still, he relishes the work, and recently completed a portrait of Helena Bonham Carter -- as a ballerina -- for the soon to open film "The Lone Ranger."

Buoyed by my friends, and feeling legally prepared after a quick email consultation with an intellectual property attorney, I telephoned Visualeyes Productions in Los Angeles. I got a quick response from Bettina Tendler O'Mara, the producer of "Leave" who couldn't have been more kind and professional. We spoke on the phone the next day, and after she consulted her notes and co-producers, she promptly paid an invoice for the use of my painting.

Honestly, having my canvas show up in a thriller has been a win-win situation. Its always nice to have a bit of extra money for the summer, and having a painting in a movie provide a kind of exposure that I hadn't previously considered. Jon Swihart tells me: "More people will see your painting in a movie than will ever see it in a gallery." He has a point, and apparently Tom Hanks was one of them. Bettina Tendler O'Mara tells me that Hanks was very taken with "Leave," and that after viewing it he e-mailed her with this praise:

'Leave' is at first a haunting and fascinating puzzle of a story that grows into as touching and human a film as I've ever seen. Days later, the images and ideas of the movie hang in my head, a sure sign of a well crafted film.

I'm pleased to have contributed to movie that Tom Hanks saw and admired. I'm also very proud of my painting, the accidental 30 year old movie star.

Author's Note: California Lawyers for the Arts and the LA Mural Conservancy are presenting:

"Fine Art in Film: Licensing and Fair Use Between Artists and Filmakers"

Tuesday, March 26th

7:30PM to 9PM

Art Share LA 801 E. 4th Place

Los Angeles, CA 90013 tickets:

$20 online, $25 at the door

Dominic Cretara, "Self-Portrait with Doll," 2011, Oil on Canvas, 36" x 24" Domenic Cretara, who has served as a Professor of Art at Cal State Long Beach since 1986, is now the subject of a 20 year survey at the Triton Museum of Art in Santa Clara. Cretara is a representational artist with a commitment to the human figure and a straightforward credo: "I paint and draw about my own life experiences as an artist and as a family man."

The catalog for his Triton exhibition divides his works into several prominent themes: Doll Paintings, Family, Gender Roles and An Italo-American Life. A narrative painter who comes from the heart, Cretara's work fuses the personal with the theatrical, and channels emotions ranging from nostalgia to tenderness to indignation. Cretara is a rarity in the world of contemporary painting: a mature representational artist who has stayed the course as the art world has hemmed and hawed.

I recently interviewed Dominic Cretara and learned more about his personal history, his themes, and his current work.

Dominic Cretara, "Autobiography," 2011, Oil on Canvas, 54" x 84" John Seed Interviews Dominic Cretara

In 1974 a Fulbright Grant allowed you to spend a year in Florence, and you were also later able to spend time in the Padua and Cassis. How did those years in Europe shape your career as a painter?

Having grown up in an Italian-American family culture I had been inspired by Italian painting since childhood. I was an only child and often retreated to an "Italy of the mind" in my imagination. Being there was not quite what I expected. Confronting the work in person I felt that I was communicating directly with the artists, especially with Andrea del Sarto and Pontormo. There was no sense of childhood nostalgia at all. The formal, technical and content ideas were so interwoven, especially in their drawings, that all I could think of was, "I want to work with that level of complexity too." I analyzed, studied and asked the works questions unceasingly.

Later in Padua it was Giotto (and Tintoretto in nearby Venice) that taught me about composing narratives. I also have always been deeply interested in late 19th and early 20th century painting, and Cassis (and all of southern France) really sharpened my understanding of the language of Modernism.

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2013-03-26-TheArtistsFamily4622x6222OilonCanvas2006001.jpg

Dominic Cretara, "The Artist's Family," 2006, Oil on Canvas, 46" x 62" Over time, you have developed a personal style that blends Old Master and Modernist influences. Can you tell me more about some of the artists and traditions that have been most important to you?

I had known and admired the work of Raphael and Michelangelo since childhood. When I began studying art seriously in my teens I was drawn to Caravaggio and Tintoretto, not only because of the drama but also because of the simplicity and directness of their compositions. In college/art school I fell in love with Goya and French 19th century art (especially Courbet and Couture). I became inspired by Post-Impressionism (especially Cezanne and Seurat as a composer), as well as Modernism (Bonnard, Vuillard, Marquet, down to Balthus). I also discovered German Expressionism and became enthralled with the work of Kokoschka, Beckmann, and Otto Dix.

I could see that the possibility of a powerful synthesis between the great Italian tradition and Modernist pictorial language was very relevant to my individual voice as a painter. Most recently I have been inspired by the drawings of R.B. Kitaj, and the paintings of Frank Auerbach, Paula Rego, and Leon Kossoff.

Domenic Cretara, "Going Home," 2005, Pastel and Pencil, 59" x 39" How important is drawing for your work?

After forty plus years of painting I know that I am coming to a profound understanding of color. Drawing, however, has always been my great passion and I have come to believe it is synonymous with thinking. It is so powerful, varied, direct, economical and beautiful that I want to do it all the time. I love to draw.

Dominic Cretara, "The Forgotten," (Trial of the Century Series), 2002, Mixed Media, 84" x 122" Can you tell me something about the image "The Forgotten" which was part of the series you did on the O. J. Simpson murder trial?

The Forgotten was drawn a couple of years after I thought my Trial of the Century Series was finished. I found a brave gallerist, Susan Schomburg, who was willing to exhibit the series, so I did The Forgotten as a return to and a summing up of my feelings and ideas about the case. I had just received my work back from a big exhibition. The paintings were all soft-packed in cardboard - that warm golden surface is so tempting. I began to draw in charcoal and just could not stop.

It is meant as a critique of the justice system, but especially as a critical comment on the carnival-like hoopla and temporary celebrity-creating news coverage, which struck me as so awful and typical of our time. The title refers to the victims, especially Ron Goldman; but, also to the ideals of impartial justice that were thrown away. Even here I was involved with art-historical references. On the left I quoted Gustave Dore's illustration for Dante's inferno, the canto about the murderers being submerged in a river of blood with centaurs on shore shooting arrows at them if they lifted their heads above the blood. The idea that the so-called un-deconstructable concept of justice (according to Derrida's late ideas) had been thrown away, made the material of impermanent cardboard packing seem particularly appropriate.

Dominic Cretara, "The Actor," 73" x 44", 2007, Mixed Media, 73" x 44" You have been actively teaching since 1972. How have you evolved as a teacher over the years, and what changes have you noticed in your students?

I have always liked what the physicist Richard Feynman said about the connection between teaching and personal creativity. He talks about how having to think and rethink ideas in order to present them clearly to students is helpful to the teacher and pleasurable as well. He also point out that good students ask questions that the teacher wouldn't necessarily have thought of. The answers to these questions can have implications for new discoveries. In short, teaching need not detract from but can add to the creative spirit.

Many teachers today say that the advent of video games, social networking, texting, etc. have made it harder to teach distracted students, but I can't say I have noticed any real differences in how students learn. Perhaps I have been unusually fortunate, but I have always had talented, dedicated students who want to learn. I have changed as a teacher over time. I have become a clearer communicator, more tolerant of different ways of learning and painting, and much more patient.

Dominic Cretara, "183 Webster Street," 2000, Oil on Canvas, 84" x 54" What does it feel like to see twenty years of your work brought together?

It is highly gratifying, and a little scary. My first reaction was, "Whose work is this?" The work looks completely different in a museum setting with its high walls, beautiful lighting, and thoughtful groupings than it does in the studio. It was as if I saw my works for the first time with something like real objectivity. There are times in an artist's life when that prospect may not be comforting, but this time I felt that I had achieved something substantial. No matter what one's aesthetic predispositions, this is a body of work that says something, and says it powerfully.

Dominic Cretara, "Woman and Baby," 2004, Oil on Canvas, 66" x 48" What are you working on now?

I have begun painting exclusively from drawings that I have done from observation of the life model. The challenge here being to invent plausible but also beautiful rich color harmonies - especially rich chromatic neutrals. My latest piece, which is just begun, is a massive contemporary altarpiece with no one seated on the deity's throne. The presence of absence, I suppose

Dominic Cretara, "Victor," 2011, Oil on Canvas, 60" x 72"

When you visit contemporary art galleries are you seeing work that you like? Any names?

I admire Jerome Witkin's work, especially his drawings. I love Paul Fenniak's paintings. The drawings of Antonio Lopez Garcia move me very deeply. I think Sigmund Abeles and Jack Beal are real contemporary masters. I also greatly admire Hanneline Rogeberg. I like work that can challenge, provoke, disturb, and yet seduce with its beauty.

Domenic Cretara: 20 Years of Painting and Drawing
The Triton Museum of Art
1505 Warburton Ave. Santa Clara, CA 95050
February 16 through April 14, 2013

Anne Harris, "Invisible Girl," 2007, 33 1/2 x 31 incheswatercolor (verso) with watercolor, graphite and oil (recto) on frosted mylar
"I'm sort of painting myself out of a job," artist Anne Harris recently remarked to me during a telephone interview.

In truth Anne's remarkable exhibition at Alexandre Galley -- "Phantasmatical: Self-Portraits" -- will likely make her job as an artist more secure than ever. The point that she was trying to make, with a dose of humor, is that the women who populate her recent works seem to be fading towards total disappearance. The gradual evanescence of Harris's imagery is occurring as a feature of what she acknowledges is a "long standing evolution." She confides that "over the years I have become more and more interested in the the idea that I am painting a slice of air."

With that in mind, the majority of the works in the Alexandre show include the word invisible in their titles: "Invisible (Blue)," "Invisible (Pink Face)," "Invisible (Blonde)" and so on. There are oil paintings and drawings on paper in the show, and also a mixed-media work from 2007, "Invisible Girl," that was executed on both sides of a sheet of mylar. Inspired by a "sister" drawing on buff paper from 2006, Anne says that it is the starting point or "template" for the invisible series.

When I asked Harris to tell me more about "Invisible Girl" she took some time to explain both how it was made and what it evolved:

It's done on translucent mylar. I painted the back of the mylar with a pale yellow watercolor: Naples yellow. Then I drew on the front with graphite, water color and oil paint. I think of "Invisible Girl" as a drawing because the ground -- the mylar -- has a prominent, active role. The thing that makes this drawing relevant, that gave me the idea for the paintings, is that the background, the space surrounding the figure, is opaque oil paint. The figure is mainly the translucent ground. The "modeling" at the edges is actually the shadow cast on the wall behind the drawing.

Harris feels strongly that the thematic impetus and the improvisational spirit of her "invisibles" has to come from drawing. "I don't get so over-wrought and heavy handed with drawings," she explains. "I feel free to toss drawings, to throw them away. They're more open, more intuitive, pulled out of the ground, rather than layered as skin over the ground. Painting can bog me down, sometimes like a black hole; I'm trying to learn to paint the way I draw." Working to free herself up in technical terms has been a necessary ingredient that has allowed a greater range of expression and a multiplicity of new meanings to creep into Harris' imagery.

I tend, inevitably, to veer toward the grotesque, although I'm never aiming for that. Really, my best paintings seem to happen between subtlety and the grotesque. These paintings, because they're more delicately made, the touch more evident, the range of color and value extremely close, they walk a line between subtlety and intensity that is... I hope, better, more powerful, maybe more beautiful, although beauty is another topic. I realize I'm trying to make a beautiful painting of a subject many won't consider beautiful.

Anne Harris, "Invisible (Pink Face), 2011 - 2012, oil on linen, 33 1/2 x 30 inches Because the "invisibles" begin as self-portraits -- as do nearly all of Harris's works -- they certainly deal with self perception. In an essay written for the catalog that accompanies this show, Alison Ferris, curator at the Kohler Arts Center, who has followed and studied Anne's work for many years, comments that the recent paintings display "the physical and emotional consequences of menopause for middle-aged women." Harris, whose reputation as an artist was established by paintings that documented her pregnancy, is comfortable with that observation, but doesn't want it to constrain other possible meanings that her work might suggest. In a more general sense Anne's recent works explore a range of ideas about how others see us, how we feel about being seen, and how we gaze back.

"How does it feel to be stared at?" is one question that Harris has thought through quite intensely. "At puberty the awareness happens and with it comes both vulnerability and power: it is kind of awful and kind of good. It's complicated. You can't just walk down the street and be yourself. You are defined by those looking at you." When asked how the sense of being looked at connects to the theme of invisibility, Harris explained that aging -- in both positive and negative respects -- is certainly part of the mix.

"When I was younger -- and better looking -- I was much more anxious, more self conscious. Then the looks began to stop as my looks began to go, in my mid thirties, I suppose, after I had my son. I gradually realized that I was literally less potent, had less of the automatic force and impact that comes with youth, that I was disappearing and could only make myself noticed by being heard, but I was also more confident, more likely to speak up. And being invisible engages a kind of power, I could stare with impunity because no one was watching: previously, if I stared it was an invitation, and my default eye position was down. So I'm trying to paint contradictions: a visibly invisible painting, the feeling of being invisible and exposed, of being both less and more powerful."

As a technician, maturity is also serving Harris well and she has attained a genuine mastery of her materials and methods. Not surprisingly, the palette of her recent canvases has been carefully selected and adjusted to suit the nature of her imagery. Harris generally works with several whites, including Old Holland Cremnitz and Titanium, and also likes to use Williamsburg Zinc Buff: a very pale pinkish color. Raw umber, a dark warm tone, actually becomes cool when mixed with white and played off warmer earth reds and yellows. As Harris explains:

I tend to rely a lot on relative color -- "no-name" colors against "no-name" colors -- that push each other warm or cool, or colors layered over each other to create mixtures that are technically called half-tones or optical grays. The best way I can describe this is to use the analogy of blue veins as we see them through fair skin. Layers of skin lie over veins, the light passes through and bounces off, causing us to see, as blue, translucent vessels carrying dark red blood. Translucent layers of paint work this way as well.

Emotionally, technically and stylistically Harris is walking a tightrope, and she seems genuinely thrilled to be there. Describing one of the "invisibles" to me on the phone, she tells me that, "the figure might have less weight than the air: I love trying to paint dense air. The entire painting becomes the body. It is exciting to me that everything is skin and air."

Anne Harris "Phantasmatical: Self-Portraits"
April 6 through May 11, 2013
Opening Reception: Saturday, April 6, 2-4 pm
Alexandre Gallery
Fuller Building
41 East 57th Street, 13th Floor
New York, New York 10022

Sujas Bhujbal, "Hanging Out," 2012, oil on canvas, 60" x 42" During a 2011 trip to Cat Island in the central Bahamas, artist Suhas Bhujbal found something he craved: peace and quiet. The island's lifestyle -- one in which people gather on the beach and enjoy each other's company -- reminded him of his childhood in India. "I appreciate the simplicity in life," he comments. "I paint what I see, experience, and feel. It is really about falling in love in that moment and bringing that on the canvas in a visual form."

Sujas Bhujbal, "A Quiet Town 123," 2012, oil on canvas, 50" x 65" Bhujbal, who has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area since 2001, is well known for his semi-abstract images of urban environments, many of them suggestive of his native India. He is a keen observer of what architecture has to say about a town's inhabitants, to the point that his buildings sometimes seem at least a bit human. "When I see a building that strikes me," Bhujbal notes, " I suddenly stop and find myself standing and staring. Sometimes I feel something is happening. Even though the building cannot talk, I feel it is saying something to me."

Sujas Bhujbal, "Getting Ready for the Day," 2012, oil on canvas, 42" x 60" Besides providing a new setting for his work, the Bahamas revitalized Bhujbal's interest in painting the human figure. The artist's handling of the figure overlaps nicely with his approach to architecture: he treats them both with a searching, process-oriented approach to his materials that allows him to improvise. Interestingly, this figures sometimes have a hint of architecture about them, and his buildings are distinctly organic.

In the paintings inspired by his trip to Cat Island, there are some particularly elegant figure ground relationships in which clearly delineated human forms are set against broadly brushed color fields and more than a few drips. The Bahamas paintings also demonstrate that Bhujbal is able to render the feeling of light with considerable confidence.

Sujas Bhujbal, "Had a Good Day," 2012, oil on canvas, 48" x 48"In his painting "Had a Good Day," Bhujbal gives us a single figure engaging in a simple act: repairing a net while a freshly caught fish glistens on his table. The image has a vitalizing freshness and its colors -- silvery greys, cool blue and a burst of fresh green -- perfectly compliment the umber silhouette of the solitary fisherman. Although he has been drawing figures for some time, including portraits of riders on the Muni train he takes to his studio, Bhujbal says that his vacation in the Bahamas was an "amazing experience" that gave him a new impetus to develop figural compositions.

On Cat Island Bhujbal found something he had lost touch with: a simpler life more connected with nature and less in touch with modern distractions and temptations. Since his return home the positive energy of the experience of the trip has continued to resonate in a his work, which includes a new series of paintings of single figures observed from life. Like the fisherman in "Had a Good Day" Suhas Bhujbal enjoys his work and is at peace with his surroundings.

Suhas Bhujbal: "Dialogues"
April 4 -- 27, 2013
Dolby Chadwick Gallery
10 Post Street San Francisco, CA 94108

Group Figurative Exhibition Featuring Suhas Bhujbal, Gloria Gaddis, Kathy Jones, Marianne Kolb and Craig Mooney
April 4 -- 30, 2013
Sue Greenwood Fine Art
330 N. Coast highway,
Laguna Beach, CA 92651

Fatemeh Burnes in her studio: photo courtesy of the artist If you are fortunate enough to see Fatemeh Burnes' exhibition at Mt. San Antonio College -- "Imprints of Nature and Human Nature" -- the variety and quality of the work will likely knock you out. "How is it," you may wonder, "that one artist can do so many things so well?" Part of the answer must be that Burnes, who is a painter/photographer/printmaker, puts herself completely into everything she does. "There are no categories for me, only experiences," she comments, and each of her varied works of art emanates Burnes' phenomenal curiosity and passion for life.

Her works are full of every kind of sensation, and her approach ranges from naturalism to abstraction. Always adventurous -- in life and in art -- Burnes has been astonishingly productive during a period in life that has presented her with tremendous joy and sobering challenges: her much adored first grandchild was born a year and a half ago at the same time that she was enduring radiation treatments for a stubborn tumor. "I have had a very dramatic life," Burnes acknowledges. Her ability to channel the drama of her own experience into works of art, and to inter-relate it with the drama she observes in nature, has resulted in a compelling and varied body of work.

John Seed Interviews Fatemeh Burnes

In her short essay, Shana Nys Dambrot says that you have a "polyamorous" artistic practice that presents your total consciousness. Have you always been so wide-ranging in your creativity?

I've always been very responsive to the moment and therefore very spontaneous and hungry for what surrounds me both conceptually and perceptually. The primary interest for me is to be able to communicate that state of being or what I experience at the time on a larger scale. Sometimes what I want to do is above and beyond what I'm capable of, but what my passion requires of me is to not be restricted by my ability -- I'm not intimidated by what I don't know. I don't look for experimentation, but when the opportunity comes that I find something stimulating I grab onto it. This is also true with the process of art-making, I take chances.

Fatemeh Burnes, "Shattered Mosque," (Blue Revolution Series) 2009-11Oil on canvas, 60 x 72 inches Your work seems to come from your memories, but it doesn't come across as nostalgic. Is it fair to say that when you are making art you are very much in the present?

My work is not autobiographical and I'm not the direct source of my art making. I get inspired by what exists outside of me which ultimately comes to be what's inside of me. There's an famous poem by Saadi Shirazi which basically says that we are all parts of the same body. It states,

"Human beings are members of a whole / In creation of one essence and soul / If one member is afflicted with pain / Other members uneasy will remain / If you've no sympathy for human pain / The name of human you cannot retain!"

I live in the present, and my work is about cause and effect, the human condition. Time is a non-element for me because the concept is not just about history. History simply repeats itself and we are a part of it, contained in its capsule of energy. I don't dwell on the past, but I can't ignore the effect of it, and my work is about how our nature has been impacted by events in human history, and essentially what our nature is about. It's not a slice of time, it's what always continues. Time is evidence of what has always taken place, but for me, it's not about storytelling.

Fatemeh Burnes, "Untitled," (Transluminants Series) digital print suspended in resin In your current show you are displaying your "Transluminants," which are altered digital images that are protected by resin. How long have you been working with this medium?

For the past few years, I have been trying to find a way to display these photographs non-traditionally. I wanted to make them one unit. I started looking at all different options including researching light boxes, experimenting with encaustic, and eventually I ended up with resin. My primary goal is to protect the effect of light because these photographs are palettes of light and movement and secondarily to make them as archival as possible. Each medium has a different effect and interacts with light differently. At this point, what interests me with resin is its accessibility and it's also very sensuous to touch. I love the tactility and the temperature. I also think that conceptually, working with toxins and turning them into beautiful objects that are no longer toxic is a very playful idea.

Fatemeh Burnes, detail of a bird image from "Stripes," 2012Graphite, oil, emulsion, carving and acid on panel, 48 x 72 inches (complete image) The last time I saw your work -- many years ago -- birds were an important image, and they are still appearing in your current work. Can you tell me why they continue to appeal to you?

My last bird painting was called "Stripes." It's ironic that I have to think about the fact that birds have actually left my compositions since last march in my exhibition at Municipal, and I still can't believe it's been a year. The use of birds is probably connected to my childhood and mythology.

At age 8, my cousin and I, with my encouragement, believed we could fly without any wings of wax and jumped off a two-story building. It resulted in broken ribs and more. I've always had interest in birds and what they can do... they sing, dance, fly, they are painterly, musical, tactile, in the air, on the water, or on the rocks. I envy them. I find them strong with a very delicate anatomy, and their evolution interests me as well. This is only on a biological level.

Birds have had a great placement in Persian culture, particularly poetry and mythology. I see people as different birds, even done portraits of people as different birds and most of these birds are made up the way I think of them. Now I think the bird finally is dissolving in my paintings and I'm open to it if it comes back.

Fatemeh Burnes, "Untitled," (Dachau Series) 2010-11Oil, natural pigment and acid on copper, 16 x 32 inches You allude to some of the twentieth centuries most tragic cities -- Hiroshima and Dachau -- in a recent works. Tell me about your decision to deal with cataclysmic subject matter.

And also Islamic Revolution. I don't use these subjects to make any statement, I am just very much affected by the imprints of these tragedies on our daily existence. I study history, genetics, geology, etc. with the curiosity of what role do we take as human beings and how do "we" affect "us," meaning nature? I don't see man as separate from nature, I see man as nature. Our genetics, psychology, and behavior interest me tremendously. By studying these tragedies, I learn everyday more and more of our nature and what we are capable of. I don't make portraits of tragedies, I'm eager to learn and know in a scholarly sense, and then I process what I have learned spontaneously by what I do best, which is make art. I'm like a conduit, and my art-making echoes my curiosity and compassion for us, nature.

Fatemeh Burnes, "Hiroshima," 2012Oil, acid and natural pigment on copper, 36 x 72 inches When I visited your exhibition we talked about how your artistic practice has given you a "safe" place while you have dealt with health issues. Could you say a bit more about that?

When I am working is when I feel most connected to nature -- a nature that I think of and believe in on many levels. During the process of creativity I feel no fears and I'm free and fluid. There are no boundaries, there are no diseases, and it's all about light. It's a place of light and hope.

Fatemeh Burnes, detail of "Nest," 2012Oil and emulsion on copper and hand-carved panel, 44 x 48 inches (complete image) What matters most to you at this point in your life?

The extent of my love for my children and grandchild is unexplainable. I felt the same emotions at Dachau when I sensed the presence of existence and life, or when I would visit an orphanage, or mentor a homeless teenager. What I find different is the energies, how I respond to my grandchild very differently than to my adolescent and my adult children. It's hard to categorize this sensation as just my biological connection -- it's just the opportunity of being intimate, being able to give, to love them and be with them more. What is the most important to me is to continue having this opportunity to love and give through friendship, motherhood, teaching, whatever is possible for me.

Fatemeh Burnes, "Flourish," (Transluminants Series) digital print suspended in resin Is there anything important you would like my readers to know about your life and art?

I have had a very dramatic life from childhood through adolescence and adulthood. I can't help it, and it's kind of entertaining. I don't entertain myself with it because I don't want to even think of it, but sometimes people want to know and it will suddenly occur to me that I am the subject. I am very distant from myself and it requires other people to help remind me of my stories. Beyond memory and nostalgia, what you experience always lives within you, one way or another. I neither fight it nor celebrate it.

Fatemeh Burnes:
Imprints of Nature and Human Nature
March 14-April 21, 2013
Mt. San Antonio College Art Gallery
1100 N. Grand Avenue, Walnut, CA 91789
Gallery Hours:
Tuesday - Thursday 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday Evenings 5 to 7:30 p.m.

"The Museum of Relics," Photocollage by John Seed via Photofunia.com On the 26th of March, several news sources reported that casino magnate Steve Wynn had sold Picasso's 1932 painting "Le Rêve" to hedge fund owner Steven Cohen for $155 million dollars. Mr. Cohen apparently felt like doing some art shopping and image burnishing after having paid a fine of $614 million to settle accusations of insider trading without any admission of guilt. Cohen had been coveting "Le Rêve" for some time, but a previous sale agreement had fallen through after Steve Wynn, who suffers from the degenerative eye disease retinitis pigmentosa, accidentally tore a small hole in the work with his elbow in 2006.

Mr. Wynn, who has a reputation as boss who treats his employees generously, said something quite remarkable a few hours after the painting was damaged:

"My feeling was, it's a picture, it's my picture, we'll fix it. Nobody got sick or died."

Those seem like the words of a man who values people more than he values art. His sentiments - if sincere - mark him as exceptional in an era when blue chip works of art are commanding stratospheric prices that serve as reminders of economic inequality. He is right that even an especially fine Picasso is just a picture.

Just what can you say about a society in which a picture is worth so much when so many are facing poverty? It boggles my mind that one of the four existing versions of Edvard Munch's painting "The Scream" sold last year for $119.9 million. Such a vast sum of money could do so much to relieve suffering, but instead it was spent on a painting of suffering. As the prices of famous works of art rise, are we in some way going backwards in history?

There is something Medieval about the collecting habits of today's super-rich. It goes without saying that the rich have always been the most avid collectors of art, but frenzy at the top of the current art market that suggests that today's collectors are motivated less by the aesthetic value of their purchases than they are by a kind of religious fervor and supernatural faith in the transformative power of their purchases.

Blue chip works of art are now being bought and sold as relics.

Relics were bits and pieces of items that were directly connected to saints and their miraculous lives. During the medieval period splinters from the alleged true cross, finger bones of St. John the Baptist, and even alleged bits of Christ's foreskin -- the Holy Prepuce -- were avidly collected. Huge prices were paid, especially around the time of the crusades, and the market for relics was flooded with fakes. The situation got so bad that in 1287 the pope was given final authority in disputes over the authenticity of relics.

Owning a relic made Medieval collectors feel directly connected to the much venerated saints of the period. Relics also served as guarantees of political prestige and spiritual authority. Encased in lavish gem encrusted containers known as reliquaries, relics made their owners feel holier-than-thou regardless of their actual piety. Relics also were -- and still are -- major attractions for cathedrals, drawing visiting pilgrims by the score and stimulating local economies through tourism. Opposition to the cult of relics was most often treated as heresy.

As you can see, it isn't to hard to draw some comparisons between the way relics were collected and displayed and the way high end art is collected and displayed. Famous artists -- living and dead -- achieve the status of "saints" and collectors transcend their sins by acquiring and displaying physical manifestations of miraculous creativity. Art museums are cathedrals, curators are priests and museum visitors are pilgrims seeking contact with the supernatural in the physical form of works of art.

F. Scott Hess, "Procession," 1988, oil on shaped canvas, 84 x 114 inches If it strikes you that my comparison is a bit facile, keep in mind that works of art really should be appreciated in a very different way than relics. Works of art are meant to use aesthetic means to move us, speak to us, and to inspire us. Great works of art appeal to our senses and to our intellects.

The finest works of art can speak directly to you in a transcendent language, and the dialogue you can have with them benefits from education and maturity. In other words, great works of art say the most to those who take them in with the greatest receptivity and consideration. There is a reason that works made during and after the Italian Renaissance appeal to us in different ways than Medieval works of art: they come from a tradition that was opened up and enriched by Humanist thinking and the rich philosophical and mythical content of Greco-Roman civilization.

Relics appeal to something else: our need to project piety and to advertise our connection to those who apparently have or had extraordinary powers. Relics can serve the wealthy as a way of cleansing their reputations and deflecting criticism of their actual deeds and actions. It doesn't require education to appreciate a relic: their holiness doesn't require aesthetic appreciation which is replaced by superstition and a humble sense of awe. All you have to do to get the full effect of a relic is to be in its presence.

One more thing about relics: although they were often displayed beautifully, relics themselves are not beautiful because they didn't have to be. Finger bones, bits of skull, and scraps of holy shrouds generally aren't much to look at. Neither are the innumerable giclée prints of Thomas Kinkade, but his "DNA Matrix™" was added to the mechanical signatures on his works to gives his works the vibe of relics. Unfortunately, the observation that cult followings can boost the price of works of art isn't just a feature of the Kinkade market.

Thirty years ago when I briefly worked for art dealer Larry Gagosian -- who was a young dealer just starting his career -- one of his clients said something to me that I have never forgotten. "Larry," he commented, "doesn't have a great eye for art. He has a great ear for art." I have thought about that remark for a long time. The way I have come to understand it is to acknowledge that it wasn't necessary for an aspiring art dealer to have a keen visual or aesthetic sense. What mattered was an "ear" for names and market trends.

Collectors all around the world want "names" because fame sells and because works by famous artists seem to keep their value in an increasingly superstitious and brand-conscious culture. Interestingly, as the super-rich around the globe pay vast sums for works by the art world's saints, artist's foundations and estates are scrambling to get out of the business of authenticating works: both the Basquiat and Warhol estate have ceased giving authentications due to an excess of contentious lawsuits. Perhaps the new pope could step in and help.

I want to make it clear that when the market treats great works of art as "relics" they may still be great works of art. I have a high regard for the works of Picasso, Rothko, Bacon and others whose works have recently brought supernatural prices. What concerns me is that their works -- as Steven Wynn would point out -- are just pictures, not people. Mr. Wynn's Picasso was apparently pretty easy for a good conservator to patch up: human beings aren't nearly so easy to fix.

I recently asked Michael Pearce -- an Associate Professor of Art at Cal Lutheran University, and the driving force behind last year's TRAC 2012 Representational Art Conference -- how he liked to spend his time when not involved with art. His reply took the form of a question:

"What else is there?"

Pearce is currently on sabbatical from teaching, but doesn't seem a bit interested in sitting by the pool. During his time away from the classroom he is continuing to work on his personal mission: changing the course of art history.

Two weekends ago Michael Pearce gathered a select group of writers, academics and museum directors in an upscale hotel conference room, and gave them six hours to chat through a list of ten questions including one of his personal favorites: "What is the place of beauty in contemporary representational art?" The symposium, and the seven course meal that followed demonstrated one of Pearce's strengths: he knows how to bring people together, make them comfortable and get them talking. The event was also -- in Pearce's words -- a "call to arms," intended to generate wider discussion on the future of representational art.

"Michael has an unrelenting dedication to the revival of skill-based art education in the academy," observes Pearce's friend and colleague Michael Lynn Adams. In all his projects Pearce has the full support of Cal Lutheran's President Chris Kimball, and a campus gallery -- the Kwan Fong Gallery -- where exhibitions and demonstrations by representational artists make his vision tangible.

Michael Pearce Pearce first went public with his ambitions as director of TRAC, held in Ventura last October. The conference, which was attended by over 150 people, was developed around an assertion that Michael and his co-organizers share: that there has been a "neglect of critical appreciation of representational art well out of proportion to its quality and significance." Attendees heard critic Jed Perl tell them that they live in a "time when authenticity is embattled." and they seemed to eat it up. Dr. Kay Kane, a lecturer in Life Drawing who came all the way from Australia to attend, later wrote: "I came away from the conference with an overwhelming feeling of excitement at the ideas, both visual and intellectual, to which I had been exposed."

Of course, the term "representation" is quite broad, but the TRAC conference mainly drew artists whose tastes and methods are rooted in the long lineage of pre- 20th century European painting traditions. Pearce himself has a taste for the works of Bouguereau and the Pre-Raphaelites, and feels that Impressionism was a detour that led to Duchamp knocking beauty right off the highway of art history. Not surprisingly, Postmodernism, with its tendency to favor ideas over skill and irony over sincerity, is an approach that Pearce sees as exhausted. As Postmodernism wanes and wilts, Michael Pearce is optimistic that beauty, skill and engagement are waiting in the wings, ready to spread their wings and fly again.

I recently spoke to Michael, and asked more about his background, his views, and the planning for the second TRAC conference.

John Seed Interviews Michael Pearce:Can you tell me a bit about how and when you came to the US?

I'm a classic US immigrant. I landed here on my birthday in 1990, with a backpack and $1,000, which didn't last long. England was miserable in those days - everyone I knew was unemployed. I came here because I'd been given a scholarship to do an MFA and a job as a teaching assistant at USC, which was a fantastic deal - I got paid to be a student in California! While I was at USC I had the good luck to meet Ruth Weisberg and take her Life Drawing class, and I've kept in touch with her ever since. I deeply admire her.

All I knew about California came from reading Tom Wolfe, so everything was new to me. I lived in a hot pink house in West Hollywood with an elderly, profoundly alcoholic white ex-actor and his young Korean businessman partner. They adored each other. Our other roommate was a hippie girl from Santa Cruz who wanted to be a movie star. I was given a motorcycle, which I promptly crashed, so I bought a beat-up backfiring old jeep. I loved driving that car around LA, along palm-lined boulevards.

You remember that Talking Heads song: "You may find yourself in another part of the world. You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile. You may ask yourself, 'Well, how did I get here?'" I sang that song over and over again.

What educational and aesthetic experiences shaped you most powerfully?

Before I came to the United States I had been a theatre student at Dartington College, in the South-West of England. The people who established the college loved Rudolph Steiner's ideas about education, so it was an extraordinarily creative environment, where wonderful stuff happened.

You might walk up the mile long driveway to get to class, watching a steam train puff its way alongside the winding river in the valley below, and encounter a group of students dressed up as Edwardians wandering through the fields with umbrellas and balloons, then have to jump out of the way as a group of naked people painted blue ran past. I felt very comfortable there, because that sort of thing was going on in my head all the time. Looking back on it, I don't think I really learned performance there so much as I learned how to manifest my imagination, and I think you can see that in my paintings, which are both performative and idea-driven. It's as if being at Dartington gave me permission to have ideas and share them without worrying about them. The problem isn't coming up with ideas for paintings, it's about choosing which ones will work well.

The other formative educational experience for me was doing my PhD, which was all about using Prehistoric art and architecture to make contemporary art. I loved exploring ancient landscapes and sacred spaces and deciphering the traces of things that had once been normal and ordinary, but which became completely mysterious. I didn't know it then, but it was the beginning of a long creative journey into symbolism that I have absolutely loved making.

How do you respond/react if someone characterizes you as "conservative" in your aesthetic tastes?

Appreciating representational art isn't a characteristic of being conservative; it's a characteristic of being human. We've been making representational art for forty thousand years. I have tremendous faith in perennial truths, but I've got little interest in nostalgia and imitation. I want to emulate the great artists of the past but I want to make paintings that are relevant to the present.

"Conservative" implies looking backward, but I'm glad that the 20th Century's over. I think the 21st Century offers so much cause for optimism; the world wars are passing out of memory and becoming history. New ideas about emergence that are coming out of science are exciting, optimistic and truthful, about things being bigger than the sum of their parts. I want to make art that reflects that.

You once told me in an e-mail -- speaking about TRAC and its supporters -- that "We are Postmodern." Can you expand on that?

The postmodern period is an uneasy time in which we are still shaping the ideas that will follow modernity - it's like the fifteenth century, when the ideas that would form the renaissance were gathering, but hadn't yet fully emerged from the late medieval. This transitional period is post-modern in just the same way that period was post-medieval.

Postmodernity is a condition, not an ideology. We're all postmodern simply because we happen to live in the era after modernity; there's a difference between living in an era and embracing a description of it as an ideology.

We seem to be fascinated by seeking definition for whatever follows modernity because we desire cultural focus, but it took until the sixteenth century for Vasari to name the renaissance. I expect the new age will be named with retrospect in a hundred years or so. I think democratic choice will be a major force driving art. The times are uniquely suited to it.

You seem to have remarkable drive and energy. What motivates you?

Genes? My mother is a very strong woman; she's a retired medical Doctor who practiced Radiology, and associate Dean of a University medical school. My father was an RAF squadron leader who flew bombers during the cold war. Living up to their example is quite a challenge.

In 1997 I rolled that backfiring jeep over on the Hollywood freeway, completely destroying it. I wound up in hospital, covered in blood. That wreck woke me up to the reality that life can be taken away JUST LIKE THAT. It was a revelation on the road to San Fernando. I remember thinking that if I had died I wouldn't have left behind much to be proud of, with the exception of my kids. I felt the need to serve very strongly, and to do everything I could to make the world better doing what I was good at, painting and designing. My ex-wife said "you should be teaching art". And she was right - I loved it, and still do. I love those moments when students "get it" and discover their ability. I feel the pressure of time very strongly - one day I'm going to die - so I paint, write or study daily.

If I were to say to you that Postmodernism is and has been "The Academy" for the past 30 years how would you respond?

Longer. I'd say the art academy has been dominated by postmodernism since as early as 1970, but that the roots of that dominance stretch back to at least the early 1900's. Establishment art is predictably nihilistic.

It's also tedious seeing endless imitations of Duchamp's toilet gag. In the last century we asked the question it posed about art and context a million times using bits of string, bricks and poo. There's not much mileage left in it. I imagine a bored Duchamp looking at that kind of derivative work saying: "Are you kidding me? I did that a hundred years ago." and turning back to the chessboard to move his Queen to Kb5 for a tidy checkmate. He was quite good at chess.

Are you optimistic that a new appreciation of art that requires skill and which is unashamed of being beautiful is growing?

Yes. People are hungry for it. We all love beauty, and we always will. Nihilism is an unsustainable, self-defeating ideology. I'm optimistic about the growing appreciation for emergent art that looks at all the things that have been sidelined - for example: realism (which is foundational to skill-based art), spirituality, authenticity and allegory. But I think we have work to do. The hand of the artist is back in the work, the ateliers provide technical training, now it's time to set imagination free and allow her to inspire fabulous, wonderful art that epitomizes these democratic choices. I think we have yet to create the exemplars of those choices.

When Michael Lynn Adams and I established the representational art conference in 2012 the reaction it got was extraordinary - it was as if we gave water to people in the desert. It's the only academic conference I know of that makes people truly joyful. In 2014 our keynote speakers are Roger Scruton, who did the lovely BBC2 show Why Beauty Matters, and Juliette Aristides, the prominent author and one of the leaders of the atelier movement. I hope you'll join us there, because it's the only conference out there that examines 21st century representational art - it's something quite unique. It's scheduled for March 2nd - 5th 2014 in Ventura, California.

http://trac2014.org

Brandon Kralik, an American born painter who lives and works in Sweden, recently attended the Paris open house of his former teacher, Odd Nerdrum. Over 100 of Nerdrum's paintings were on view, and a special concert was performed, but the painter himself was absent. I am appointing Brandon "guest blogger" so that you can read his report about the event, and also view a video and slideshow. - John Seed

L to R: Painters Brandon Kralik and Nanne Nyander with composer Martin Romberg On an otherwise sunny day, a dark thundercloud passed over the sprawling gardens of the Nerdrum's home in Maisons-Laffitte. "Nature providing a little drama for Odd," commented the artist's son Bork Spildo Nerdrum as the rain passed and an international group of collectors, painters and admirers ga thered from around the world to see this most special exhibition of paintings.They crowded the huge rooms to see over 100 works by this most interesting, and arguably the best, of all figurative painters and to hear the special concert arranged by the composer Martin Romberg as wine and hors d'oeurves were served.

Romberg composed a piece to accompany Nerdrum's latest masterpiece, "To the Lighthouse" and the composer stood by as pianist Michael Cheung performed it in front of the painting. Cellist Marcus Eriksen and violist Sarah Niblack joined Cheung for live performances of Sibelius and Arvo Pärt compositions as well. The entire event was presented in grand style at Nerdrum's private residence and studio outside Paris which was opened to the public on April 19, 2013 for just three days. A miracle of rare device!

The event was arranged by the Nerdrum Museum, Galleri Pan of Oslo and Galerie L'Oeil du Prince of Paris, and was opened by Gerald Bliem of Galleri Pan who spoke of the challenges that Odd Nerdrum has faced during the past decade with regards to his cruel treatment from the Norwegian tax authorities. The Norwegian Supreme Court recently overturned a 2 year 10 month prison sentence and now the painter awaits a new trial which will present new evidence in the case. Nerdrum's new book, "Crime and Refuge," depicts these challenges by presenting a collection of Nerdrum's paintings with its focus on the theme of the refugee.

Nerdrum's son, Bork, presented the book which was released for the first time at the opening. The forwards to the book are written by Norwegian author Nabintu Herland, who was on hand for the opening and Gregory David Roberts, acclaimed author of Shantaram and although he could not attend the opening, his wife, Princess Françoise Sturdza of Switzerland were among several hundred people in attendance.

To see Nerdrum's work in person is important if one is to understand how large his contribution is, both literally and figuratively. Every room in the house was full of paintings by this man who has chronicled his life and the full range of human experience as no other painter has. From the soft, gentle paintings of children in their mothers arms, of families and groups of individuals bathing and lounging in the sunset by the waterside, to the despair, the alienation, and backstabbing that seems to inevitably accompany human beings as we fumble for grace during our dance to the grave.

The huge stone staircase leading up to the second floor of the exhibition was lined with paintings of mistreated animals which, alongside haunting images like Dustlickers and Five Singing Women gave the viewer a distinct impression that Nerdrum knows exactly what he is doing. He is no mad artist.

In the Cognac room there were many books by Nerdrum containing not only paintings but also volumes of essays, prose and plays. In this one room, the smallest of all the rooms, were dozens of small portraits of former students who have come from all over the world to learn from him and Nerdrum has given freely to those who have wandered his way.

An iMac on the table played the films that he has conceived and which have been made by his sons, Øde and Bork. Although the other rooms were spacious with inlaid wood floors, chandeliers and vaulted ceilings, the paintings were so large that there was room for only one per wall in most cases. The life size figures floating midway on transparent lakes, suspended in space or singing by caves, measureless to man, allows one to forget that these are paintings at all and transports the viewer into the full emotion of the song, into the longing for the dawn.

For me that is an important aspect of Nerdrum's work, to forget that it is a painting, to be absorbed by ancestral voices, and in doing so, to catch a fleeting glimpse of what was there, who we were before the turmoil, when there was just eternal emptiness. Peace. The fact that hundreds of people traveled to enjoy this experience with me reminds me that I am not alone.

Throughout the house were easels and palettes and evidence that he had been there, although Nerdrum himself was customarily not present.

In his studio, with the huge fireplace the guests found themselves in the company of five over-sized paintings on easels, the figures communicating through gestures, through paint. Beyond the brushes soaking in oil, the 200 ml tubes of paint with indentations from large hands, lids missing and piles of discarded paint scrapings, stood a skeleton wearing Nerdrum's clothing. In his timelessness, he takes us beyond his own death, in this life, by giving us an exhibition of paintings that all who made the effort to attend can be eternally grateful for.

-Brandon Kralik

The hallway leading to Nerdrum's studio -- Photo: Brandon Kralik

Composer Martin Romberg, Pianist Michael Cheung, Cellist Marcus Eriksen -- Photo: Delphine Margau

Nanne Nyander and Brandon Kralik with Odd Nerdrum's "Five Singing Women" -- Photo: Gro Raugland

Nanne Nyander descends the staircase with Nerdrum's "Tortured Animal" series on view --

Photo: Brandon Kralik

The painter's studio and palette -- Photo: Brandon Kralik

Painter David Della Venezzia and Galleri Pan owner Gerald Bliem with Nerdrum's "To the Lighthouse" -- Photo: Brandon Kralik

Odd Nerdrum's Paris home and studio -- Photo: Øde Spildo Nerdrum

Nerdrum's Studio -- Photo: Nixon St. Hilaire

Violist Sarah Niblack, pianist Michael Cheung -- Photo: Delphine Margau

"Art produces ugly things which frequently become beautiful with time."

- Jean Cocteau

Although I pride myself on having wide ranging taste in art, there are some artists that consistently rub me the wrong way. There is one major American sculptor in particular whose work I don't care for.

Yes, I am a Richard Serra disliker.

Before I go further I should clarify something: I don't dislike Richard Serra personally. I had the chance to meet him when an exhibition of his was being installed at a gallery where I worked in the early 1980s, and he was very pleasant to me. He was immensely intelligent, and I enjoyed having the chance to drive him on a few errands and hear him talk about art. Serra has a temper -- I watched him chew out the photographer who had been hired to document his installation -- but I figure that "fiery" can be sign of integrity. As I gained a generally positive impression of Richard Serra the man, the two massive pieces of battleship armor that I saw installed in the gallery floor were charming me less than he was. Over time, and after periodically viewing many more Serra installations, I still haven't warmed up to Serra the artist.

I think that Serra's work is vastly over-rated, pompous and inhuman. I think that most of the credit for the presence found in Serra's steel pieces should go to the foundry in Germany that fabricates them. Serra strikes me as an aesthetic bully whose installations are imposing to the point of actually intimidating the public meant to appreciate them. I do, however, think that Serra's large steel pieces sometimes make nice backgrounds for photographs of people. So do rusting battleships.

OK, my opinion is out there now: I'm in trouble, right?

Richard Serra: Sculpture - Gagosian Gallery, London. Gallery 3: Fernando Pessoa (2007-08), Weatherproof Steel. Photo by Matthew Retallick
By airing out a private judgement in public I have given you -- the reader -- the opportunity to judge my taste against your own opinions and biases. If you agree with me you respect me more and if you disagree we are now at odds. As human beings we are always most comfortable around others who share our taste. We are naturally insecure around those who disagree with us, and when the matter involves taste things get quite personal.

Taste is art is about a kind of freedom: the freedom of preference. Each of us likes what we like and nobody can or should define our taste for us. If a student tells me "I love Thomas Kinkade!" I try to keep my disdain in check and congratulate them on having a passion for art. At the same time, I also get ready to offer them a broader range of art to look at. I believe that the proper way to teach art appreciation is to expose not to indoctrinate.

When I find myself getting too smug about my own taste, I keep humble by reminding myself of something I call the "green eggs and ham syndrome." Years of looking at art have taught me that sometimes something that I have been rejecting morphs into a source of pleasure. "I like green eggs and ham!" I suddenly exclaim...

When a work of art that we previously found puzzling, unsatisfying or even repellent suddenly enchants us, an internal boundary is erased. According to the British writer and philosopher G. K. Chesterton, all art involves "drawing a line somewhere." Challenging works of art dare us to cross the line of our preference and to even change our notion of what may or may not be art at all. Expanding the boundaries of taste offers an exciting prospect: new pleasures.

One of the reasons I read art criticism is that individual critics hold out the prospect of new discoveries. Of course, I reserve the right to disagree. My disdain for the works of Richard Serra puts me directly at odds with the views of an art critic that I genuinely admired, the late Robert Hughes. Here is what Hughes wrote in the Guardian after viewing Serra's installation at the Guggenheim Bilbao in June of 2005:

"Let's come right out with it: on the basis of his installation of one old and seven new rolled steel sculptures at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, we can call Richard Serra not only the best sculptor alive, but the only great one at work anywhere in the early 21st century."

That is high praise from a man that had extraordinary erudition. Just re-reading it activates some insecurity on my part: could I possibly be completely wrong about Richard Serra? Then again one's taste is never "wrong," even though people will tell you that it is.

Am I six months away from discovering a work of Richard Serra that I find immensely moving and beautiful? Is one of Richard Serra's curving walls of COR-TEN steel going to be my green eggs and ham? Possibly...

Of course, this blog isn't about Richard Serra. What I want to write about is the mutability of taste. Whenever I lay out my own opinion about art I do so realizing that my taste is not stable: it's development is an ongoing project. I have written enough to sometimes be called a critic, but I'm too aware of my own intellectual capriciousness to take on that responsibility just yet. I worry that declaring myself a critic would result in more people being critical of me.

Critics play a role in the way that taste is transformed into commerce, so they occupy a hot spot in the art world. One of my Facebook friends -- an artist -- recently had a few choice things to say about art critics on his Facebook status:

"I am so sick of these so called art critics who don't know shit. A friend asked recently: How does someone become an art critic? My reply: Well, first you have to fail or give up completely at being an actual artist. From there you find a way to tell other artists how to be good artists."

Those comments hit home because I am an artist turned writer. And yes, there is something very appealing about becoming a larger fish in the art pond and having the chance to give patronizing advice and pronounce judgement. Having my brief public rant about Richard Serra was very satisfying: it let me, the failed artist, connect with a nice juicy revenge fantasy. Frankly, it also felt good to disagree with Robert Hughes, who became a critic after "failing" as a painter.

Could it be that my reactions are petty and personal? It is certainly possible, just as it is similarly possible for anyone who pronounces judgments about taste. I keep in mind that while a particular critic or commentator may be broadly exposed and profoundly learned, they are human too.

Despite being a "Serra disliker" I recently took some time to read a blog by Ed Schad, who wrote a review of a Richard Serra drawing exhibition now on view in Los Angeles. In his blog, he talks about the way that Serra's works have a kind of force of nature about them, and makes this observation:

"Nature is at best apathetic of us and the enormity of its silence and disregard of us has a strange way of making us seem precious and unimportant at the same time."

In other words, some of the same things that have made me hostile to Serra's works -- their uncompromising force and intimidating presence -- are directly connected to the aspects that Ed found so moving and profound. Ed's blog in itself is so beautiful that it made me promise myself to go see the Serra show. Part of me hopes that Serra's works will live up to Ed's praise. Part of me also hopes I don't like the show, so I won't have to change my mind.

Your taste is who you are. My taste and I are both human, flawed, and always evolving.

For the time being I remain a Serra disliker. What about you?

There is a silence about the works of painter Vonn Sumner. His canvases ask his viewers a question that takes a moment to consider: do you want to laugh, or cry, or both?

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2013-05-14-15.Defense_2013_oilonpanel_18x18inches001.jpg

Vonn Sumner, "Defense," 2013, oil on panel, 18 x 18 inches Vonn's upcoming show "Somewhere Else" features a suite of paintings that form a kind of personal Commedia dell'Arte, whose main actor has a tragic, muted air. Sumner is wise enough to know how to engage you in his theater and also smart enough to stand back and let you react on your own terms. The paintings are generous, funny and just a bit opaque.

Sumner, whose father Richard ran a Palo Alto frame store and gallery grew up looking at art and thinking it over very carefully. Echoes of Bay Area painting, flavors gleaned from Morandi, Guston and Magritte and a hint of Buster Keaton come together in his recent works through the filter of a sly, discerning intelligence.

John Seed Interviews Vonn Sumner

Vonn Sumner -- Photo: Eric Minh Swenson Vonn, you grew up in the Bay Area and got your MA at UC Davis. How have the traditions of Bay Area painting stayed alive in your work?

In many ways: There was a David Park show at the Palo Alto Cultural Center when I was in high school that was a life changing event. I went to see it every weekend, it had a physical effect on me. Also, those painters had a love of art history, of the traditions of painting, but also could not ignore the new artistic developments and anxieties of their time. With the 'Bay Area Figurative' painters especially, there was a desire to bring the processes and premises of non-objective painting together with the timeless project of representing the human form. That same question is something I try to grapple with every day in my own way.

Your images often manage to mix humor and commentary. Is it important for you to have both of these elements in everything you do?

Well, they need each other, don't they? Lisa Simpson needs Homer; Chuck D needs Flavor Flav; Karl Marx needs Groucho. Social commentary alone can become didactic, orthodox, simplistic and boring. Pure silliness and absurdity can become nihilistic and trivial. I am for the complexity and contradictions that come when both of those elements are simultaneous--I think that is more honest, more fully human, and therefore more subversive.

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2013-05-14-4.Reliquary_2012_oiloncanvas_60x48inches001.jpg

Vonn Sumner, "Reliquary," 2012, oil on canvas, 60 x 48 inches Your painting "Reliquary" includes a shrouded figure decorated with roses. What are some of the ideas behind that image?

For me, the decisions in making a painting are largely intuitive. There is no literal idea or narrative I am trying to execute or illustrate. I can say generally that I work with materials and imagery that feel "right," and that I work toward an image that resonates with me at the time. I'm also interested in breathing new life into old conventions, like portraiture. With "Reliquary" in particular, it felt both ridiculous/absurd and also somehow melancholic or mournful.

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2013-05-15-10.NeoByzantine_2013_oiloncanvas_20x18inches001.jpg

Vonn Sumner, "Neo-Byzantine," 2013, oil on canvas, 20 x 18 inches Many of your recent works appear to be self-portraits: are they?

I actually don't think of them as self-portraits, even though I am often using my own body/face as the figure. Instead, I think of them as just "heads" or "figures" in a generic sense.

An analogy might be that a filmmaker can write a script and then act in a particular part because he knows what he wants for the role more than the role is autobiographical or about "self." Also, since I am often putting the figures in a state of potential humiliation, I think on some level I feel more comfortable doing that to myself than to other people.

Since we don't -- as far as I know -- choose our bodies when we are born, I think of it almost as a kind of "readymade" or a given; like Jasper Johns using the stencil letters and numbers you get from a hardware store, a kind of neutral decision in some way. Bruce Nauman's work was influential in this regard, as was Joseph Beuys, though he was more overtly "autobiographical"-- if perhaps fictional. I do take photos, but don't stay too faithful to them and throw them out as soon as possible so as to let memory and invention take over and just be present to the painting.

Can you tell me the names of artists who have influenced you? What have you borrowed from them?

That is a dangerous question, I could talk all day... First, I will say that I give myself permission to steal from anyone and anything. My job is to make it my own. But some of the main influences: Philip Guston, Balthus, Giacometti, de Chirico, Morandi, Goya, Piero, Giotto, and the Italian "Primitives" - especially the Siennese like Sassetta, Duccio, etc.

Among current painters, I like Peter Doig as well as the 'New Leipzig School' painters from Germany, I feel a certain kindred spirit with some of them. But I also love abstract painters like Sean Scully, Terry Winters, Brice Marden, Nozkowsky. I loved Amy Silman's last show in New York, I think she has found an exciting way to address the question of how to combine abstract painting and figuration.

I have to add that many of my main influences are from cartoonists and filmmakers. People like Daniel Clowes and Chris Ware, Art Spiegelman, R. Crumb. The Marvel comics of the 80s had a profound effect on me growing up.

At Davis, my teacher/ mentor Wayne Thiebaud introduced me to George Herriman's "Krazy Kat." And Wayne made it clear that he took that very seriously: that cartoonists and "commercial artists" like that were not to be condescended to but to be seen as artistic equals. That had a huge impact on me and validated how much comic books and even children's book illustrations had influenced my wanting to draw in the first place. Some of the earliest and most impactful pictures that anyone sees are the drawings and paintings in children's books. Similarly, I think Alfred Hitchcock and the old Film Noir movies are probably a major influence on my work, as is Buster Keaton. I worship Buster Keaton.

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2013-05-14-16.Action_2013_oilonpanel_18x17inches_web001.jpg

Vonn Sumner, "Action," 2013, oil on panel, 18 x 17 inches You have explained that your work "attempts to reconcile the exterior objective world with my subjective experience of it." Can you expand on that?

It's hard to talk about. I remember since childhood being struck by the distance between what was going on in the "objective" /observable world and what I was feeling and experiencing in my "subjective" inner world. I think that is one of the main reasons that artists make art: to bridge that gap and communicate, to bring what is inside and show it to the outside, to make the invisible visible. And this is not only an intellectual or an emotional thing; this is also about the physical experience of being in a body. Painting is uniquely equipped for addressing the body, for projecting the physical experience of the painter and producing an empathy in the body of the viewer.

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2013-05-15-7.Parlance_2013_oilonpanel_24x20inches001.jpg

Vonn Sumner, "Parlance," 2013, oil on panel, 24 x 20 inchesWhat direction do you expect your work to take in the future?

Of course, I don't know, and the not-knowing is part of the point. In general, though, I hope to grow and push my work into a place that I can't yet envision. More specifically, one thing I can say is that I have always really been interested in the territory where painting and drawing overlap and the boundaries between the two disciplines are blurred. That is part of my interest in Giacometti, and I think late Guston addresses that. Picasso's black and white paintings deal with that directly. And I am increasingly interested in the ink painting traditions of China and Japan. The directness and simplicity of that painting is amazing. So there is something there that I have yet to fully explore and I hope to find a way to invent my own version of that painted-drawing or drawn-painting thing. That is very exciting territory to me.

Vonn Sumner - Somewhere Else
Merry Karnowsky Gallery
170 S. La Brea Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90036
Exhibition Dates: May 18 - June 15, 2013
Opening Reception: Saturday, May 18 from 8 to 11pm
Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 12 - 6pm

Sadegh Tirafkan (1965-2013)
Photo: Gallery Etemad, Dubai
Artist/Photographer Sadegh Tirafkan, who passed away in Toronto on May 9th of brain cancer, was a distinctive and complex individualist. Although deeply influenced by his Iranian heritage -- his work was about roots and identity -- he resisted labels; "I never want to be categorized by a singular place or category," is how he once put it.

"Sadegh's works speak volume about the loss of individuality or rather markers of individuality in our current age where crowds and collectivism are the norm," says his friend Jareh Das. "Where Tirafkan focuses on the individual -- as in his 'Loss of Our Identity' series -- he presents the individual as a complex character constantly vying between past and present, ancient and modern belief systems."

Tirafkan's childhood and adolescence were shaped by the grand forces of war and revolution. Born in 1965 to devout Muslim Iranian parents living in Iraq, the rise of Saddam Hussein forced his family's return to Iran in 1970. After the overthrow of the Shah in 1979, 14 year old Sadegh volunteered to serve in the Basiji, the poorly equipped people's militia whose soldiers ranged from teenaged schoolboys to unemployed seventy year olds.

Often acting in conjunction with the Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard some Basiji participated in suicidal "human wave" attacks against Iraq designed to clear minefields and draw enemy fire. Inspired by patriotism and promises of eternal glory Basiji militiamen marched into battle in successive rows, wearing plastic "keys to paradise" around their necks.

Tirafkan served for three years as a cultural militiaman, living alongside other young Basiji members in a mosque where they carried out collective rituals in honor of the martyrdom of Inman Hussein, the Prophet Mohammed's grandson. His interests at the time were cultural and aesthetic -- "film, theater and anthems" -- but he also learned to shoot a rifle. Tirafkan later wrote that "...spending the best decade of my life in the middle of a revolution and war had taught me so much, I don't think I would have ever been able to have the same experience just through reading or watching a movie about this time."

In 1984 Tirafkan entered Tehran Fine Art University to study photography. At the time, Iran's Revolutionary atmosphere demanded that photographers train as photojournalists who could create documentary work to serve political purposes. To satisfy his university requirements, Tirafkan took conventional photographs of streets and people, but did so with an acuity and restlessness that hints at his later themes and interests.

Sadegh Tirafkan, "A Church in the Julfa Neighborhood: Esfahan," 1989, photographic print © The Estate of Sadegh Tirafkan
After graduating in 1989 he was given a government voucher that allowed him to subscribe to a magazine called "Creative Camera" which gave him precious glimpses of western photography. In an atmosphere in which gharbzadegi -- "Westoxification" -- was seen as a direct threat to Iranian cultural identity, this kind of access was rare and carefully controlled. Following his 1990 one man show of portraits at the Seyhoun Gallery in Tehran, Tirafkan came across an article about the American photographer Cindy Sherman, which a friend was able to translate for him. "After reading the article," he later recounted, "I knew that another kind of photography existed which was very different from what we knew as art photography."

An invitation to exhibit in Paris then opened up a career outside of Iran, including a brief period of living in New York in 1997. Interestingly, Tirakfan's time in the west had the effect of putting him more deeply in touch with his Iranian cultural and aesthetic roots. Now a practicing postmodernist Tirafkan returned home to create "Persepolis" -- Iran's first conceptual video installation -- in which the artist poses amidst the ruins of ancient Iran's ancient imperial city.

A video still from "Persepolis" © The Estate of Sadegh Tirafkan
Defining himself as a conceptual artist with roots in photography, Tirafkan's mature photographs, digital collages, installations, and videos became vehicles that allowed him to explore the themes that would preoccupy him until his death: masculinity and identity. He would explore these themes in a way that wove the threads of his own life and experience into the vast and ancient tapestry of Iranian culture.

Sadegh Tirafkan, "Iranian Man," 2000, c-print © The Estate of Sadegh Tirafkan
Writing about his photo series "Iranian Man" in 2007 Tirafkan explained his underlying ideas and cultural contexts:

My initial inspiration for this series came from looking at ancient drawings, existing in places such as Takht Jamshid and Perspolis. In this series of pictures, a man is hiding his face behind a red cloth/towel, which should usually cover the lower body; maybe he is ashamed of his past. We can't see his face, but he has a sword in his hands. But in some images, you may notice that his hand is up and seems like he is about to give up, maybe after all, he is tired of putting up the veneer of toughness... maybe he is ready to quit.

Tirfafkan served as his own model for the "Iranian Man" series, and his bare torso -- decorated with block stamping, calligraphy, and tattoos -- often appeared in later photos and videos. In his "Body Signs" and "Body Curves" series words spelling fire, water, renewal, secrets -- and also single letters -- stand for the artist's psyche while the stamps represent symbols of Iranian popular culture. Tirafkan once commented that "...flesh is the canvas branded by culture." These series -- and others that followed -- also demonstrated the artist's willingness to expose the male body, breaking down another Iranian cultural taboo.

Sadegh Tirafkan, "Body Curves," 2001-02, stamps and hand written calligraphy on silver print © The Estate of Sadegh Tirafkan
The confessional aspect of Tirafkan's self-portraits gave way over time to digital collages that made broader cultural commentaries. In the last decade of his life Tirafkan orchestrated layered vignettes of heroisim, athletic prowess and self-flagellation. His "Endless" series frames images of daggers and combat in a kind of dance of death and intimacy. These digital collages represent one of the artist's ongoing projects: an attempt to represent "...a different side of my culture through images to address cultural and religious aspects of where I came from and their homoerotic and homosocial potential."

Sadegh Tirafkan, "Multitude #3," 2008, digital collage©The Estate of Sadegh Tirafkan
In 2006 the artist turned his interest to the problem's of Iran's growing population. Using digital collage, and adopting the metaphor of a human carpet, he created his "Multitudes." The idea of the carpet, as he explained in an exhibition catalog, allowed him to address a rich and inter-connected set of ideas:

The carpet is emblematic of Persian culture. It is a symbol of culture, seasonality, richness, diversity and continuity - in time and in history. As such I have been obsessed by the parallelism and marriage between this symbolic, intricately loomed object and the people to which it belongs.

Sadegh Tirafkan, "The Loss of Our Identity #2," 2008, digital collage© The Estate of Sadegh Tirafkan
Another series of digital collages -- "The Loss of Our Identity" -- sets cultural images and emblems against the features of contemporary Iranians. Tirafkan's friend Jareh Das recalls being deeply captivated by "Loss of Our Identity #2":

This photo montage quietly speaks of the silencing of females which I must say isn't just a Middle Eastern concern but universal. To be seen and not heard could be a literal interpretation of the work as her eyes gaze piercingly whilst her mouth obscured by the decorative motif of male royalty. Its a work I keep going back to and have been captivated by since I first encountered it.

Sadegh Tirafkan, Always in Our Thoughts, 2011© The Estate of Sadegh Tirafkan
In 2011 Tirafkan exhibited a suite of multimedia columns referencing the hijla -- temporary shrines to commemorate the dead -- titled "Always in Our Thoughts." Conscious of his own mortality, he had been struggling with cancer for three years at the time, but remained hopeful that his mother's prayers would help him defeat the disease. Wrapped in strips of cloth that allude to the bits of fabric tied to traditional hijla in remembrance of the dead, these final projects transformed and updated an ancient way of coping with grief, as Tirafkan explained in an interview:

With Hijla, I wanted to present a gift from the living to the deceased in their honor, but to also celebrate life. The word actually means marriage, and traditionally it's an image of a deceased man, but I wanted to break the taboos and use pictures of living people and also women and include mirrors, so that the viewer can share in the celebration.

In his final decade Tirafkan made regular visits to the U.S. and Canada, but remained an Iranian in his heart, deeply proud of his culture. Acclaimed both in Iran and in the west, the artist who had begun his life as a boy revolutionary died a revolutionary of another kind.

"My goal is to demonstrate that all the people regardless of gender, culture and religion are indeed seeking inner peace and sanctity." - Sadegh Tirafkan

A celebration of Sadegh Tirafkan's Life will be held at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tehran, Wednesday, May 29th, 5 to 7 PM

Israel Hershberg: Fields of Vision

Hassel Smith: A Free Spirit Remembered

Kyle Staver: Into the Mythological Zone

Lawrence Gipe "Salon" at Lora Schlesinger Gallery

About Me and My Blog

Astrid Preston: New Territory at Craig Krull Gallery

A Report from The Assar Gallery: Contemporary Art in Iran

Duane Keiser: A Painting A Day

Dan McCleary: The Mentor

When Art Becomes a Movie Star

Dominic Cretara at the Triton Museum of Art

Anne Harris: "Phantasmatical: Self-Portraits" at Alexandre Gallery

Suhas Bhujbal: Peace and Quiet

Fatemeh Burnes: Living in the Present

Has the Art Market Gone Medieval?

Michael Pearce: Rescuing Beauty

Odd Nerdrum's Paris Open House

On Taste, Richard Serra and the Green Eggs and Ham Syndrome

Vonn Sumner: Somewhere Else

In Memoriam: Sadegh Tirafkan (1965-2013)