With my new series of paintings of raining scenes in San Francisco, I have invented a way to amalgamate representational with abstract. Representatioal is figurative and abstract is arbiturary on the canvas. Representational is what I see as I look around me.  It is visual and is the combination of shapes and colors of things of my environment.  Abstract is what is in me as I feel, remember, imagine, think and foresee. It is so much more than the visual perception. I am stuck in the middle between representation (what is aound me) and abstract(what is in me).  My reality I create in my mind lays in the balance between representational and abstract as the idea that the phenomenological experience of self and world is one continuous whole.

The new series of paintings liberate me from both representational and abstract by letting me see them putting up with one another on my canvas from a distance while I am painting and also after completing the painting. As those are being painted and eventually have gotten stucked on the canvas I break free from them. I am not any more in the middle between those. Therefore the distance open up between the painting and me. The distance transcends me. It takes me to another level where to contemplate those.

With the newly found distance, I have understood what is elemental in my painting is the surface of the bubble in which I am. Now I see representational and abstract happen in the outside of the surface over there and are on the surface. Those are intensely pushed away with the surface metaphorically and are integrally adhered to on the canvas. Meanwhile the bubble paradoxically involves me with those, regardless of the distance between me and the surface of the bubble causes me to be with. It is certian that there is no way to get out of the bubble as you live but you stay in it. It is the conceptual liability of life. It is my abstract realism.

Born and raised in Portland Oregon. He graduated with a B.A. in Political Science from the University Of Oregon in 1980. In the summer of 1982 he became extremely stimulated from a visit to the New York Museum Of Modern Art and realized he was an artist. David moved to San Francisco and took various classes at the San Francisco Art institute over the next several years. McGraw is mainly known for large welded abstract figures. Lately, David has utilized mixed media including found objects to further his vision of Bauhaus inspired ‘” Total Art”.The artist lives and works in San Francisco and Sonoma County.

Mike Scagliotti is creator of Oddly Gone Comix, a philosophical comic strip about relationships and magical dimensions. He exhibits his original comic strip art along with a series of abstract paintings.

Most of my art work is figurative and representational. My paintings are based in experiences which have had deep emotional impact on me. I am deeply inspired by images and colors of Mexico. I enjoy working with bright vivid colors in oil on canvas, in order to evoke a striking experience. While the images in my paintings seem more or less derived from nature they are not intended to be representations of ordinary everyday reality. As I paint, I continuously ponder the structure and concepts of my images in order to insure that they correspond to my sense of the experiences underlying them.

Priscilla Otani is a San Francisco-based artist working in installation and mixed media.  

In my “Forgotten Memories” series, I depict the untold stories from long forgotten photographs. I paint these images on wood panels with oil paints, using a considerable amount of white space with the images cropped out of their environment, creating a sense of unbalance and emphasizing the need to focus on the individual’s memory, rather than the whole picture. White areas from the images blend with the negative spaces of the panel to create tension and abstraction of each delineated line. Since many memories are shared, the identity of the person within each memory is inconsequential. The eyes are blocked out so that the viewer can take part of each memory as if it were their own. The painting is then covered in encaustic wax to add an antique photo look and dream-like feel to each piece. Because many memories are unclear and somewhat “fuzzy”, the wax also obscures the images as if the viewer, themselves, were trying to recall a past event, yet could not remember all of the details.
I started this series in 2009 because it made me sad to see so many old photographs sold in thrift stores and flea markets or thrown away, as if the memories no longer mattered, the events recorded no longer important. This series is my attempt to resurrect these memories in a contemporary way.

Fort Mason: Tim Christensen Profile “I often am confronted by astounding beauty and I try to reflect upon that impact, transferring the experience to other images.” The raw beauty, sensuality or deep human emotion inherent in an image is what figurative artist Tim Christensen strives to convey in his work, and his hope is that his art will touch you and elicit a response. The New Zealand native who came to the San Francisco Bay Area some 20 years ago to study feminism on a scholarship at UC Berkeley believes that it is the role of the artist to provide a lens for society to view the world. “I feel a responsibility to stimulate thought and feeling in the society around me,” he emphasizes. “I want to engage my viewers to react strongly to whatever I present to them.” Power of the human form Inspired by the Bay Area Figurative School of Art, (Joan Brown, Elmer Bischoff, etc.) along with modern masters, such as Lucian Freud and Cecily Brown, Christensen originally focused on the power of the human form. More recently he expanded to other subjects -- a series entitled “Deep Space,” which is based on images acquired from the Hubble Telescope, and “Waves” inspired by the large waves of the California coast near his home. Persuaded by his young children and his many years as a diver, he also has created large-scale works of marine life and flowers. Christensen describes his work as bold, fast, instinctive and at times almost primitive “My work is often large, always bright, hot and sexy, as is life,” he says. “My art is impatient and energetic. The brush strokes do not require deep analysis; they are emotive and tactile. Pieces are generally ‘wet.’ Some say the paint colors are ‘fat’, with sloppy, dripping, blazes of color so bright that it immediately captures the viewer.” Interpreting the subject through personal experience Christensen seldom attempts to approximate realism but rather interprets the subject through his own experience. “Often my best works result from the challenging and invigorating experience of working with the live model or my visual replay of an engaging experience, such as being rolled by a tremendously powerful wave on the way out to a dive site, somewhere on the wild coast of Northern California,” he says Subject matter drives the technical aspects of Christensen’s work. He may rapidly execute a gigantic ocean wave on a large-scale canvas, using vast fluid strokes of paint to convey motion. On the other hand “Aurora,” a series of interpretive skyscapes, softly bleeds across the canvas to reflect the ethereal nature of that subject matter. Whatever the subject, Christensen believes that our lives are greatly enriched by all forms of art, and that we must learn both as a society and as individuals to invest in these important works in order to maintain our spirit and to preserve our cultural expressions. Being able to play a small part in that dialogue is what helps Christensen validate his being an artist.

This year I've been developing a series of recycled globes which I'm thrilled to preview.------

I'll also be showing several of my paintings with silver and copper leaf.-----

The power of color has been a life long passion. I am influenced and inspired by the surrealist, minimalist and colorfield painters, among others. Some of these qualities and questions they brought up tend to appear in my own new body of explorative works. My intent is to develop an abstract visual vocabulary with images using an innate sense of relationships which take the viewer to both somewhere new and somewhere in the subconscious at the same time.-----

The addition copper and silver leaf recently added to my paintings adds a fluid element as light changes from different vantage points. Those tonal changes then play with varying qualities of the rich under-painting.

My work search for visual clues, metaphors and states of grace that might illuminate how the world of solid surfaces can exist alongside or within the ever-present backdrop of impermanence and change. My intention is to open a window, at least for a moment, where the static experience of a single view gives way to the ecstatic possibilities of the ephemeral. 

Self Portrait Series:  I collaborate with forces inside and outside the studio to make images that explore my own shifting understanding of “the self”.  In the past I have worked with rain and wind and a seasonal leak in the studio. My one rule: never force, always coax these collaborations into being.  More recently, I have been working with dust and debris from my studio floor. Each portrait represents the accumulation of dust from one particular day.  I cut a stencil and use a spray adhesive on mylar to collect the dust and to cast a shadow into each image.  

Old Is New Series: These sculptures are made from a series of paintings that I completed in 2005. Each sculpture is assembled from one painting in the series. The original series was inspired by building facades in and around the city of San Francisco. The powerful act of ripping a finished painting combined with the meditative act of sewing and mending created a new understanding of form and change.