Exhibition at MiraCosta College

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Bold and Beyond 2

"One Universe, Many Worlds"
Exhibition of Digital Media Paintings by Howard Ganz

At: MiraCosta College
One Barnard Drive, Oceanside, CA 92056
Kruglak Gallery,
October 15 to November 7, 2002

This exhibition was selected from my digital media paintings from 1999 to 2002. It was a major exhibition showing the diversity and wholeness of my work at that time.

I'm reproducing the exhibition on these pages. All pieces are printed 24" by 32" or 30" by 40" with Hewlett Packard pigmented inks on cotton rag paper. I have recently purchased a DesignJet 5000 printer, which is one of the best printers in the industry, and I do all my own printing and color control.

All images are copyrighted by Howard Ganz and may not be reproduced without written consent.

These notes are to present a setting for your consideration of my work.

The true subjects of my art come from within me. They are usually about the processes of nature which I see and experience as I move around the Earth.

Three areas of interest overlap: the world of the outer universe, the world of microscopic form and the world I see in my own mind. Sometimes a painting starts out to be from the outer universe, but it could also be from the microscopic world or from the world of my mind.

These overlaps are enlightening and make me think of fractals where a whole form grows from a variety of similar nested patterns.

My paintings express some of what I experience in the spaces of these worlds. I think the sense of truth that I want to feel in art is that it reenacts what could be in some world that we experience.

This show starts with some carefully observed landscapes and continues through landscapes painted from memory. Then there are landscapes merging with ethers and mists or becoming ideas and processes moving towards abstraction or views from other perspectives.

Some of my paintings show an interest in patterns of life. What do these patterns look like? What patterns support the evolution of life? I try a variety of ways to portray life.

Conventional rules of art style and art order, though of some beauty and significance, eventually become boring and lose their ability to inspire. Even the applied reasoning of art professionals eventually becomes stale until newly inspired artists make art which demands our refreshed feelings and thoughts.

Though my roots are in my culture and I am influenced by many other artists, my art arises from an individual spirit which moves beyond what I know. I can't help that I present an art of complexities. My feelings drive me there. I go towards active and complex color, towards multiplying patterns, and yet to find some resolution within the varying degrees of tension in my work. Though complex, my paintings seek to find a moment of structure which can stand strong through time though challenged by opposing forms and rushing sequences.

I have many faces, one moment extravagant and wild, another moment soft and subtle, and many states in between. Yet beyond the variations I see a unity brought about by being my individual and inspired self.

realistic landscapes remembered landscapes life forms abstract landscapes environments and life playful paintings stately paintings

This show starts with some basic images, staying close to the normally seen views of nature one would experience in the Southwestern United States. The first four paintings were done from scenes around Lake Powell. They were painted while looking at photographs I took at various sites.

Select an image to see it larger.

Bronzed Gorge

This is the most accurately presented image in this exhibition. It is painted from a photograph taken during a houseboat stay at Lake Powell. It is an anchor of accurate observation and inspired selection from the patterns of the cliff. Nevertheless it is only a starting point in this exhibition which extends to other kinds of painted presentations and interactions, more personal than this optical reality.

Stormy Day

Light comes through the clouds during a stormy day while driving to Lake Powell. Painted from a photograph.

Sloping and Sliding

Another scene from the cliffs around Lake Powell. This is a freer approach than the first two paintings. I allowed more brush strokes to show as descriptors of the rolling forms. There is more sense that we are looking at paint, color and lines on a surface which portrays the cliffs. The lines and colors are the hills. And the hills are the lines and colors. They enrich each other.

Painted Cliff

Lake Powell again. Nature painted many lines and patterns on this pointed cliff. I enjoyed it and added my own lines and colors. Essentially the painting is made of complements, orange and blue, with violet at the left of the peak, an opening to another realm. It's also the complements of the hardness of stone to the ether of sky.

Rolling Along
Darks, soft colors and bright highlights. I was interested in the dark airiness of the atmosphere, the crisp lights and rolling clouds and hills. This is from a photograph taken along I-15 going north from San Diego to Escondido.

This next series of paintings was painted from memory. I find that after many years painting from scenes in the Southwest, the basic forms are clear in my mind, and by working from memory I am able to select the basic forms that interest me. I also can invent what seems correct, in my own way, without the distraction of the endless details of a scene in front of me or the distraction of an incidental perspective view of the scene. When working from memory I have ample time for concentration to develop the paint, color and calligraphy that I want.

Stone Arch

This is from the memory of many natural stone arches I've seen in the Southwest. I was able to keep fresh stokes, and well ordered form. I am particularly excited by the nerve and strength of putting the yellow line down the inside of the arch. Notice that the painting is personalized with my calligraphy presenting lines and patterns for their rhythmic quality, color and shorthand description of nature.

Land and Light

This is a scene with light skittering across the plane from sky to land to water---from clouds to land, and greens and blues to light edged rocks. Of course it is also a work of jestured patterns and colored lines.

River Scene

River scenes, light, direct brushwork and rocks were in my mind, but also cross patterns and value transitions. It's wonderful in its unity and clarity.

Cutting Across the Land

Here is a relatively simple painting. Yet, its simplicity makes it strong and direct. It is particularly effective in the large printed version.

Filtered Light

This painting is drawn from my memory of the diffuse colored light that filters into a narrow canyon. It is an abstract impression concerned mostly with atmosphere and color patterns.

Inspired Peaks

This painting shows strong, active color and gesture with tight knitting of its forms and composition.

Earth's Richness

This is the second version of "Earths Richness". The first was started at Torrey Pines and completed in my studio as acrylic on canvas. This version was painted from memory on my computer.

Turbulent Wave

I've been watching stormy seas along the California coast, and I composed this painting of a wave, a turbulent wave. The painting process is my hand drawn calligraphy facilitated by a hard-edged brush I designed in the "Painter" program.

In this next series of paintings I am choosing brushes that are more direct, without smearing them around too much. I am allowing the computer to work more magic in the brush strokes that the "Painter" program enables me to design. But beyond that, I am still wielding the brush with my hand and my intentions. My interest has turned to exploring some patterns of life emerging in my universe. Also, the portrayals are less "pictorial" and more the effects of the color, lines and patterns painted on a surface. Depth is more an effect of color, overlapping forms, texture and rhythmic flows rather than natural chiaroscuro and linear perspective.

Seed	Centricity! A powerful central form, dominating, pregnant with possibilities. As a student, I was warned not to put so much power in one form because it would hypnotize the viewer, and the eye couldn't keep moving through the composition. So, I'm playing on the threshold of a black hole, trying not to fall in. It's an exciting place to be.
Wings Strings and Things	I started this scene by thinking about an outer space environment. But I think I ended up with a microscopic space environment. Nomatter, some insect-like form occurred, as I was working, just like magic.
Fertile Darkness	Earthy textures, exotic colors (much brighter than I was taught to use---hah!), in a crease of darkness something is living.
propagation	This is another painting which started out as macro-space and is more likely of micro-space. The heavenly body may be a cell. Radiation may be striation. A living galaxy may be a microbe and color is COLOR. And the whole thing is in evolution.
Fierce Rods	More play with wonderful brushes---making color striped rods which somehow frighten me. Color, changes of focus, interacting rods and their vectors.
These next three paintings are a return to the landscape theme, but loosened up. I go for the colors and rhythms with broad striped computer brushes keeping the organics of color and pattern. And I find moments of stability in the flow of forms.
Radiant Land	There is precision in this loose painting. Nature's precision is not in smooth sharp clean forms, but in relationships that work and are cohesive, that work for irregular living forces. That's the character of this landscape.
Our Land	Purple color cascades to a darker plane. Soft light cascades by the mountains to a gentle and darker land. I'm tripping through forms I know, soft darkness and the hand of man.
Growing Red and a Touch of Green	Dark land and light sky, both in action. Blue and violet speak in the sky and distant land. There are red and yellow growing in the foreground and a distant touch of green.

These are a series of paintings about environments that grow life and some of the life forms that grow in them. The painting style is strong on color, line, rhythm and mood.

Enters the Fish	Emerging Animals	Fertile Garden
After making this wonderful underwater-like environment, a fish just swam in from the side, and even though it was realistic, I couldn't get it to leave.	What interests me about this painting is that the same quality of line that grew the background also grew the horse-like figure with roots for legs. And its metamorphic form moves between line, animal and asymmetric adjustments of anatomy. Then too, I like the goat-like form that thrusts against the larger animal's chest.	This is a fertile environment with startling, raked lines dancing through. Quite interesting for its own sake, but also a good place for something to grow
Sweet Support	Glorious Pinata	Processing the Light
Another environment where something might grow. Its colors and forms are emotionally supportive to me. It's an expression from my heart.	This started as play with rake brushes, became landscape-ish and then grew a balloon, pinata, head-like form, reinforce and delineated with ribbons and dots. It all seems quite reasonable and glorious.	Beams of color, refracting, illuminating, activating, particulating, resonating, contrasting and dancing around, forming structures and finding a moment to pose in this rectangle.

This next series of paintings is more elegant, formal or playful than the previous series. The forms and issues they present seem clearly resolved within their frames. They are, on the whole, abstract constructions of a playful mind.

Arrangement of Toys and Colors

To me this is a happy conjoining of a group of playful forms and colors. The dark left side sets up the bright and cheerful right side with its sky blue and toy-like colors. It also exhibits a clear and easy calligraphy. Though I try to imagine it as some natural formation, I guess it's only my own playfulness.

Space Table

Gentle objects floating bye an airy plane, perhaps resting there---soft, delicious, stable.

Rings and Cells

This clearly seems to be an aggregate of cellular forms in the blues and violets of space.

Winged Staff

A glorious vertical soaring form. I don't know its meaning, but from time to time I find myself presenting this kind of vertical soaring, winged staff.

Performing Patterns

This is a satisfying composition of abstract patterns. They're engaged in some process. The softer smeary stuff is engaged in some kind of interaction with the other patterns.

Ganglia

A rich color, raked-line, environment that spawned some wonderful dancing forms. They seem very organic, like slow lightning or a ganglia of nerves.

Sticks and Stones

A number of forms floating bye or resting together. The selection offers a chance to compare their variations, and placement.

This last series of four paintings are calm views of forms in space. Each of them is a different approach. But each is transfixing and stately. In the last three paintings I accept the facility of computer brushes that I have designed to create intricate patterns and shapes. I use these brushes with restraint and purpose.

Colorful Planet	There are many things happening in this painting. Each color, pattern and texture codes to some meaning of color and shape configurations in our experience. It could be an aerial view of a section of a planet like Earth or a microscopic slide of organic tissues.
Molecules on Blue	I designed a fascinating brush that made transparent tubes of changing thickness, which I could control as I drew with my hand. So I laid these molecular forms on this blue drenched surface. I laid them out for observation.
Cosmic View	Here I used a brush that made delicate and intricate patterns. With it I created a seemingly endless firmament of eddies of blues and magentas, wisps of pale clouds, branches of feathered shapes. To avoid a ridged lock in the composition I placed a soft airy stick in front to allow a different quality for comparison with the intricate patterns.
Burn Slow, Burn Fine	The arch, its strength and contained power, holds the light of many colors burning slowly to eternity.

Bronzed Gorge	This is the most accurately presented image in this exhibition. It is painted from a photograph taken during a houseboat stay at Lake Powell. It is an anchor of accurate observation and inspired selection from the patterns of the cliff. Nevertheless it is only a starting point in this exhibition which extends to other kinds of painted presentations and interactions, more personal than this optical reality.
Stormy Day	Light comes through the clouds during a stormy day while driving to Lake Powell. Painted from a photograph.
Sloping and Sliding	Another scene from the cliffs around Lake Powell. This is a freer approach than the first two paintings. I allowed more brush strokes to show as descriptors of the rolling forms. There is more sense that we are looking at paint, color and lines on a surface which portrays the cliffs. The lines and colors are the hills. And the hills are the lines and colors. They enrich each other.
Painted Cliff	Lake Powell again. Nature painted many lines and patterns on this pointed cliff. I enjoyed it and added my own lines and colors. Essentially the painting is made of complements, orange and blue, with violet at the left of the peak, an opening to another realm. It's also the complements of the hardness of stone to the ether of sky.
Rolling Along	Darks, soft colors and bright highlights. I was interested in the dark airiness of the atmosphere, the crisp lights and rolling clouds and hills. This is from a photograph taken along I-15 going north from San Diego to Escondido.
This next series of paintings was painted from memory. I find that after many years painting from scenes in the Southwest, the basic forms are clear in my mind, and by working from memory I am able to select the basic forms that interest me. I also can invent what seems correct, in my own way, without the distraction of the endless details of a scene in front of me or the distraction of an incidental perspective view of the scene. When working from memory I have ample time for concentration to develop the paint, color and calligraphy that I want.
Stone Arch	This is from the memory of many natural stone arches I've seen in the Southwest. I was able to keep fresh stokes, and well ordered form. I am particularly excited by the nerve and strength of putting the yellow line down the inside of the arch. Notice that the painting is personalized with my calligraphy presenting lines and patterns for their rhythmic quality, color and shorthand description of nature.
Land and Light	This is a scene with light skittering across the plane from sky to land to water---from clouds to land, and greens and blues to light edged rocks. Of course it is also a work of jestured patterns and colored lines.
River Scene	River scenes, light, direct brushwork and rocks were in my mind, but also cross patterns and value transitions. It's wonderful in its unity and clarity.
Cutting Across the Land	Here is a relatively simple painting. Yet, its simplicity makes it strong and direct. It is particularly effective in the large printed version.
Filtered Light	This painting is drawn from my memory of the diffuse colored light that filters into a narrow canyon. It is an abstract impression concerned mostly with atmosphere and color patterns.
Inspired Peaks	This painting shows strong, active color and gesture with tight knitting of its forms and composition.
Earth's Richness	This is the second version of "Earths Richness". The first was started at Torrey Pines and completed in my studio as acrylic on canvas. This version was painted from memory on my computer.
Turbulent Wave	I've been watching stormy seas along the California coast, and I composed this painting of a wave, a turbulent wave. The painting process is my hand drawn calligraphy facilitated by a hard-edged brush I designed in the "Painter" program.

Arrangement of Toys and Colors	To me this is a happy conjoining of a group of playful forms and colors. The dark left side sets up the bright and cheerful right side with its sky blue and toy-like colors. It also exhibits a clear and easy calligraphy. Though I try to imagine it as some natural formation, I guess it's only my own playfulness.
Space Table	Gentle objects floating bye an airy plane, perhaps resting there---soft, delicious, stable.
Rings and Cells	This clearly seems to be an aggregate of cellular forms in the blues and violets of space.
Winged Staff	A glorious vertical soaring form. I don't know its meaning, but from time to time I find myself presenting this kind of vertical soaring, winged staff.
Performing Patterns	This is a satisfying composition of abstract patterns. They're engaged in some process. The softer smeary stuff is engaged in some kind of interaction with the other patterns.
Ganglia	A rich color, raked-line, environment that spawned some wonderful dancing forms. They seem very organic, like slow lightning or a ganglia of nerves.
Sticks and Stones	A number of forms floating bye or resting together. The selection offers a chance to compare their variations, and placement.