Parris Jaru

I Swallowed a Gold Fish - Surrealist Figurative Painting with Yellow and Green

2019

Parris Jaru's The Last Time I Saw It is a 16 x 11-inch surrealist oil painting. The primary colors are black and red. The canvas surface has a thick impasto of paint, made with plant-based pigments that Jaru collects during his long exploratory trips through India. The imagery brings a surrealist human figure, with all the body features exaggerated as if in a caricature. NY-born Parris Jaru comes from a Jamaican, Blackfoot Nation, and Arawak Nation background from both his parents. His work is informed by the vivid colors and imagery experienced in his childhood years spent in the coastal town of St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica. His exploratory journeys in India enriched his work with a sensibility to natural plant-based pigments that he grinds with oils for his paintings. In his Brooklyn studio, Jaru brings all these cultural inspirations together. His entire body of work is informed by an intentional childlike, faux-naïve style, constantly shifting between figurative and abstraction. Even though at times, Jaru has been working on somber and entirely figure-free paintings, most of his work is defined by poignantly colored and playful surrealistic figures. Jaru often draws his figures with a continuous line emerging from a thick impasto of paint made with powders of Sea Algae, Hibiscus, Gymnema Sylvestre, and Turmeric. Related keywords: Caribbean Artist...

Parris Jaru's Octopus Huggs is a 8 x 9 inches surrealist oil painting. The main colors are blue and yellow. The artist created a surrealist representation of a human face defined by ...

This captivating painting features a dynamic interplay between nature and man-made objects, with cascading waterfalls forming a serene backdrop for symbolic objects in the foreground...

Parris Jaru's The Other Mask is a 12 x 9 inches surrealist oil painting. The main color is blue. A surrealist representation of a human face can be recognized. The surface is defined...

Walking Creature, Contemporary Surreal Figurative Abstract by Michael William Eggleston Bold and imaginative contemporary figurative abstract by San Francisco artist Michael William...

SORCERER'S BISCUIT is a new oil on canvas surrealist painting by Brooklyn, New York artist Tony Geiger. It measures 16x20" and is a unique artwork. Note the artist's vocabulary present here – the young girl in early 20th century clothes holding the chewed biscuit; on poles either side of her what looks like a wolf in top hat, and a queen with crown. The wolf and queen are dimensional though appear as garish silhouettes – setting up a duality, a dream, a magic spell... Tony Geiger has said his paintings take you to a certain place, but you have to find your own way back. The world he creates encompasses both classical surrealism and more contemporary concerns. Conflict is usually present. These mischievous juxtapositions make statements on the human condition – either politically, physically or spiritually. Geiger wants the viewer to be challenged and amused by this mixture of the macabre and the playful. A graduate of the School of Visual Arts, New York and a longtime NYC resident, Tony Geiger still considers himself a transplanted Californian. He has exhibited paintings at the Sideshow Gallery in Williamsburg, the Barbican Centre in London, England, Miami Projects at Art Basel, Ceres Gallery in Chelsea, NYC, and he was accepted into The Drawing Center’s Viewing Program. Tony Geiger lives in Carroll...

keywords; surrealism, portrait, oil painting, earth tones, figurative painting, strangeness, contemporary surrealistic, unsettling, contemporary figurative painting, dreams, symbolic...

In The New York Times Arts in America column, Edward M. Gomez wrote of Valton Tyler: Visionary seems the right word for describing his vivid, unusual and technically refined painting...