First off, I would like to thank Ginny Parsons and Rhythmix Cultural Works for this opportunity to exhibit recent paintings in such a supportive milieu. They have generously opened their vibrant artistic community’s doors to a new resident and he is wholeheartedly revitalized by it. Although I lived in San Francisco from 1986 to 2006 I did not have chance to explore Alameda as I might have, so my return to the “familiar” has been amazingly brand new.
There’s nothing like a global pandemic to reinforce any artist’s sense of retrospection, and in my case it comes hard upon the heels of Hurricane Irma’s furious destruction of my studio space in the Florida Keys in 2017. Returning to the Bay Area was bittersweet as my newly rekindled loving relationship took root here in Alameda, as the fires filled the air with acrid smoke and we watched so many people seek refuge from a different catastrophe.
The Keys and Key West are brimming with the kind of inspiration that keeps me afloat.
(okay, no more nautical descriptors.) I have always been drawn to the power of water and its transforming and healing characteristics. So it was that I was drawn to that part of the world to paint, where one can often mistake the horizon lines, where light dances above and below and around you and the colors keep shifting throughout the day. Where stepping into the shallows and snorkeling to the reef will reveal countless mysteries. And where one more significantly notices that the waters do not recede as they used to, where the ground is losing ground, and the king tides will soon reign unchecked.
Ginny Parsons sees that same thing happening here as she circumnavigates in her kayak, and she inspires me in her kinship of vision. I haven’t been on the water lately but I walk everywhere and am inspired by the lagoons and vistas from South Shore and the wetland areas and the city skylines. My aesthetic sensibility is rooted in capturing my emotional responses to what I see. Here, let me cut and paste from an earlier statement which still rings true:
“The plasticity of resin as a painting medium has afforded me the opportunity to paint through the surface of nature, which as my primary source of inspiration in these recent works becomes the captured moment of energy-infused visual phenomena. Rather than paint the object, I paint the emotional response created within me by that-which-appears-before-my-eyes.”
Working in this medium since the ‘90s, I constantly discover new ways of portraying things that other mediums have never satisfied me with: the color saturation, resin’s ability to overlay imagery, the ways it can be carved, sculpted, polished, and manipulated. I have found a material that allows me to paint what I need to see, which is often through the assumed object or surface to the way it has been created for me to observe it. To sum it up: “why is this so beautiful, and how can I paint it?”
So our exhibition’s theme of Immersion is one of Water, but is also one of Culture and one of Society and of Friendship and mutual Admiration and Support and hopefully one of Healing the planet upon which we continue to survive.
Orientalia – Friends & Inspirations
Orientalia- Friends and Inspirations are a series of brand new works on paper and canvas by Persian American artist Shabnam. The orchid hued paintings and, firm ornate lines of ink drawings, reflects the femininity, discipline and strength of her profession as an Oriental dance performer. Her journey into the visual arts began as a child when she would sketch her schoolmates in exchange for candy and continues to be motivated by the portrait. The sinuous lines of the female form, decorative detail and bold colors of Persian art are often inspiration for her expression.