Billis Williams Gallery will have one of my older pieces in their booth at the SF Art Fair.
San Francisco Art Fair 2024 April 25-28, 2024 @billiswilliams.gallery Booth F05
“Vico’s Science” Oil and wax on canvas 2002.
In 2001 I started experimenting with cold wax medium by mixing it into oil paint, allowing it to partially cure then carving into the painting. I would then load the scars with paint and sand it back even with the surface. This would produce very fine lines with many imperfections where the surface cracked as I scratched into it.
Monica’s family moved to Compton near south Los Angeles in the mid 50’s amid a backdrop of intense racial discrimination. Some of the first black families entering Compton neighborhoods were met with violence, vandalism, and terror. One of the many forms of discrimination was in the use of housing covenants, deed restrictions and extralegal measures that restricted minorities from home ownership in many parts of Los Angeles. They were limited by covenants as well as a narrow access to financing known as redlining. These covenants were a part of southern California housing since the late nineteenth century and they were struck down partially in 1948 and then completely in 1953.
The words I chose to use in the formation of this portrait are sections from current residential deeds that still to this day contain the covenants restricting ownership to whites only, though they lack any legal standing.
Appolos: The Crenshaw District” 44 x 40 acrylic, charcoal, graphite, ink on panel.
This piece depicts three separate subjects in a simplified racial history of the Crenshaw district in Los Angeles.
Developed in the 1920s as a white suburban outpost the Crenshaw District remained minority free until 1948. This restrictive ownership was based on covenants written into the residential deeds that stated one cannot sell, rent or lease to a non caucasian. It remained this way until the Supreme Court struck down the racist housing covenants in 1948.
As a result of this ruling in the 1950’s many Japanese Americans and African-Americans moved into the area.
They shared feelings of being discriminated against and as a result they formed bonds and established a community feeling based on mutual respect and admiration.
This portrait attempts to convey the ethnic history of an area that is continuing to evolve in its racial diversity.
On view until Feb 24 Band of Vices 5351 West Adams Blvd
I am honored that the Bakersfield Museum of Art has acquired two paintings from early in my career to add to their permanent collection. It is a privilege to have work included in their esteemed collection and is truly a moment of immense pride and joy for me as an artist.
I am deeply grateful that the museum recognized the value and significance of my work, and I am thankful for the curatorial decision to incorporate it into their prestigious collection. The knowledge that my art will be displayed alongside other exceptional pieces in the museum is both humbling and inspiring.
I want to extend my appreciation to Victor Gonzales and the entire team at the museum for their expertise and dedication to the arts. It is truly a testament to the museum’s commitment to fostering and celebrating artistic expression. I am thrilled to contribute to the cultural richness and diversity that your institution represents.
“Love Falls the Tears” 30 x 48 acrylic on canvas 1995
I was working in acrylic figuring out flow, bleed and viscosity. I used visual elements and gestures from movements of the past to feel with my own hands how gestures are laid down in paint.
“Impermanance” 36 x 48 oil on canvas 1997
In 1997 I discovered a technique used during the renaissance where they used many layers of paint to build a transparent, luminous black instead of an opaque, flat black. The colors used were yellow ochre, burnt sienna, terre verte green, alizarin crimson, prussian blue and aureolin yellow. In order to learn more about glazing and building a luminous dark I reduced my palette to these 6 colors.
Bakersfield Museum of Art “Bryan Ida : Life of Change: A Retrospective”
Sept 28th, 2023 – Jan 6th, 2024
While working on my “con.Text” series of ink on panel portraits I wanted to express some ideas I had on environmental issues we face today. I began work on two series that culminated in a show titled “Deep”
In “Deep” I present two series of paintings that explore the delicate balance between human existence and the fragile ecosystems that sustain us. We are blessed with a world that contains such exquisite natural beauty and wonder yet mankind’s endless demand for energy and expansion puts immense pressure on these systems to survive. In the name of human advancement and expansion the cost to animal species and the environment is deep and irreversible. The true measure of a civilization is in its compassion and empathy, not in its ability to consume.
Within the “Nature” series, I cut apart landscapes of trees and nature and place them one on top of each other, breaking their continuity, while bending and merging what remains. The juxtaposition of the two worlds reveals the struggle we face today with the future of our planet dependent on our ability to balance the increasing demand for resources and the needs of the natural world.
In the “Fading Light” series I explore the theme of endangered species, depicting each animal obscured in a deep darkness. The concept of fading light serves as a metaphor for the dwindling populations of endangered species and the threat of extinction that looms over them. This twilight also represents the passage of time, the impermanence of life and the move from the unconscious to awareness. As light frequently does, it represents hope and possibility in the face of adversity.
Bakersfield Museum of Art “Bryan Ida : Life of Change: A Retrospective”
Sept 28th, 2023 – Jan 6th, 2024
In 2017 after Trump was inaugurated as president one of the first action he wanted to take was to ban people from Muslim based countries from entering the United States. He took to twitter to justify the Muslim Ban and it reminded me of the Internment of Japanese Americans during WWII of which my parents were both interned.
The idea came to me to render my neighbor, whom I frequently saw in her Niqab going to temple for service on Saturday mornings, with the words of Trump’s tweets which were so damaging to her.
This first portrait took about three months to finish as I endlessly wrote out trumps tweets, figuring out the shadows and highlights and trying to make his words inert and harmless, word upon word making them illegible and powerless.
“Neighbor” 60 x 37 ink on panel 2017
The second is a portrait of my grandmother inspired by a photograph taken by Dorothea Lange when she was commissioned to photograph Japanese Americans being interned during the start of the US entry into World War II. This shot was taken in San Francisco as my grandmother and her family waited to board a bus for an internment camp in Utah.
The words used to make the marks that compose this portrait are the text from the Immigration Act of 1917, which barred most immigration from Asia.
These portraits are the first in the series and the latest portrait I have completed. There are 24 in “con.Text” so far.
In 2016 -2017 I was thinking about how I could portray the angst, anger and resentment of the political and social climate of the election year without referencing it through obvious pathways. I was looking for something that I could do that would be a step or two away from actual events, so I decided to work on a series of paintings and drawings that depict artists and curators as a way to convey something about the political zeitgeist of the time. I chose artists and curators because they are a group of people who strive to communicate the hidden reaches of interpretation and present a more profound form of expression.
Each time you step further away from the source material, distortion and bias grow, as each person interprets and gives meaning to events differently. I try to interpret and communicate in theses portraits, each person’s awareness and reaction to the current reality, and show a deeper awareness of the political and social atmosphere in which we live.
I chose to represent the face, as it is the most identifiable and expressive part of the human form, and by offering multiple angles and views of the same subject, it shows the many facets and angles that each person perceives and emanates. The interaction between the many layers references my previous work, by using hard edge forms and multiple glazes, I create relationships between the foreground, middle ground and background that communicates the interconnections between our various subjective planes of reality and exemplifies the complexity of each individuals personality and the different ways we are perceived. Each fragmented portraits covers and reveals itself, the underlying forms and images capturing the compiled complexity of the moment.
The pen and ink drawings take the idea of layering and stacks image over image while rendering them to paper. There are as many as 50 charcoal sketches that are laid down and then erased from the each portrait before an ink drawing is rendered over the top as a final layer, completing the fragmented representation of our interior and exterior worlds.
“Jill” 36 x 32 acrylic pencil and ink on panel 2017
After working with thick layers of epoxy for the past few years I started using acrylic so I could do multiple layers without building too much weight and to get away from the toxicity of epoxy resin. I could do many thin layers, up to 50 layers, and build subtle darkness again like I used to with oils.
In this series I have continued my exploration of memory and it’s relationship to our feeling of place. We have strong emotional memories tied to certain locations as well as small recollections based on glimpses of areas we have passed by. Our memory is a reduction and refinement of our experience and I try to collect and assemble this assortment of thoughts and impressions and further distill them to their essence and lay down the elements in paint.
“China Basin” 48 x 39 acrylic on panel 2015
“Shelter Island” 39 x 65 acrylic on panel 2015
“Dusk in the Blink of an Eye” 48 x 41 acrylic on panel 2015
“On the Perspective of Being Wrong” 34 x 48 acrylic on panel 2016
“Fallout” 34 x 48 acrylic on panel 2016
“Lines Drawn to Yesterday” 44 x 56 acrylic on panel 2016
In the last series I was doing abstract gestural paintings working with layers of epoxy trying to integrate the background, mid-ground and foreground into one cohesive statement. Out of nowhere came a hard-edged piece with an entirely different palette reminiscent of the mid century modern movement. When these moments of inspiration hit I follow them as far as I can, trying to unlock the secrets of the moment of creation. Cities 2012-2017 is that exploration.
The new series of paintings, using round and rectangular shaped panels, explore the intricacy, diversity, complexity, and beauty of the cities we live in. Cities are built in layers, and when you peel away layer by layer truths are revealed. I like the idea of layers and reveals, digging and unearthing forms.
“Genesis” 36 x 36 acrylic, epoxy on panel 2010
“Century City” 47 in diameter acrylic and epoxy on panel 2012
“Granada Hills” 38 x 48 acrylic, epoxy on panel 2010
“Santa Monica” 32 x 84 acrylic, epoxy on panel 2012
Bryan Ida 