E-Mail: bwarren2@hvc.rr.com
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Resume´ & Art Statement
I studied at Hunter College and the School of Visual Arts. I moved up to Gardiner, NY, from Greenwich Village five years ago. I continue to work for world-renowned artist Chuck Close who generously took on the role of mentor and helped me to find my own voice as a painter of bizarre narrative. My intensely colored oil paintings often tell a story, suggesting everything from a gigantic house cat welcoming visitors from out of space to a child having nightmarish images of a shopping bag lady as she’s being read to sleep.
I paint eccentric scenes because I’ve always been fascinated by the ability of artists to make their inmost imaginings visible to others. My work erases the line between humans and other creatures and often shows strange beings performing familiar activities. I start with accidents in order to incorporate lots of surprises in the work. I remove my strong eyeglasses and run amok at a usually large canvas with paint, oil sticks, or just muddy turp. Replacing my glasses, I then step back and search for what the Zen artists term “happy accidents.” What frequently appear out of the chaos are potential creatures, places, objects and--if I’m lucky--entire stories. I enhance these suggestions up to the edge of recognition, allowing the viewer to see what I see or something from their own imagination.
In the year 2000, I faced the reality that I was not satisfied with my work. I destroyed everything that I’d done up till that point, then created a new body of work I felt comfortable showing and that my mentor deemed good. In the summer of 2004, I approached gallery owners and art societies for the first time. During September of that year, my paintings were displayed at the Farfetched Gallery in Kingston, and at the upstairs gallery of the Country Store in High Falls, NY, for six months. I was also in a group exhibit at the Woodstock Artist Association throughout the month of December.
A solo show of my work was on display at the Beck Gallery in Hurleyville, NY, throughout the month of August 2005 and, that November, I had a solo show at the Woodstock Artists Association. In March 2006, I won the Grand Prize at the Catskill Regional Art Expo and in June my work was on exhibit in a solo show at Backstage Studio Productions (BSP) in uptown Kingston during which American Artist Janet Fish purchased one of my paintings. I won a 2007 Merit Award in the Art Kudos International Internet Juried Art Competition and also Best in Painting in the Manhattan Arts Gallery’s international Juried Art Competition. My work was at the Kingston Library throughout October 2007 and, in 2008, I was included in a group show at the Icosahedron Gallery for the month of March in New York City. Most recently, there was a solo show of my work throughout April at the Hudson Opera House in Hudson, NY.