Artists Describing Their Art:
Gregory Liffick - I like to find new life in old, found items. I perform a kind of plastic or reconstructive surgery on the materials that I find in thrift stores and other like places, refinishing and refreshing their skin with spray enamel or acrylic paint and reforming and improving their shapes with bits and pieces from elsewhere. In the process of reimaging the items, I resurrect them from the past and bring them into the present, making them current and relevant through the concepts and messages I attach to them, commentaries on the state of things in the world today. I give new purpose and interest to items that have lost their place in the onrush of use and fashion. I take once upon a time materials and try to make them timeless....
Eduardo Diaz - Statement My name is Eduardo DIaz and Iim a Mexican artist residing in the Bay Area since 2001. In my work I express different elements of Mexican culture, while emphasizing its Native American heritage. I incorporate native themes and images, both extant and prehispanic, into my works and combine them with personal feelings, experiences or fears. Although cultural elements are the essence of my art, through them I also like to express political and social opinions. As a Mexican, I feel in touch with the problems at the Mexican-American border, as well as with the issues facing Mexican immigrants. I also like to express the tension between the indigenous and the industrialized worlds, and to analyze the different elements that make up Mexican identity, especially when confronted with life in a different country. My favorite medium is oil painting. I use vivid and deep colors, with which I reflect the light of the Mexican sun. Some of my compositions are figurative, and oscillate between realistic scenes and more elaborated images, with affinity to surrealism. My most recent productions are less figurative and combine the same vivid colors into expressive abstract constructions. Biography My name is Eduardo D...
Thomas Jewusiak - Artist's Statement I reject the description of the style of my painting as photorealistic. I make no attempt to duplicate a photograph. Although there can be a valid artistic point in doing this, it is decidedly not my point. I attempt to communicate a reality or rather an illusion of actuality, as perceived by the eye and mind that is more intense, more concentrated than that which can be captured by the camera and lens alone. I also attempt a more honest portrayal of what is real than can be produced by the simple photograph. Since many of my paintings are purely conceptual, existing originally only in the imagination, or as a distillation or manipulation of many separate scenes that may exist, did exist or I think existed, the charge of "merely" duplicating a photograph is particularly galling. By representing the finest detail in paint I attempt to foster the illusion, (or foist the illusion), to give a perceived concrete existence to a pure product of the interpretive imagination. The sometimes excruciating detail is fundamental to the intended impression, a sleight of hand (or eye), where we are perhaps distracted by the minutia, enamored of it and thus lulled ...
Mike Carr - My name is Mike Carr. I began working with charcoal and gouache in the late 1980's, and continued through the latter part of the 90's, recently switching to oils. I am, for the most part, self-taught, receiving limited art instruction while in college. My favorite artists are all of the French Impressionists from the late 1800's, and several of the contemporary American Plein Air painters, whose style and techniques provide a constant challenge. Please see my link to www.mnartists.org to view several other paintings, however, you will need to click to enlarge at this site to view them clearly--for some reason. ...
Shmuela Padnos - ARE YA READY TA GET THE BIG LEG BLUES FROM THE GAS MAN AS THE SPECIAL RIDER MAKES YOU MISSISSIPPI MOAN? ARE YA GONNA RIDE THE NEW HAMHOUND CRAVES A BLACK SNAKE MOAN WITH THE LITTLE LEG OUTSIDE WOMAN BLUES? WELL TAKE A LITTLE WALK WITH ME AS i TELL YOU ABOUT THAT CHERRY WOMAN ARTIST SHMUEL A PADNOS. AS THE DEVIL SENT THE RAIN TA N'AWLINS SHMUEL A WAS CONCEIVED DURING MARTI GRAS FUN OF LE BON TON ROULET. 9 MONTHS LATER IN THE FOOT HILLS OF NORTH CAROLINA, LAND OF RATTLE SNAKIN DADDY& STEP IT UP & GO, SHMUEL A WAS BORN. ALTHOUGH EXPOSED TO THE EAST COAST PICKIN OF BLIND BOOY FULLER, BUDDY MOSS& JOSH WHITE BY HER GRANDPARENTS, SHMUELA WAS ALWAYS FOUND WITH A PAINTBRUSH IN HER HAND INSTEAD OF A GUITAR. SHE FOUND THE MOVING OF THE BRUSH CREATED ITS OWN FUNKY SOUND&RHYTHM....
Maryjean Galivan - Over the years my art has evolved into a personal introspective search. The constant denominator is a strong sense of color, though the subject matter can range from whimsical to disturbing. I feel my inspiration stems from a past saturated with LSD and a present filled with ADD. The combination of these two ingrediants as well as my jaded perception of life are the fulcrum of my creative energy. Since I have lived in Arizona for the last 20 something years, I am inspired by the colors and textures of the desert. For the last year I have been incorporating them into my work. ...
Dmitry Rakov - Impossible reality (All new artworks and largerview at www.rakov.de and
Carol Griffith - My oil paintings are meditations triggered by places or situations in my memory, arrived at through a sort of daydreaming state of mind. I attempt to evoke that mood in the handling of the formal elements of the painting, especially the color and the perspectival point of view. I wish to create both a believable place and the sense of something more significant behind it. The viewer, in contact with the painting and their own memories, may then project into the space and experience the significance that I sensed. This approach has led me to an interest in souvenirs. I see them as an attempt to capture a special place or experience in concrete or symbolic form. By doing paintings of my own remembered places and experiences, I have been following a parallel path. I like the comparison with one purpose of art. I use borders in some of the paintings to function simultaneously as framing devices and as an arena in which to create a dialogue with the internal painting. The borders also extend the meaning of the internal subject. Memories often consist of simultaneous kaleidoscopic vignettes that, in combination, embody the whole, original experience. Each vignette is also ...
Ralph Michael Brekan - Art gives a unique glimpse into the past and a vision of the future. Theme's of popular culture, consumerisim and politics fill our waken world and I in turn create artwork that defines the world around me. Reoccuring elements of mass production and ego identity reside throughout my work, both in the subject matter itself and in the media I've chosen to execute the vision. Contemprary art methods and contemporary themes and subject matter yeild great contemporary art. My art work subscribes to the most common virtue of past masters: experimentation....