“Between Realities” Artist Stephen Namara
“Into the Light”. Oil on Canvas 48 “ by 48”
Please join us for a reception for the artist, Stephen Namara, on Tuesday April 1st from 5-7pm. This is part of the First Tuesday Art Walk. The April Art Exhibit can be seen during the month of April during our open hours. If you would like to see the exhibit at other times please contact us at info@142ThrockmortonTheatre.org or call us at (415) 383-9600 to arrange a personal appointment.
ARTIST STATEMENT. I named the show, “Between Realities “because I use representational painting to show the edge of our everyday world-moments that are different from the usual, where reality and non reality meet. In other words, I am painting the places between the ordinary, boring and serious reality, and the amazing.
ARTIST Stephen Namara, born in 1953, is a contemporary American and African artist and figurative painter residing and working in San Francisco. Since graduating from art school, Namara has organized his artistic practice around recurring themes and scenes, creating a personal taxonomy of images drawn from his own life.
Namara’s exhibitions began at the Haines Gallery in San Francisco in 1988, and he has been a regular at the Andra Norris Gallery in Burlingame for the last decade. Throughout his career, he has participated in over 80 solo exhibitions and more than 100 group shows, locally, nationally and internationally. His work is represented in private and corporate collections across the United States.
While Namara’s distinctive visual language is unwavering, his work draws heavily from the pictorial traditions of the “Bay Area Figurative School” and magic realism. The legacy of these art movements is evident in the poetic quality of Namara’s style. His mastery of light and the alluring manipulation of depth of field in his paintings create a sustained sense of tension and mystery, hinting at a multitude of meanings. Namara’s works incorporate psychologically potent symbolism, and his still lifes, in particular, evoke a disquieting atmosphere, with objects bathed in contrasting light and shadows. The act of still life painting is a constant pursuit of beauty in the ordinary moments of life. Each painting serves as an elegant invitation to contemplate the exquisite qualities of time and its relationship with light.
Despite the absence of the human figure, Namara’s works delve deeply into how people experience the passage of time in their everyday lives. The poetry of our own ordinary moments is captured in his paintings.