CThru.com Presents Tony Ward

The Prophecy

Posted By Mikel Elam

“Numbers and letters may fitly be called eyes” Alan Ginsberg

……..I have a kindred spirit in another well known artist by the name of Francesco Clemente. We share in several ideals. Words can be great inspiration for future paintings, as I have always been an avid reader. I’m fascinated with the concepts of hidden messages. In my life numbers, letters and passages have become fodder for my imagination.

In this painting, there is a woman who is in a meditative state of consciousness. A place of relaxation and exploration of her future objectives. Something unexplainable is happening to her. Perhaps it occurs in her subconscious. It’s leading her in a certain direction. She clutches a tool for choosing her fate.
This story is one I created for this painting, yet as important to me is the viewer’s interpretation which can be quite different and equally as valuable.
My work has been a constant exploration of the mind’s eye, intermixed with the conscious world.

In fact eyes are the windows to the soul. It’s the place where breathing leads to meditation and ultimately to transformation.

…….To learn more about Mikel’s work log on to www.mikelelam.com……..

Master At Work Photo: Roy Ives

……I had the pleasure of meeting Genevive Zacconi in 2006, when she curated an art exhibition entitled, “Negative Exposure” for Trinity Art Gallery in Philadelphia. Her unusual interest in the erotic as well as the macabre, forms the basis of her unique vision. A distinct persona that is reflective in her paintings. Genevive was born in Philadelphia in 1981. As an artist and curator, she has been involved in numerous art exhibitions around the globe and has been featured on MSNBC, New York Press, Coagula Arts Journal and Juxtapose magazine.

Objective Observation

In addition to creating her own art, Genevive has also worked as a painting assistant to Ron English, headed the first Philadelphia branch of “Dr. Sketchy’s Anti -Art School”, and was the founding director of Trinity Art Gallery in Philadelphia and Paul Booth’s, Last Rites Gallery in New York.

Delusions Of Candor

Disillusion

Miss Fortune

Try Walking In My Shoes

Genevive is currently curating an exhibit within “The Dirty Show” (the worlds largest art show) to take place in Detroit, February 12 to the 20th, 2010. The exhbit will include works by Michael Hussar, David Stoupakis, Shawn Barber and yours truly. To learn more about Genevive’s work, log on to www.genevive.com……..TW

Genevive Zacconi, Photo: Lithium Picnic

Bang

Posted by Charlene Lanzel

I used to do target practice in my driveway as a kid. We had a BB gun… and also a pellet pistol. I preferred the pistol. I suppose this painting has some deep hidden psychological meaning. Perhaps that I have always felt like a target. Like prey. Some men make me feel that way, when they leer at me on the street. It’s like they’re foaming at the mouth. I find that very disturbing. Sometimes I feel like I need protection. And then, I remember those days of doing target practice in my driveway.

www.CharleneLanzel.com

…..Blend is to mix smoothly and inseparably together or to mix in order to obtain a particular kind or quality. A perfect title for the avant guarde publication born in 2005 from a collective of Dutch visionaries from Amsterdam. The studio was delighted to be participate in producing some of the first fashion spreads for the new publication. Today Blend has grown and evolved in to the mainstream and has morphed in to a popular culture icon in Holland and beyond.

Blend Fashion

The intention was to design a lifestyle publication for people that enjoy contemporary music, art, film, fashion and photography. With an ear to the ground for what is happening on the street, Blend editors are quick to point out trends that are happening in the alleyways and on main street with an intense passion and regard for all of the the topics that attract their growing 21st century readership.
Besides the regular issues of Blend which appear on newsstands eight times a year, they also collaborate with external parties such as the Stedeliijk Museum of Holland to create unique publications that are referred to as Special Blends. These additional publications have featured the work of Andy Warhol for example……

www.Blend.nl

Charlene Lanza

…..No stranger to the studio, pin-up artist Charlene Lanza and TW met through a mutual friend, fellow painter and guest blogger Mikel Elam back in the nineties while they we’re hanging out regularly in Soho. Recently, the artist and the photographer met again for a portrait sitting and to introduce her latest works to our growing audience. Ms. Lanzel is an American artist, originally from LaCrosse, Wisconsin. Born in 1967, she started to paint with passion at the age of five. Self taught and determined to exhibit her works beyond the confines of a small town, she moved to New York City at the age of 20 and has been enjoying the creative process in the Big Apple ever since.

We are delighted to introduce a sampling of her work to you. To learn more about Charlene’s painting’s, log on to www.charlenelanzel.com…….

Nirvana By Mikel Elam

…..Guest Blogger, Patrick Breslin a professor of Speech Communication at Santa Fe College in Gainesville, Florida; writes a commentary about Mikel Elam’s state of “Nirvana”, the studio’s Painting of the Day…….

Mikel Elam’s painting titled “Nirvana” depicts a male figure seated in meditation. The painting is a partial patchwork: the figure’s head encased in an orange square, the torso in a dark gray one. The background contains light colored disks, gold leaf squares, and dark purple 5-spoked behandled circles reminiscent of Buddhist icons, all ensconced in rectangular shapes. The dominant shade at the bottom of the painting is also purple, suggesting a base or ground, and philosophically linked to the icons; the top is adorned with swaths of blue, suggesting sky.

The meditator in the painting is a multiracial collage. The head appears African; the torso a shade of bronze; the lower abdomen and legs partake of a dark Caucasian complexion; the arms lighter—the left hinting at orange, the right bordering on pink—, and both terminating in an empty space of unpainted hands.

The title of the piece suggests several interpretations. Nirvana by definition refers to the ultimate peaceful state, and the multiracial makeup of the subject of the painting seems to propose that the blending of races, or at least their acceptance of one another, might lead to a peaceful existence. In the context of meditation as understood in popular culture, the lower abdomen whimsically lacks a navel, the historically clichéd object of meditation, causing the viewer to wonder whether the meditator in the painting is a holy incarnation not born of a woman. The viewer observes that the head of the subject does not fully connect to the body; the two are separated by a strip of the orange color from the box that surrounds the head. One could read into this that the nirvanic state of the meditator is all within the mind, disembodied, the concept of which does align with classic Buddhist perspectives.

The goal of meditation is enlightenment, whose common metaphor is light. Meditation is practiced in the mind—in the head—, yet the color scheme of the meditator’s body in the painting casts the darkest shades on the head and the lightest ones on the nonexistent hands, reversing the typical expectation and intimating that perhaps through the hands one expresses one’s degree of spiritual development, as Elam may be attempting to do in this work.

Pat Breslin Vulcan Days

www.MikelElam.com

Guest Blogger Mikel Elam, “I think this self portrait says a lot about me and my work. My paintings have been mostly about signs and symbols. It started early in my life when I began to notice patterns of numbers shadowing my everyday existence.

First I thought it was just chance and then as time passed, I realize there are very few coincidences. In portraiture and figure studies there are a great deal of measurements used to create an accurate representation. As an expressionistic painter, I use my emotions and my imagination to create images which are symbolic to my thoughts. In essence, they become these dreamscapes and very surreal in nature. I am interested in that place which is somewhere between reality and the ethereal.

A Tribute To A Father

….. He was seated in his living room when I visited one day with his son, my confidant and good friend Tony Colagreco. Tony had been asking me for some time to meet his father and to see the drawing’s that he was creating in his living room over the years. As Lou-Pop (as he was affectionately called) got older, he wasn’t as mobile as he used to be, so he often occupied his time by making whimsical drawings of things from his fantasies or from found objects around his home. A variety of subject’s and a substantial body of work evolved from time well spent at his living room chair. Lou-Pop proudly displayed his works on the walls of his home and had a story to tell, for any one that would listen, about each and every drawing he created with the passing of time.

An Art Filled Living Room

The first thing I did when I arrived, was to photograph Tony in the living room where his father found his inspiration. This was the place where his best friend spent many days drawing.

Objects Of Inspiration

There were lot’s of figurines around the home, many of which were representative of the embodiment of women. Lou-Pop loved women, in all age’s, shapes and sizes.

Busty Figurine

He also surrounded himself with classical reproduction’s of women as subject’s in paintings and then surrounded those framed works with his own art. The room was transformed in to a multi-dimensional art installation, serving as an altar for the remaining desires of his life.

Woman Painting

Betty Boop was one of Lou-Pop’s favorite subjects…….

Lou-Pops Version Of Betty Boop

R.I.P. Lou-Pop