Randall Mooers

A Good Day for A Parade III

My paintings begin with a serious sense of play, both in the staging and the creating of the compositions. It is at this beginning stage that I operate under the Dadaist dictate that “anything can be art”, and at the same time I seek out a balanced and harmonious composition by way of line, shape, and color. I work according to my whimsy, sometimes seeking to assert some form of narrative however personal or ambiguous, and other times I am simply satisfied with the hint of a human presence. Once I have my compositions the paintings then very quickly become about work, a very labor intensive work that forces me to focus my mind and slow things down (which I feel is relevant especially in this day and age of high-speed everything). A great amount of effort is spent on trying to get to the highest level of finish that is possible according to my current skill level. For inspiration I have drawn from the past four centuries of object specific paintings, from the ontbijtjes (laid tables) of the 17th Century Dutch masters such as Willem Kalf...

My paintings begin with a serious sense of play, both in the staging and the creating of the compositions. It is at this beginning stage that I operate under the Dadaist dictate that...

An oil painting of a tomato still life. On a neutral background sits a larger tomato and 6 smaller tomatoes still attached to a vine. The two groups are divided by a diagonal slash of branch. Painting dimensions: 6 x 13 inches Framed dimensions: 12 x 19 inches John Morfis was born in Bayville, Long Island in 1976. His humble beginnings made pursuing a career in art difficult and paradoxically necessary. Fixated on making things aesthetically pleasing, John made an extreme departure from his family life when he chose to base his life on art. Surrounded by mechanics, welders, and otherwise trade workers John had a tough time expressing his interest in a world much more utilitarian and much less expressive and impractical. With an extraordinary desire to be an artist and a grant awarded, John was able to earn a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a concentration in painting from the University of Hartford in 1998. While there John studied oil painting under American realist Stephen Brown...

Miguel Padura was born in Havana in 1957. "I was four years old when my family moved to Rodas, in the province of Las Villas. My father was an engineer, ...