Artist John Sabraw really gets us excited. His enthusiasm and true love of art is contagious, his knowledge is vast. The guy was just born an artist, nothing was going to change that, and his word and words show that through and though. We talked with Sabraw about this love, his inspirations, and his current exhibit, which you need to go see. Sit back and enjoy some Sabraw, it will no doubt be your art fix for the day.
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Serial Optimist: You’re extremely talented in multiple mediums. I usually find when this is the case it’s the artists just having a gift, What medium did you start out with, which came most natural?
John Sabraw: Thanks man! I feel sheepish when people say that, but I also cherish the compliment. I started out with anything that could be used to build my crazy dreams. I pulled pickets off the neighbor’s fence and stole nails from the garage around the block to make a full sized helicopter (for a 6 year old) that I was completely convinced would fly. I stole my sister’s clay to make an entire city and its inhabitants on an old box in the back room. I tore apart clock after clock and numerous household appliances to make a time machine. So they stopped buying me anything. Then I started drawing. Fantastical things: whole worlds, fighters in space, planets, aliens, dogs, cars; dogs driving cars made by aliens flying around planets fighting spacers. I didn’t know how to draw. I just drew. No rules. I used spit, dirt, good pencils, broken pencils, crayons, ballpoint pens, anything to make sense of my inner world as it crashed against the outer world. I never showed them to anyone. I spent hours on them. Everything else stemmed from there. Even now when things seem unsettled I always return to drawing. All my work is drawing really.
SO: “Art is the mechanism through which I explore fundamental metaphysical dilemmas we face as a conscious species. No media or mode is unconsidered in the pursuit.” Wow. That’s a beautifully written statement, but I have no idea what you’re saying. Please explain.
Sabraw: Ha Ha! Well said. Considering the very broad use of “Metaphysics” to cover anything that is “beyond physics,” I struggle with the basic metaphysical questions of life: how did we get here, what are we supposed to do while we are here, and where do we go next? I don’t struggle with these questions in an abstract way; I mentally and physically battle to understand them every day. My art is the release valve for this nearly unbearable tension between the desire for peace and answers and the gravity of what’s at stake. I think that is also why my subject matter and approach vary so much: any peace is fleeting, any answers unrequited; restlessness pervades and my creative drive reflects that.
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SO: If you had to choose two colors to work with, only two, for two years, what would those colors be?
Sabraw: Burgundy Wine Red from Old Holland, and Greenish Yellow from Holbein. I’m trying to think of some legit color theory reasons for this choice, but honestly I’m just in love with these oils right now. The Red is so absolutely BLOOD red, but glazes out to cinnamon lollipop sweetness, and the Greenish Yellow is a sort of split pea soup color but glazes out to a lemon grass yellow – it’s almost magical! And yes, I always talk about colors in terms of food, maybe because I find them so luscious.
SO: The Arborescent Show is so fantastic. How did you create those images?
Sabraw: I am a new soul. Or so I have been told by numerous chiromancers. I encounter the world with childlike wonderment. Every moment of every day I am flooded with images, feelings, dreams that unbidden form intricate connections to each other. I don’t seem to have any filters – I blurt things out as they come to me, I forget I’m driving the car because I saw something that I can’t explain and my mind went off on a expedition to build a context for it, I say things that have great importance to me and watch peoples faces express their now confirmed inclinations that I have gone off the edge.
So instead of trying to pretend I am an artist of readily identifiable style and subject I produced my most honest show yet: arborescent. The term refers to being tree-like in growth or appearance and that is the structure that I feel connects these many varied works.
The large digital print “Unified Theory V2: (Hermeneutic Ontology)” is my artist’s statement for arborescent. Nearly 1600 images have been carefully collected and selected over the last few years to provide a visual equivalent for how connections are formed in my thought processes, which ultimately inspire my work. Like idiosyncratic connections between things – simultaneous macro and micro events – compression of time and distance in singular captured phenomenon – celebration of beauty, the sublime, the glory of our universe through exploration of natural and cosmological processes – discovery – complexity – and grand schemes in small things.
In the chroma series I worked from my interests in natural phenomena and sought to explore these processes using the mediums of paint and time. Dozens of layers of different colors mixed to different viscosities are juxtaposed, superimposed, and intermixed with one another then allowed to coagulate, amalgamate, collude and interact with environmental forces (humidity, air movements, temperature, evaporation, reticulation, etc.) over a period of time ranging from days to weeks to months. The result is complex, luminous, mysterious paintings that strike a beautiful balance between controlled and organic processes
The landscape and cortex paintings are bookends to my interests: the landscapes are mist filled, indefinite and spiritually contemplative. While the cortex paintings are brilliantly colored, sharp, high contrast and they seem a little dangerous to me: optically inviting like the brightness of a poison tree frog maybe.
Also, using an algorithm that I developed with CarbonFund.org I purchase carbon offset credits each year to make my artistic practice carbon neutral. (I even used it to offset the Mona Lisa, though not surprisingly I never heard back from the Louvre after I sent them a letter congratulating them on this achievement I accomplished for their painting without asking J.)
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SO: Three people, dead or alive, that have inspired you most are?
Sabraw: Antonio Lopez Garcia
This Spanish realist has never ceased to be a beacon for me for integrity in painting. His works are so lovingly and painstakingly created with such a sense of organic process and inner drive it almost makes me cry. It certainly makes me humble and charged with possibility if I can just trust in myself.
Chris Burden
Most publicly known for having himself shot, I return to his work again and again to learn how to take an idea to its end point. Take his Flying Steamroller piece for instance. This is the dumbest idea ever: get a steamroller and attach it to a huge boom and lift it off the ground for a bit while it is running. But in Chris’s hands it becomes sublime, other-worldly, a dangerous encapsulation of all those dreams of our youth when we played with Tonka toys and could feel their potential to fly. But he REALLY made it fly. So that dumb idea you have? Make it happen, don’t hold back, it will be worth it for you and for the world.
Robert Brawley
The only reason I am a functioning human is because of Bob’s help. He passed a few years ago now and it seems a century to me, I miss him terribly and think of him every day. He was my painting professor at the University of Kansas for 2 years. He refused to teach me his painting techniques, which was the only reason I went out there in the first place. I was furious at him. I only understood after I started exhibiting that he knew exactly what was right to give me and what was needed for me to earn on my own.
He unfailingly supported me every day that I knew him in every way imaginable. And he taught me to be open, to accept before judging, to be OK with what my instincts told me to do even in the face of fierce opposition.
Most importantly he showed me that love is the most powerful force in the universe. It saved my life.
SO: What’s next?
Sabraw: I have a solo show of new works going up at Kathryn Markel NY in June. No title yet, more as it happens!!
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SO Note: Stay up to date on Sabraw at johnsabraw.com and streetwaterarts.com. Go see the exhibit going on now:
January 18-March 2
Thomas McCormick Gallery
835 W. Washington Blvd.
Chicago, IL 60607
312.226.6800