John Scott Postovit: Myth and Legend | On view in the Main Gallery 5 April – 9 June 2024
John Scott Postovit, pastel, "Du Lac", 2023
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John Scott Postovit was born in Grand Forks, ND, in 1962, and raised in Bismarck and Fargo. He attended the University of North Dakota, and graduated in 1985 with a BFA in Painting and a BS in Physics. Since then, he has lived on the east and west coasts, as well as a nine-month spell in Florence, Italy. His paintings and drawings have been exhibited in galleries and museums in various locations across the country, including North Dakota, Minnesota, New Jersey, Washington, Ohio, Montana, and California. He has shown frequently at The Rourke since 1988. To date, his art has appeared in 42 solo exhibitions and 151 group shows. He currently lives in the mountains south of San Francisco, California, drawing and teaching math and physics.
His primary medium for the past thirty-nine years has been pastel and charcoal. Over the years, his work has progressed to more detailed and complex representational work. Most of his work is done for specific shows, and the themes vary from show to show, from figurative to historical, mythological to allegorical, and cityscape to landscape. The common thread found throughout these drawings are the intense colors, and many surreal and anachronistic objects thrown into the compositions. |
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Artist Statement
Over the years, I have cycled through many different themes for my art, starting with ’Pataphysical Travelogue in 1989. Travel, revolutions, Norse and Roman mythology, Goths, and an entire show based on the idiosyncratic oddities that I to throw into the drawings. Why so many themes? Primarily because I find it more interesting to take on new subjects that require new drawing methods. But then, I also recall a long-past college lecture by a moderately famous visiting artist. It's one that has stuck in my mind mostly because all of his paintings were of the same thing, every one! So I resolved to be different, every time. Those with long memories may remember that my theme for my 1993 showing of The Emperor Wore No Clothes was fairy tales, and may take issue with my claim of perpetual originality. But I maintain that fairy tales and myths are distinct ideas. You are of course correct in saying that I’m no stranger to zeppelins. I can’t make everything different all the time. --John Scott Postovit, 2024 |
John Scott Postovit, pastel, "Underhill", 2023
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