On view starting October 19th 472gallery photography work of Denis Krylov. The show, “LAND ESCAPES” features 12 photographs shot during past two years in and around the city. Denis is captivated by a nonconformist and non-stereotypical. The Golden Gate Bridge barely seen through the fog is exactly how Denis envisions the bridge in contrast to how this American icon is usually represented to the world media. He is fascinated with SF cold summer nights and lonely streets of working-class Sunset. The real heroes of his photographs are the streets, landscape, and other details of urban environment. His goal is to capture a strange and intriguing mood.

I am showing in SOMA with photographer, Gwen Fuller and abstract painter, Rick Fisher:

My photography shows what I see in my daily life. I try my best to look for offbeat, Americana, or anything that strikes me as odd or different. 

I have just returned from two years in Paris and I am opening up my studio for the first time in San Francisco to show some of my acrylic paintings from Paris and my charcoal drawings from San Francisco. This show is going to focus primarily on faces, but I'll be showing some figures as well.  While in Paris, I sketched daily on the metro, sneaking glances at passengers and then returned to my studio to paint my on large canvases. I 'sketched' live models using acrylic paints on paper during short poses at La Grande Chaumiere in Paris. I drew live models  in charcoal at the 23rd Street Studio in San Francisco. I spent many years drawing, but kept  my work very private. This is the first time of most  of these drawings will be shown to the public. 

Colleen Mullins' work, for the last several years, has focused on an area of Sonoma County in which her family camped in their VW van in the 1970's, based both on personal exploration and an archive of her father’s work dating back to the 1940’s. In addition, she has work of great breadth, from flamboyant high-end luxury cruise ship revelers to the urban forest of New Orleans, as well as work in the book arts.

A 3rd generation San Franciscan, Mullins recently relocated to her hometown from a 22 year stint in Minnesota, where she taught college level photography and book arts until last year. She was the 2013 recipient of an Artist Initiative Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board (her fourth), a two-time recipient of the McKnight Artist Fellowship (1998 and 2011), and a recipient of the Women's Studio Workshop Production Grant, with which she produced a limited edition artist book, Opening Day. Opening Day recounts her father's crossing of the Golden Gate Bridge on Opening Day, crossing together on the 50th Anniversary, and the crossed wires that occurred when her father succumbed to senile dementia.  Her work is in several national museum collections including the Ogden Museum of Southern Art and the Southeast Museum of Photography.

My goal is to go beyond likeness to capture the soul or spirit; emotion reflected in the subtle nuance of facial features revealing the essence and character of the subject at the moment in time.  The art I aspire to is painting humans, not just people, in the context of life.

I am lucky to be an artist.

 Let me tell you why I'm not an axe murderer.

 I have traveled to every corner of this dark earth and it really is a terrible place:  death, disease, irritable bowel syndrome.

 Then there's the rent, the bills, the unhappy spirits floating everywhere around us.
  I chose to just run away from my problems and paint naked ladies all day. 

My art isn't about trying to heal the violence in my soul, instead it's about the cultivation and nourishment of it--because that is how I genuinely feel, or maybe this is how the universe genuinely feels, through me.  

 Either way, I am putting all of that violence out for your viewing pleasure:
 destruction and chaos, colors and shapes, form and imagination.

Plus philosophy, science, mysticism, our ordinary experience of daily life.

 It's all on the table, and because I have no allegiances to any of those things, I can fuck around all I want.

 Healing is for hippies.  Self-cultivation is for deluded artists.  
 Stop by my studio and share in my delusions.

 Namaste,

 Locust
 SF 2013

There are no limits to the ways people can be photographed. Sometimes, the picture tells a story even beyond the person being photographed. It may even say something about all of us. It’s not always necessary to offer a direct likeness of someone. A stilled and even ambiguous moment may capture something unique and captivating. I like portraits that are suggestive. My idea of flattering a subject is not necessarily to make them look like a magazine ad or a model. It is to imbue their portrait with character.

I look for individual and expressive gestures, for backdrops and locations that can deepen the sense of who we are. Often, the least expected environment or pose can bring out the most striking side of someone, capturing and creating instants of openness and authenticity. The truth of a portrait lies both in what it represents and in the possibilities it offers.

At their most imaginative, portraits can be theater, playing with masks and personas, revealing dramatic character, telling a visual tale.

Much of my photography represents a commitment to my peers in the gay community and to continued visibility as we age. The photos stem from an interest in and attraction to those around me. Intimacy, curiosity, desire and sometimes even a healthy discomfort or fear guide me. I am looking at and getting to know these men . . . and they are looking back.