Khalid Nadif

Colorful Contemporary Figurative Painting "Untitled I"

2007

Contemporary figurative painting by Khalid Nadif Mixed media on canvas, offered in a light wood frame. Signed on back by the artist. Portrait, female fi...

Beautifully rendered large-scale contemporary figurative painting of two African American women. Oil and mixed media on canvas. Size: 76 × 60 in 193 × 152.4 cm Through a mode of portrait painting that acknowledges tradition but also tries to capture the rawness and urgency of contemporary elements of street art, graffiti, and urban motifs, Tim Okamura seeks to celebrate the individual but also – and importantly – discover through his models, metaphors for greater aspects of the human condition. Okamura uses an academic-based, realist approach to painting and incorporates the mark-making and spontaneous language of spray-painted graffiti, collage, and iconographic “signage” in an attempt to weave the nuances of relationships of ethnicity, social identity, and inner-city sub-culture into his subjects’ stories, as captured on canvas. The stories that he has sought out in recent years have belonged primarily to African-American and minority subjects – in particular women – a segment of our society who he feels have been under-represented in the history of figurative painting and narrative works, and whose strength, courage and stoicism he most often finds very inspirational. Tim Okamura’s work is represented in the permanent collections of the Davis Museum at Wellesley College, The Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the Toronto Congress Center, the Hotel Arts in Calgary, Canada, the Jiménez Colón Museum, and Standard Chartered Bank in London, England. Celebrity collectors include Uma Thurman, musicians John Mellencamp and Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson (The Roots), director Ben Younger and actors Bryan Greenberg, Vanessa Marcil, Annabella Sciorra, and Ethan Hawke, among others. Exhibition History: Solo Retrospective - "This Story Has Not Yet Been Told...The Work of Tim Okamura," - The Robert and Sallie Brown Gallery and Museum, The Sonia Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History, University of North Carolina (2013). black history month, African American, portrait, figurative art, figurative painting, black portrait, female portrait, black women, black female, women's history, African American painting...

Victor Wang's subject is a female seemingly caught in a contemplative moment yet a war rages behind her. She dons a hat shaped as a boat and carries and oar as if to "Dream Away" these other thoughts. Wang uses a blend of luminous colors and buttery textures to evoke these enigmatic moments of meditation. Influence by the Renaissance Masters Titian and Rembrandt for their glazing and layering techniques respectively, the artist builds the surface using heavy paint, swirling and mixing the color on the canvas. The end result is a poetic and emotionally powerful representation of the human form. Victor Wang Dreaming Away, 2017 oil on canvas 42h x 56w in 106.68h x 142.24w cm VWG009 My path through life has been adventurous, exciting, and dream-like. My experience of settling into America in search of better opportunities has been both challenging and inspiring. I use the human face as a vehicle to paint human experiences - worry and wonder, sadness and pleasure - which reflect the emotional stage directly tied to my immigration experiences. I grew up amongst the sunflower fields in northern China. In my childhood years, I played under the bright, yellow sunflowers with my brothers everyday. China’s Cultural Revolution played an important part in my life. During that time, sunflowers were used as political allegories to depict how citizens of China should follow Mao who represented the sun, since sunflowers follow the sun’s movements. People eventually inferred the deception that this symbol masked. After graduating from high school, I was sent to a labor camp in the country for ‘reeducation’ during China’s Cultural Revolution. There, I was subject to grueling farm work. Often, I worked in corn and sunflower fields from sunrise to sunset. Thus, for me, sunflowers evoke both personal joy and sadness. Therefore, to deliver my complex feelings, I use sunflowers as a metaphor to connote my background and emotional stage. My incorporation of collages of figures from China’s Tang Dynasty represents my Chinese heritage and is a constant reminder of where I came from. The texture and earthiness on the canvas’s surface are inspired by the texture of the soil on the farm where I worked in China. Although I often gain great pleasure from the process of painting, it is most important to unfold expressively those feelings within myself. Wang belongs to a generation of immigrant painters from China, whose artistic background was defined by socialist realism but took advantage of their skills and broke away from that tradition to create new subjects in the U.S. “When I was a student during Cultural Revolution, Soviet realism art was among the dominant source of influence and it grabbed us like lightening rod...

My solid backbone, a pillar of strength, A foundation of power, a source of great length, It supports me through life's ups and downs, A constant companion, a source of profound. Sh...