Lot 177 - Ian Everard - Recto Vanishing Point Four

ARTIST INFO

About 

I was born in St. Ives, Cornwall, in 1953. I have lived in Santa Cruz, California, since 1980. Influenced by Minimalism in my youth, I treat Minimalism now as a lapsed Catholic might the Church. So, I find myself still, absurdly perhaps, attempting to pare painting down to its essentials. However, unlike the Minimalists, my focus is, irreverently, on representation. I paint things I have found or inherited, such as books, pamphlets, photos or, in fact, post cards. These things are often mass-market, sexy, romantic, sensational, mysterious or deeply personal. They have been around for a while, show signs of wear and tear and, for me, there is always more to them than meets the eye. They are products of swift manufacture and mass production, but I work many hours to faithfully copy them, right down to each accident, crease, smudge or tear. The paintings are not always finished but I consider them complete. When complete, I almost always juxtapose the thing and the painting of the thing, within the frame - but not always. If not, as with these postcard pieces, it can be assumed that I took a long time making a good copy, and that the exception, absent the original, proves the rule 

Education 

B.A. Painting, Stourbridge College of Art; Graduate Certificate, Science Communication/illustration, University of California, Santa Cruz; M.F.A., San Francisco State University, California. 

Select Exhibitions/Awards 

I have exhibited my work extensively, in museums, commercial galleries in the U.S. and internationally. Museums include the de Young Museum, San Francisco, the Crocker Museum, Sacramento, the Riverside Museum, Los Angeles, and the Museum of Art and History, Santa Cruz. Commercial galleries include the Jack Fischer and Andrea Schwartz Galleries, in San Francisco, Senior and Shopmaker, in New York, Couturier, Grey McGear Modern and Sherry Frumkin Galleries, in Los Angeles, and Mirage Gallery in Tokyo.  
 
COLLECTIONS INCLUDE: 

The Lawrence B. Benenson Collection, Greenwich, Connecticut; University of California Santa Cruz, Special Collections; The Achenbach Collection at the Fine Arts Museums, San Francisco, California; The Oakland Museum, Oakland, California; The Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California; The Farhat Museum Collection, California. 

AWARDS / SCHOLARSHIPS / FELLOWSHIPS: 

2023, The Tree Of Life Individual Artist Award; 2012, Rydell Visual Arts Fellowship; 2007, The Murphy Fellowship; 2004, The George Sugarman Award. 

Gallery Representation 

Jack Fischer Gallery, San Francisco, California. 

Statement about AOAP Submitted Artwork 

Art on a Postcard has become a mail art adventure, for me! In 2021, for the Art on a Postcard auction, I submitted art of a postcard (well, of two postcards, actually). They were both very exact watercolour copies of postcards in my possession. One of the postcards showed a street scene of my birthplace - St. Ives, in Cornwall; the other, a 1950s leaning man at the Mystery Spot, in Santa Cruz, California, where I live. I knew that the successful bidder, or bidders, for the Mystery Spot postcard painting lives, or live, in Portland, Oregon. Not long after the auction, I received a postcard from Portland in the mail. It was a leaning man Mystery Spot postcard that had been altered. The leaning man had been cut out and replaced with a cosmic pattern leaning man. So, for the Art on a Postcard auction, in 2022, I made a very exact copy of the leaning man Mystery Spot postcard, but left the cosmic pattern out. I also made a very exact watercolour copy of the street scene in St. Ives, with the cosmic leaning man inserted into the scene. Another successful bid was made from Portland, Oregon. Early in 2023, I received another postcard from Portland, Oregon. This time, it was the street scene in St. Ives that had been altered. The background had been cut out and replaced with a repetitive patterned paper, resembling a biological phenomenon of some sort. There was also the addition of an enormous barefoot, as if Gulliver were turning the corner at the end of the street, which was now a fluorescent orange river. I painted an exact copy of this and submitted it for the Art on a Postcard auction. I also painted an exact copy of the reverse side of the postcard, with its Solar eclipse stamp, franked in Portland, and quotation from Victor Segalen; “Is the imagination weakened or reinforced when it comes face to face with the real?”. In addition, I painted a fairly exact, but subtly different, watercolour copy of Art on a Postcard’s self-addressed envelope bearing the appropriate legend “Please do not bend”. 

You must not reproduce, duplicate, copy, sell, resell or exploit any works. In doing so, you endanger our relationships with artists, and directly jeopardise the charitable work we do