Featured Artist for May - June 2000

Featured GiveAway by Joseph Haroutunian Black and Burnt Sienna Oil on gessoed paper 30" x 22" - 2000 Valued at $1500

Judy McCurdy Broken Arrow, OK

Black and Burnt Sienna demonstrates an intuitive approach to texture and clever use of just two basic colors. At first glance, movement in the image can appear jumbled, but a closer look naturally brings about sensuous impressions from its brushwork and pigment.

Featured Artist Joe Haroutunian

Born 1944 in Chicago, Joe Haroutunian started painting his gestural brush strokes in 1966. He now resides on the coast of Maine where the sea and scenery inspire him. His mother is an artist whose father designed and formed stained glass windows. Joe enjoyed helping his grandfather with his glass windows as a child. In 1988, Joe and his mother exhibited their work together at the University of Maine at Machias.

Mostly self taught, Joe studied a bit with Tom Dietrich at Lawrence University in Wisconsin and also with a former Bauhaus member, Paul Wieghardt, at the Evanston Art Center. He spent a morning at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and never returned to school. Eventually, Joe earned his Bachelors of Art in Philosophy from Lawrence University in 1967.

Joe believes that the strong inner drive he possesses would have been tarnished by art school. Inspirations for his paintings include landscapes viewed in the states of Utah and Maine, as well as rocks, mountains and the ocean. His work is essentially abstract and any defining of it is best left to the viewer since Joe indicates, "he really doesn't know what it's all about." It does not exist on a cognitive level as far as he's concerned. He has a few policies regarding composition and color, but the rest is completely intuitive. Van Gogh was an important early influence that still emerges in his physical handling of paint.

Joe was a philosophy major in college and his wife was an art major. Early on he randomly slipped into an art history class to see a slide projection of Van Gogh's last painting of crows over a wheat field. Joe was hooked on art from that moment forward and pretty much decided that's what he would do.

Blue, Black and Burnt, 2000 Oil on gessoed paper, 30" x 22", $1500

Joe feels most creative in the morning hours but also paints in the late afternoon and evening. His goals as an artist are to continue his production and career advancement. He teaches tennis and coaches a High School tennis team which provides him a nice social balance from time spent in the studio. He's also a coordinator for PAX, a High School foreign exchange program.

Joe is a vegetarian who loves his family, making art, teaching tennis, kids, music, Morocco, Utah and Maine, the Metropolitan Museum and museums in general. Family values are important to him as well as support for environmental causes.

Choosing specific colors is the starting point for most of his work. Then intuition and spontaneity take over with the release of energy and the painting evolves. Joe does not expect a viewer to simply witness his art. He hopes they are as open to revelation as he is during the creative process

Naples over Gray on Blue, 2000 Oil on gessoed paper, 30" x 22" $1500

Joe's work has made its way into corporate collections such as General Electric, Sweetheart Plastics, MIT, ARCO, Hyatt Hotels, as well as the Museum of Art in Portland.


EXHIBITIONS:

1999: Robert Ferst Center, Georgia Tech University, Atlanta, Georgia
1998: University of Maine at Machias
1996: College of the Atlantic, Bar Harbor, Maine
1992: Leighton Gallery, Blue Hill, Maine
1990: Frank Bustamante Gallery, New York, New York
1989: Leighton Gallery, Blue Hill, Maine
1989: Frank Bustamante Gallery, New York, New York
1985: Cape Split Place, Addison, Maine
1984: Cape Split Place, Addison, Maine
1983: St. Botolph Club, Boston Massachusetts
1981: Cape Split Place, Addison, Maine
1979: Sunne Savage Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts
1979: University of Maine Museum of Art, Orono, Maine
1979: St. Stephen Cultural Center, Milltown, New Brunswick
1979: Cape Split Place, Addison, Maine
1978: Penthouse Gallery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
1978: Elliott Museum, Stuart, Florida
1978: Ondine Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts
1977: Harold Ernst Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts
1976: Harold Ernst Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts
1975: Harold Ernst Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts
1974: University of Maine Museum of Art, Orono, Maine
1974: Countway Library, Havard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts
1973: Harold Ernst Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts
1972: College of the Atlantic, Bar Harbor, Maine
1971: Galerie Amadeus, Boston, Massachusetts

Contact the Artist

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ARTIST STATEMENT

My art, though abstract, is very much tied to elements of the landscape. My wife, Gay, and I live in a very special part of the state of Maine. We are surrounded by rugged coastline, small but fascinating mountains, amazing and colorful blueberry barrens, woods, fields, etc. A far cry from the Chicago where I was raised. We have two wonderful daughters who are grown now (they were "replaced" by a delightful German exchange student this year). What's this got to do with art? Well, nothing and everything. Which is exactly what my art is all about. It concerns nothing in particular. I never try to "capture" anything. Yet all my feelings about art, landscape, family, color, and music become synthesized and expressed in my paintings. And you can find some influences there: Van Gogh, Matisse, early Hunderwasser, Rothko, Marin, The Mayans, The Asmat carvers, Middle Eastern art, Utah Rocks and countless others. But all these inputs play no conscious part in my work. I plan the color, a few elements of composition, and the rest is spontaneous. So what's it all about? I'm open to suggestions. ~ Joe Haroutunian