Advanced Practice Nurse
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Charles Wish is a California artist best known for visually fusing American
Regionalism styles with 16th - 19th century
South Asian,
Tantra &
Buddhist motifs (debut show
Detroit,
Michigan,
2005).
Seasonably confronting the
information age challenges of extreme, cultural contrariety and cross-cultural interaction, Charles Wish (b. Frederick Charles Peters VIII,
Los Angeles,
California 1971, BFA
University of Arizona, 1993) draws from a diverse range of influences to deliver his style of "Neo-regionalist" paintings. Sighting local giants like
Grant Wood and
Thomas Hart Benton, as well as the many anonymous artisans of a foreign, primal world, he combines the esoteric ontology of a nonage civilization with some of provincial-America's most selfsame symbols and scenes.
"Americans suffer from an extreme, cultural schizophrenia. We are all, born and raised, diehard xenophobes, while we work like mad to create a nation where the opportunities for progressive eclecticism abound. If we can pick-up on the benefits of both sides of this coin, if we can learn to temper elective-freedom with our backwoods ways, the future of American culture will shine like no other culture before. Brimming with the byproducts of idiosyncrasy, a balancing act of intuition and imagination, from the boundless marriages of acquired and innate motifs, beautiful mutants shall be born… If Heidegger (a leading exponent of 20th century existentialism, but also a staunch critic of advanced, technological society) could have only lived to fully experience the irony, what a confused smile he would have had."From
"Pirates of The Electric Church," 2003,
Charles Wish.
After spending four years (1999-2003) at a
Ramakrishna,
Hindu monastery (as a student of South-Asian symbolism and iconography) Wish would return to the
San Fernando Valley, California not far from where he spent his formative years. It is here, along with his wife Abbigail, where he continues to reside and paint today.
*
Rick Manore, Director,
CPop Gallery, Detroit, Michigan.
*
Joy Hakanson Colby, Art Critic,
The Detroit News, Saturday,
July 2, 2005.
*
Debi Jacobson, Director,
L'Imagerie Gallery, Los Angeles, California.
*
Wish's official website*
Adrian College, Adrian, Michigan
