CEREBRAL

ANTHONY HADEN-GUEST 

“Just how does this particular cartoonist generate useable ideas? Well, I don’t treat it as a wholly separate use of the brain from my writing, dealing with the people I am dealing with, the other stuff I am then doing. They feed off each other, sometimes nourish each other, sometimes smoosh each other, but every now and again – and there can be dismayingly lengthy shut-downs – a spiffing cartoon idea will be born from whatever is going on in my head and will bob to the surface like a rubber ball in a pool.”

BILL BUCHMAN 

Buchman’s painting approach is based on the idea that there is a universal language of line, color and form in visual art as there is a universal language of melody, harmony and rhythm in music. This language, when spoken, speaks directly to the heart beyond the trends of time, place and fashion. Having devoted the last 60 years of his life to exploring and developing this concept in paint, Buchman has developed the capacity to let the ideas flow in each unique piece as they would in a jazz performance and to trustingly follow that flow from impetus to completion. As to the specifics of his work, each piece is created with a very specific intention: it is designed to enable and encourage each viewer to have their own interpretation. For Buchman, that is the work’s raison d’être.

www.artispoetry.com | @artispoetry.

COSMO MULLICAN

The artist’s original spark for the ideas surrounding “3 faces” and “Scream” came as a response to his own mental state living and working in New York City. “Split brain” is a theatrical accounting of the 1960’s experiment on patients where the corpus callosum (center of the brain) has been cut to treat epilepsy. Mullican found the subject quite strange and fascinating as a phenomenon that holds much importance in medical science history. This really captured Mullican’s attention and helped the artist fathom the understanding of an isolated conscious that is unable to express its feelings, desires or thinking due to a lack of language or connection.

DAVID RICHARDSON

“Although compositional and color symmetry may be initially pleasing for its novelty, symmetrical colors and compositions quickly come to bore the brain – there is nothing for it to resolve, nothing for it to do. Our brains were made to process complex fields of light, shape, and color. If something is too asymmetrical or too awkward, it is simply displeasing – some would say even distressing, because our minds cannot make sense of them. But somewhere in between the over simplicity of symmetry and the distress of chaos is a happy place of “just-awkward-enough,” which stimulates and attracts our brains. These flowers – composition and color – strive to get at the conceptual asymmetry of the world.”

www.derichardson.com

EVAN SEBASTIAN LAGACHE  

“Bishop 1” and “Bishop 2” are named after the chess pieces. You start with two—black or white—and both pieces move the same way but never make the same moves. “Apex” is a primal expression of a mental fight for survival. This was spontaneously created in a single sitting as a release of bottled emotions after the loss of a very close friend. “Beyond” is a meditation on curiosity, wonder and a more peaceful perspective on the afterlife.

 www.evanlagache.com | @evanlagache.

FRANK MANN

“I began the study of human vision and perception beginning with Hasan Ibn al- Haytham who, in the 11th Century, was the first to correctly explain the theory of vision and argued that vision occurs in the brain and extends through the science of seeing. “Oculus” is simply the Latin word that refers to the eye. While I consider the work to be informed by my own thoughts about the facts of vision, most of the work derives from an internal model rather than from a description of objects in nature or a virtual scene. It derives from the imagination. In the “Oculus” group I am visualizing the processes of seeing and externalizing that image in a concrete way in order to make it more real or tangible.

MARY REID

The “Virtues” series was inspired by many trips to the Uffizi in Florence. Time and time again, Reid was drawn to the Botticelli altarpieces illustrating four of the virtues and kept asking herself: “What do virtues mean in today’s world?” and “Can my version empower instead of inspire obedience through fear?”

MARC BOUWER

Marc Bouwer, known as a fashion designer, is taking us on a new journey of the imagination through colorful and quirky portraiture and abstractions that were painted mostly during the pandemic using repurposed canvas, cardboard and wood. The faces painted with dry acrylic in colorful neon hues and black backgrounds emerge as individual personalities that evoke distinct stories, allowing the mind to create a persona. Bouwer has achieved worldwide recognition as an acclaimed fashion designer and creative director. He has dressed luminaries such as Beyonce, Angelina Jolie, Jane Fonda and Sarah Jessica Parker.

RICK SECEN

Rick Secen (see-sen) is a Brooklyn-based artist who has been working primarily in oil painting since 2015. After graduating from the Savannah College of Art and Design, he moved to New York City to pursue sound editing for film.  After working in television for over a decade he began his career as an oil painter.  Secen’s figurative paintings are made to communicate a dual emotional experience of loneliness that resonates universally. For Secen, “Cerebral” is an exhibition which calls for artwork thoughtfully made to shine a light into one of the murkiest places there is: our minds.  This exhibition is important to him as an artist as his current body of work is strongly focused on mental health and seeks to make a connection with viewers who, no doubt, face challenges in their own story. 

TINA SALVESEN

A meditator for many years, Salveson’s drawings are very much like mediation. Existing between one state of consciousness and another, Salveson works in a conscious dreamlike state. Images form a kind of liquid reality. Ethereal forms transform, bleeding into one another and morphing into something else. Reality’s ongoing, ephemeral dance is what the artist hopes to capture with her work.