[ad_1]
Tom Strychacz’s landscape exhibition, “TWIXT: Soulscapes on Oil” will be on display at the Benicia Library until April 5 (contributed photo, Tom Strychacz)
At first glance, the landscapes of Tom Strychacz’s paintings resemble a jigsaw puzzle featuring the prolific work of Charles Wysocki.
But where Wysocki’s paintings tend only to look to the past, Strychacz describes his art as stuck between past and present, modernity and tradition.
His current exhibition at the Benicia Library, “TWIXT: Soulscapes on Oil,” encapsulates just that. Thirty of Strychacz’s paintings will hang inside the library’s gallery until April 5, offering viewers a walk through the English Lake District and on through the Napa Valley.
In bringing these real places to vivid life, Strychacz views it as drawing out the landscape’s ideals rather than painting an idealized scene. “I view them as romantic in the sense that they present the values and ideals of a landscape,” said Strychacz.
“I didn’t grow up in the scenes that I paint,” said Strychacz. Originally from an industrial city in England, Strychacz made his way to America when he was 22. In 1988, he began teaching American Literature at Mills College at Northeastern University in Oakland.
While there is some incorporation of writing in his paintings, Strychacz views his two pursuits as being almost entirely unrelated. Describing his scholarly work as very abstract and esoteric, Strychacz’s painting is completely left-brained.
“My brain goes into a rhythmic state that has nothing to do with thought really,” he said. “The narrative impulse carries across, but I think the experience of doing the paintings is a wholly different beast.”
For Strychacz, art and painting was never an academic pursuit, but an experiential one.
“I was very poor in high school art class,” he recalled. “My drawing refused to look like the motorbike we were meant to draw.”
Told to give it up by his art teacher, Strychacz didn’t touch a brush until 15 years later when his wife gave him a set of oil paints.
“I don’t want to learn how I’m supposed to be doing something,” he said. “I’d prefer to just do it. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn’t.
After an unsatisfactory still life of apples and bananas and another few years of putting it aside, Strychacz picked up the brush to recreate an old mansion he and his wife had visited. The painting took off.
“It worked that time,” said Strychacz. “Maybe because I had more of an emotional attachment to it.”
Ever since then, Strychacz has found a wealth of inspiration from traveling, receiving a vision and bringing it out on canvas.
“Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t,” he said. While his art is very rarely an exact representation of a place, it is always vaguely inspired by what he sees.
One visit to Bolinas, for example, prompted a series of seashore paintings.
“Things take on a different life as I ponder them,” said Strychacz. “Things also come back from long ago.” An image of Germany’s windy rivers and vineyard-covered riverbanks came to him 20 years after he had visited, inspiring a version of that scene.
Strychacz views his art as both strange and beautiful. Fun elements like symbols, song titles and other unique details reward the close observer. Quoting his wife, Strychacz said they are “fun paintings to pop in and wander round in.” Ultimately, that is the effect Strychacz aims to achieve. He not only wants viewers to see from a distance, but to locate the little narratives going on inside.
Even while his use of color has evolved over the years, Strychacz has always painted those details. In that inaugural painting of the mansion, he drew a hand coming out the window throwing a paper plane. This was a playful way to incorporate his son into that memory.
As a result, Strychacz feels a strong attachment to some of these pieces. Not only are there the months of work that go into them, but there’s also the pieces of his own history inside.
IF YOU GO:
- WHAT: “TWIXT: Soulscapes on Oil”
- WHERE: Marilyn Citron O’Rourke Art Gallery, Benicia Public Library, 150 East L St., Benicia.
- WHEN: Exhibition is open through April 5
[ad_2]
Source link