Curious Pratchenko, Fluid Markings, Multi-Media Zen & Encaustic on Parade

Paul Pratchenko at Braunstein/Quay:

Paul Pratchenko’s work gets curiouser and curiouser. That’s what I like. He’s been painting, since 1965 and is probably laughing his ass off at the crazy ideas people take away from his stunning and carefully polished compositions. So go ahead, laugh. On first take I thought of Alice wandering around Wonderland on drugs, trying to make sense of things just weird enough to be legitimately called “edgy,” without offending the people who live there. Then I realized I’d been looking with my eyes closed, seeing nothing. I begin to notice miniature magical details peeking out of the realistic settings, so natural and unforced that I only noticed them third time around. It became easy to accept his logic because his Alice’s & Adam’s did. He takes you inside a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel or an ancient legend you dimly remember. Any conclusions you form have to stay open-ended. Will his confident hero prevail or perish? Is it the mundane reality or the magic in the piece that is more in sync with the world we know? Please see for yourself. It’s more than worth it. Pratchenko has been widely displayed and collected nationally and internationally. He is a Professor of Art in Painting and Drawing at San Francisco State University. Images and reviews of his work have appeared in Art News, Art in America, New American Painting, ARTSPACE and Flash Art. Reproductions of his work were published by Simon and Schuster under the title Dream Riddles: The Artwork Of Paul Pratchenko. Go see his work at Braunstein/Quay Gallery in San Francisco.





Nadol Pak at Lisa Dent Gallery
Remember the story that starts out “mom died in the middle of making me a peanut butter sandwich?” That line grabs me every time, much the way Nadol Pak’s new work at Lisa Dent Gallery does. Exciting and unpretentious, it's worth a 15th look. Imagine yourself in the story and maybe you will get why looking at Nadol Park’s inked aerial landscapes of imaginary World War II battlegrounds made me think of it. Both the story and the drawings are mischievous and horrific at the same time, Both come off as simple…invented documentaries of social issues built on small detail, inviting us closer. Both are irreverent, creating complex and unexpected compositions one mark or word at a time. The concentration and range of the marks create a huge inner scale…,how can mom drop dead making a sandwich or a map of a bloody battlefield be created by hundreds of obsessive yet fluid marks? Both create spaciousness by incorporating empty space between details and both are impossible to forget. No idea’s original however and names that pop up who work with line similarly are Jack Scott, Jacob El Hanani and Daniel Zeller. Don’t miss this show. It’s got staying power.

Paul Brigham at HANG ART
You’re a hiker in a rainy mountain valley when you notice the relationship between a pebble and a blade of grass….well you might get that lucky if you are Paul Brigham, an artist whose subject matter is his personal experience with the environment. He is a rare one, who respects nature without trying to imitate it , render it realistically, or even label it correctly. For those of us who are not fans of traditional landscapes, his work is fresh and provocative, all about trying to understand the connections within the natural world and how they reflect his own experiences living in California today. His new collection of mountain landscapes is inspired by his direct experience and Asian art but his technique is 21st century multi-media. Layering paint and silk-screen images, he uses sandpaper to reveal elements from previous layers. This technique makes the images appear to be slightly moving. As an experienced watcher who just happens to study Zen philosophy, practice Tai Chi and study Asian aesthetics, his ability to create challenging, joyous and unclassifiable scenes is a gift to us, appealing even to a cynic like me.

Mary Farmer ( yes, THAT Mary Farmer) at ConradWilde in Tucson
Our own Mary Farmer has been included in the Second Annual Encaustic Invitational at ConradWilde Gallery. This is Farmer's second showing, not bad for Bay Area Gal, woo-hoo girl you strut that encaustic work.

Shepherd's Rest