John Boyce (American 1938); Portrait 1; watercolor on paper board

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John Boyce
John Boyce (American 1938); Portrait 1; watercolor on paper board
1970

About the Item

John Boyce is a Los Angeles artist who, after 33 years of developing his own unique expression, has received national and international recognition. With public and private showings in Paris, New York, Stockholm, Sidney, Tokyo, East Berlin ... his audience spans three continents, an acknowledgement of his emerging widespread appeal. As an accomplished painter, sculptor and filmmaker, John Boyce has earned such commendatory reviews as those of Anais Nin, collaborator, autobiographical writer and friend: "The work of John Boyce is quite unique ... his exquisite lines translate the lyrical, each drawing attesting the power of poetry ... he has created his own contemporary style." A self actualizing artist who considers himself to be unschooled in the traditional sense, Boyce strives for individualism, simplicity, and understanding in his “renderings of the phenomena of nature." He views himself as "an observer and recorder engaged in an activity that goes all the way back to the cave painters." John Boyce was born in Nowata, Oklahoma in 1935, grandson of a pioneering family of the Cherokee Strip, and spent most of his formative years in Texas. He started drawing at the age of ten with the encouragement of his teachers and parents. His father wanted his son to excel in a pursuit for which he was gifted. Boyce's academic career began in 1953 when he attended the University of Kansas, on scholarship, to begin training in the arts. Later, while stationed in Central America, he studied with Juan Sedueno, Chairman of the art department of the University of Panama, at his private art academy. During this time, he became acquainted with a missionary working among the Indian population in the jungle. Through their dialogues, Boyce developed an interest in ethics and aesthetics, and when he returned to the United States, he earned a degree in Philosophy. In 1962, with only two years of formal training, Boyce received a recommendation from T.E. Green, 4 former professor at Princeton, to Millard Sheets, President of Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, where he enrolled in courses leading to a Masters Degree in Fine Arts. However, after a year of studio instruction, feeling a need to broaden-his-experience and follow-his-own-direction, he left Otis and took up residence in Mexico to paint. While in Puerta Vallarta, Boyce met Marianne Greenwood, former curator of the Musee d'Antibes or Musee Picasso. As a curator, Greenwood had initiated and presented exhibitions for artists from all parts of the world. Greenwood responded to Boyce's work by arranging numerous showings, some by invitation only, in eleven countries, throughout Europe, and North and South America. From 1965 to 1969, Boyce lived alternatively between Mexico, the California Coast and the East Coast. With a home base in an old converted carriage house in Stockbridge, Mass. began to gain exposure as a significant contemporary artist exhibiting in New York's competitive art market. In 1970, Boyce came to Los Angeles to do an experimental film--a three year project. Under the instruction of Iver Flom--independent filmmaker--he produced an unconventional fine arts film combining the techniques of line art, animation, and computerized video tape editing. These techniques provided an ability to record images sequenced in time and an opportunity for metamorphosis of imagery not possible through any other medium. With a single identifying shot followed by abstract shapes, Boyce was able to capture the essence of objects in motion, transforming and disintegrating, making an exaggerated statement about the perception of reality and illusion. Although the film was well received, Boyce felt that it was not well - enough understood. It's abstract content had materialized as almost an artifact of experimentation without specific intent or purpose. Recognizing a need to more clearly define it's direction, Boyce developed a script to clarify the film's plot and characters. The equally unconventional script a "film poem" or collection of poetic passages - juxaposed poetic fragments in such a way as to create a series of sequenced surrealistic visions - these visions are the film's theme. Once scripted, the film became an enlarged poetic statement that depicted the comfortable and familiar from a somehow unfamiliar, disquieting point of view. The original film, forty-five minutes in length, was edited to seventeen, and scored by Louis and Beebe Baron, creators of the electronic sound score for Forbidden Planet, academy award nominee and classic science fiction film. The Boyce Bio film was introduced at a surrealism seminar at the University of California at San Diego, viewed by Herbert Marcuse, and re-edited for distribution. What resulted was a one-of-a-kind film experience that, like a Rorschach, evoked the unconscious projections and suppressed emotions of it's viewers. At a private showing of this film arranged by Marianne Greenwood, Boyce met Anais Nin. Seven years later, she suggested a collaboration on a book of illustrations that would complement passages from her celebrated diary. The collaboration that followed seemed a natural synthesis of art forms from artists who shared a similar aim. The aim: To express the inner workings of the unconscious achieved through the use of "automatic technique" also associated with turn-of- the-century poets and the twentieth-century surrealist painters. After a year of reading Miss Nin's life work, Boyce selected passages and drew eighty-four drawings - six sequences of "Love stories" that represent the evolution of a relationship between a man and a woman for Aphrodisiac. Published in 1976, the manuscript and it's authors were acclaimed by the New York Book Review: "Rarely has the human imagination produced a work that was more exquisitely erotic." Critiqued as a "singular" and "unusual" book, it has been published in America, France, Britain and Spain, in both hard and soft bound editions. For Boyce, these illustrations were the result of a fifteen year pursuit of line drawing as a point of departure for a remarkable personal statement. Since 1976, Boyce has lived in the Redwood Country of Northern California where, with an invitation from poet Bill Bradd, his paintings, prints, and film were exhibited at the Mendocino Art Center; he has traveled to Europe where he produced a collection of drawings of the German Circus Krone, and an edition of lithographs with Marcel Salinas, Picasso's noted lithographer; and, with an invitation from artist Michael Parsons, has sojourned in the Philippines as first visiting artist to the Green House Monastery in Baguio City, Mountain Province, where he worked under the direction of print master and etcher Virgilio "Pandy" Aviado, formerly of the William Hayter Gallery in Paris. To chronicle Boyce's evolution as an artist: He began with the desire "to record Buffalo hunts" as a young boy--that is, to draw the personal experiences of his youth motivated by the pleasure of creating. Inspired by the Renaissance painters and sculptors, he set out to gain a facility for realistic rendering. Later, in the early 60's, he indulged in the exploration of abstract expressionism experimenting with painting without premeditation or deliberation. However, realizing the limitations of this approach, he returned to drawing, this time from his own psyche-uncensored. Now, like other Nineteen Seventies artists, his work reflects a rediscovery of representationalism. But unlike other representational painters who choose the alienation and isolation of our overly mechanistic society as subject matter, Boyce prefers to paint from nature. Without doubt, Boyce's work reflects a knowledge of a wide range of sophisticated techniques available to the artist today. (Probably one of his most demanding project's yet, is a multiplex hologram, 4 three-dimensional erotic drawing sculpted with Selwyn Lissack, creator of Salvador Dali's holograms.) In spite of this ability, he offers the ideal of simple effort - potentially universal, that communicates or touches another and gives pleasure - as more important than the mastery of complex technology. He holds a particular distain for the “well-made professional picture that has everything except the authority or integrity of real art". Boyce says that his intent is simply …to elicit a response and share his own personal feelings. Boyce is currently in Los Angeles to consumate a contract with Pinnacle Press for a major printing of Aphrodisiac. He plans to start work on a new book of poems and drawings with watercolors titled, China Sea

Creator:
John Boyce (1938, American)
Creation Year:
1970
Dimensions:
Height: 15 in (38.1 cm)Width: 10 in (25.4 cm)
Medium:
Watercolor,Cardboard,Paper
Period:
20th Century
Condition:
Gallery Location:
Los Angeles, CA
Reference Number:
Seller: 24851stDibs: LU90813509972

John Boyce (American 1938); Portrait 1; watercolor on paper board

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