Art by John Motian. Paintings and drawings by the 79 year old artist.
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Press release, Eureka Times Standard, 2012.
John Motian “Tripping through Time” Paintings at the C Street Hall Gallery, 208 C Street, Eureka CA Saturday September 1st for Arts Alive 6-9pm. Open Sept 1st12-9 and by appointment through Sept, 498-0059 or 442-1419
79 year old artist John Motian has recently returned to Eureka after almost 20 years of caring for his mother in Cleveland. His mysterious, visually delightful paintings will be in a solo show at the C Street Hall Gallery Arts Alive.
Described as evoking van Gogh, Cezanne, Gauguin and Matisse, Motian’s style is uniquely his own. He describes his work as a visual diary, it is filled with stories that flow out of their own accord, “I have to surprise myself.” Paintings on paper and canvas are full of color and figures, mostly representational, but not literal, “I’m unimpressed by photographic reality, I want poetry, mystery. My art is a continuing search for spiritual enlightenment…I am less interested in art that mimics nature and more concerned with creating a sense of mystery and ambiguity…”
The son of Armenian immigrants, Motian wasn’t great at math and science in Cleveland schools, but when he found a book on Impressionism at the library when he was 12, he knew he would be an artist. He later took classes at the Cooper School of Art, the Cleveland Institute of Art and the Art Students League in New York.
In 1966, he packed his car full of art supplies and headed to California. There, he found other artists who inspired and mentored him, and had daughter Rachel and son Noah with wife Nancy, to whom he was married from 1971 to 1984. During those years, he did hard, physical jobs to make money, but he lived to make art. “I even told my wife, if it’s her or the art, the art comes first,” says Motian, who admits the message didn’t go over well. A year after his marriage ended, he returned to Cleveland to care for his mother.
John King recently had a chance to visit Motian’s studio. “Looking at John’s art with him was like trying to package up hot bagels that are coming off a conveyer belt way too fast. There were twenty portfolios spread through the room that he picked from at random and upon opening it he gave a brief description of each piece before jumping to the next. You felt like spending more time with each but if you picked a favorite to look at later, that time never came because it was soon buried under a mountain of work. As the work piled up around me, a verbal stream of consciousness from Motian also piled up. “In this piece the artist just died and the birds are pecking at him… here are some simple trees with a simple boat… that’s my mother when she was snoring, people think she was singing in this picture…’”
Come to the show on Saturday and experience John’s show firsthand. You will find mysteries of your own in each work.
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