SYNCRETIC BEGINNINGS
Extramaterial-Farm Paintings & the Autonomy of Ideoaesthetics
Copyright 2007 Charles Wish
I spend a peculiar amount of my time picture making. And, what’s probably even more peculiar, I’ve actually managed to earn a pretty decent living at it. I really can’t tell you what any of that ultimately means, if it means anything at all. What I can do, though, is share the story on how this unexpected pastime came about. So if that’s something you’re into, please, read on.
“Aesthetic sense is the twin of one's instinct for self-preservation and is more reliable than ethics.”
-- Joseph Brodsky
Like many of us, I was born into a home under the influence of a diverse mix of sentiments. In my case, dad was definitely a Goldwater conservative, where mom was more a mix of Vito Paulekas and Lorrie Collins. And you know what? From an aesthetic standpoint, I absolutely adored the crisscross environment these two distinct personalities had set up for themselves. Everything about their place felt like home to me.
Creating a peculiar correlation where nostalgia courted spirituality, my father’s influence on our now long-gone living space stemmed largely from thoughts deeply rooted in a past that always overshadowed his present. Meanwhile, my mother’s efforts were driven by thoughts fascinated with a preferable parallel world, that might very well influence this one, existing somewhere majestically over yonder. When I think back on some of my earliest exposures to this home they created for themselves, there are certainly reminiscences of the outer décor, but at the forefront of everything, there’s always this unified apparition of my mom and dad’s inner workings and imaginations.
There has been a lot of theoretical discussion lately about how we really don’t have any memories from our earliest childhood; we just make them up later on as ‘mental constructs,’ recreated from the basis of reoccurring photographic exposure. While these observations may carry weight for more picture-saturated smartphone generations, I can honestly say they don’t resonate with me. I have crystal-clear memories of my youngest childhood days that are as much visceral as imagistic; moreover, when I look at the few photographs from this time that still exist, they seem one dimensional and nothing like my memories at all. Nevertheless, my parents’ onetime experiment in crossbred interior decoration and its mechanisms for generating memories wouldn’t last past my third birthday. Consequently, both of them ended up moving out and into their own small apartments.
I didn’t care much for my parents’ new post-marital environments. They were bland and stagnant; it would seem that on their own, neither of my parents could outwardly express themselves in their surrounding décor to the same degree as when they were united. However, this didn’t last long, as they would both soon find new partners – ones who were more in line with each of their differing points of view -- and would go on to create fresh, up-to-date homes for themselves with their newfound love interests.
These third-time-around residences were definitely more expressive and robust than the apartments. But, they were also obvious attempts at quarantining themselves from the opposing aesthetics and ideas of their previous relationships. Mom’s new place was buoyant, new-age liberal with a dash of Amerindian/country-western, while dad’s was restrained Catholic conservative with touches of Hopper and Tchaikovsky. Synthetically perfect little settings aimed at flaunting their polarized identities. It was also during this time that they would spend a lot of energy degradingly dismissing one another with self-grandiose statements about how their own ideas and lifestyles were somehow superior to the other. I had little time for any of this, and soon found myself disliking these new saccharine-sweet places even more than I disliked the flavorless apartments.
I took this aversion very seriously. Unconsciously embarking on my own superiority trip, I easily convinced myself that dad’s ideal America was a capitalistic disaster area, bogged to the point of useless inadaptability and narrow-minded industrial excess, and mom’s model wasn’t much better. Her unconfined utopia was nothing more than a delusion choked with intra-psychic new-age twaddle, whiny, loudmouthed protesters and excessive self-indulgence where most of the major cultural achievements had been reduced to a compilation CD featured in late night infomercials. Armed with these strong opinions, I would spend most of my teen years marginalized within the musings of Southern-California’s 80’s and 90’s, musically enhanced sub-cultures.
As I approached my twenties, though, I began to feel conflicted as several things were becoming more and more apparent. The first issue was that, no matter how hard I tried to block it out, imagery from my earliest upbringing was beginning to auto-expressively find its way into my life and work. It didn’t matter how much relatively new culture I exposed myself to, which is now no longer very new, I could never fully shake the buoyant impressions from the original hybrid environment my parents had once attempted to sustain. Moreover, I was beginning to realize that all the fashionable punk rock, dub, techno, and hip-hop I’d been enjoying, music I felt had raised me miles above my parents’ conceptual cultural trappings, were just as wrapped up in aesthetic ideology as anything they were into, maybe even more so.
At this point in my life, like a wet egg hurled by an intelligible chicken, it hit me: wherever you find a distinct set of appearances, you’re going to find an equally distinct set of ideals; there’s really no way around it. Additionally, I began to notice that wherever you find that elusive thing we commonly refer to as beauty, it doesn’t necessarily guarantee that all of the propagated principles being forcibly associated with it are equally as beautiful. Like a good friend of mine once said, “The worst causes always have the best flags.”
With thoughts like these in mind, I found myself spending a lot of time exhaustively reaching for what I could best describe as ideo-aesthetic balance and clarity, hopefully trying to recapture some of the charm and magic of my toddler years, for whatever that was worth.
The whole thing was starting to get a bit tedious, and I was just about to throw in the towel, when fate decided to intervene.
It was 1995. I sat alone one rainy afternoon in the Van Nuys public library, paging through a fresh stack of books I had recently requested on Buddhist and Hindu art. My mom’s American assimilation of South Asian ideas and culture during my early youth had left the deepest impression on me, and delving into these topics seemed like a good starting point. While going through the stack, however, I noticed near the bottom two seemingly out-of-place hardbacks – one was a 1974 publication on a twentieth-century painterly movement unknown to me titled, “The American Scene,” and the other was a 1986 biography on an artist named Grant Wood. I almost brushed them aside without any thought, but the librarian who had carted the books over convinced me to take a closer look, and what I found inside would initiate major changes in my thinking that have not altered since.
What caught my eye in these unrequested books were vivid landscapes that I had never seen before, yet they felt instantly familiar to me. Mostly executed during the 1930’s, the first thing I noticed about these paintings was that they had compositionally achieved everything Cézanne was after, even rivaling the master Frenchman in many regards when it came to harmonizing theoretical composition with nature. Furthermore, their North American agrarian vibe succinctly captured clearly the male virility associated with my dad’s notions of national culture and progress, while their pastor-idyll charm simultaneously encapsulated the feminine magic and mystery of my mother. Coincidentally, it was this interplay of gender forces that had initially drawn me to the South Asian art, which I had originally set out to view that day.
Having previously taken several art history courses, and I was definitely familiar with the painting “American Gothic,” but I couldn’t remember ever being exposed to the vibrant naturalism and artistic modernity contained in some of these rustic, yet cosmopolitan, images – I really wanted to know more. Passing the entire afternoon engrossed in these two books, stark clues as to how and why artists like Wood and Benton had been so intentionally removed from fashionable history began to surface. One of the strongest indicators of this sentiment appeared in the appendix of Wood’s biography, in the form of a first-person (yet ghostwritten) essay tactically titled “Revolt Against the City.” This prosaic and overly postured piece attempted to outlandishly demonstrate why the rural art these men had created was supposedly regionally grander than that of unfortunate urbanites.
Reading this gratuitous paper, an imprudent attempt at marketing, I couldn’t help but understand why much of its associated work had been historically closeted. What I really took away from its transparent prejudices was a valuable, organic shift in thinking, a shift which centered on the age-old symbiosis of ideology and aesthetics.
Terse and obscure in its wording where the art that accompanies it is anything but, I knew then that enraged discourses like “Revolt Against the City” are Trojan-horse travesties, the direct result of what happens when we refuse to let the astounding simply speak for itself and then proceed to anchor our thin rhetoric to something which, clearly, never needed it in the first place. Every cover has its own book to write.
Inspired by this realization, as well as how nicely these American landscapes coincided with the South Asian art I had initially sought out that day, I resolved to liberate the aesthetics of my childhood from the partialities of my parents by simply allowing them to speak for themselves. It wasn’t like I entirely stopped listening to people’s opinions on such things. It’s just that if they claimed one cluster of symbols and appearances to be superior to another, I would now always investigate such divisive sentiments by letting the aesthetics (not their handlers) have the first and final say. Do you know what I discovered? Imageries that I had always been told were enemies were actually really good friends.
From here, I would proceed to freely connect with the American art I had discovered that day, while tandemly continuing investigations of the symbolic imagery of India. I set up a Western-Asiatic framework for myself, which not only resolved much of the conceptual confusion of my youth, but also enabled me to engage with articulate artwork. This began a visual journey that, I’m pleased to say, continues strongly today.
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Titles & Descriptions
Sometime during the twentieth century, a group of artists and writers codified a set of symbols and appearances which essentially became synonymous with the ideals of the American right, and subsequently, the very same thing took place for the left. I enjoy aesthetics from both of these camps. What I don’t enjoy is all the shallow bickering from people who weaponize and claim ownership over them. Like someone in a toxic relationship who woke up one morning and realized they’d probably be happier passing the time with their favorite color than some bitter spouse, I decided to backburner their caretakers and simply start having conversations with the aesthetics themselves – I’ve long been better off for it.
Obviously, America is a place of extreme ideological tension and diversity, so the same naturally follows when it comes to our aesthetic tastes. Still, how many of us have truly explored the total worth of the appearances we claim as our own? Especially when we allow the static of fanaticism to get in the way – as soon as we decide to hold one set of aesthetics hostage to our own clannish limitations, any inherent notions of ideoaesthetic value we possess, surely begin to wane. As humans, we always have more in common with one another than otherwise. It’s funny how the things we use to accentuate our differences often know more about these commonalities than we do.
This gallery contains some of my first attempts at working alongside the aesthetically congruous Indo-American vehicle I set up for myself. Challenges would be there for sure: working within and around conventions, fashioning paintings that would stand free from the assistance of a rhetorical crutch or pedestal, and respectfully translating culture from another time and place. Some of these pieces rise to the occasion, while, I'm sure, others certainly fall short. Nevertheless, everything here represents a rewarding time for me as a painter, and I’m always grateful for that. Regardless of the future directions I may take, I believe I will always view this initial work as a valuable starting point.
The work featured here spans a period of roughly four years, 2004 through 2007. However, I’ve also included images from the very first large piece I ever produced, which aimed to blend American and South Asian imagery (Tri-Guna Stew, 1995). It’s a rather unpolished, colored pencil rendering, but it did set the tone for much to come. Described as ‘Surregional’ and ‘Agrariadelic,’ these images are dedicated to all those hard working people who never caught enough break-time to finish their smokes, yet still found the sensibility to unravel the mysteries of their higher selves.
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Paintings:
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7) Title & Date: The Translation of Lal-Dade. (2007)
Dimensions & Medium: 18x24 in. -- Oil on Canvas.
Description: Lal Ded or Lalla, a 14th century, Kashmiri Shaivite poetess. Little is known of her life apart from an immense proliferation of stories, which attest to her popularity. She composed numerous verse sayings which are direct and simple. Many of them are linguistically regional in their associations, so much so that western translations cannot convey why they are so deeply loved among many native Kashmiris, both Hindu and Muslim.
8) Title & Date: La Negra de la Luna. (2005)
Dimensions & Medium: 30x48 in. -- Acrylic on Canvas.
Description: Kali and Shiva happily at home in rural America. Omerica solo show, C-pop Gallery, 2005.
9) Title & Date: American Tara -- In White. (2004)
Dimensions & Medium: 48x68 in. -- Acrylic on Canvas.
Description: Tara: (Sanskrit-Star) one of the most beloved deities of Tibet. Having vowed (after being advised of the spiritual advantages of male birth) never to relinquish her female form, Tara symbolizes the universes’ role as cosmic mother of all -- even the bad kids in America. Omerica solo show, C-pop Gallery, 2005.
10) Title & Date: American Tara -- In Green. (2004)
Dimensions & Medium: 42x68 in. -- Acrylic on Canvas.
Description: Tara again (but in her green form) accompanying a tractor and sunflowers of a benevolent nature. Omerica solo show, C-pop Gallery, 2005.
11) Title & Date: National Narcissist – 1845. (2005)
Dimensions & Medium: 20x28 in. -- Acrylic on Canvas.
Description: The first of three paintings, in an ode to Thomas Cole’s “The Course of Empire” series, which visually comments on the Biblical tale of Adam and Eve and the rise and fall of oil consumption in America - The mighty arms of karma hold the heavens from the earth.
Omerica solo show, C-pop Gallery, 2005.
12) Title & Date: National Narcissist – 1945. (2005)
Dimensions & Medium: 20x28 in. -- Acrylic on Canvas.
Description: The second of these three paintings - The mighty arms of karma bring the heavens to the earth. Omerica solo show, C-pop Gallery, 2005.
13) Title & Date: National Narcissist – 2045. (2005)
Dimensions & Medium: 20x28 in. -- Acrylic on Canvas.
Description: The last of these three paintings - The mighty arms of karma rob the heavens from the earth. Omerica solo show, C-pop Gallery, 2005.
14) Title & Date: Patsy Cline. (2004)
Dimensions & Medium: 20x24 in. -- Acrylic on Canvas.
Description: A tribute to a recreational goddess of the pop-music scene, ironically stolen from us (all too soon) by promoters of the hastened lifestyle. This piece is all about the fine art of disengagement, the willingness to forfeit practicalities and responsibility in exchange for romantic searches in the moonlight.
Omerica solo show, C-pop Gallery, 2005.
15) Title & Date: American Surrealchemist. (2004)
Dimensions & Medium: 24x28 in. -- Acrylic on Canvas.
Description: Agrarian, gothic bromide at its finest. Magic things are always happening, and they’re closer than you think. Omerica solo show, C-pop Gallery, 2005.
16) Title & Date: The Vacant Promises of Harold Hill. (2004)
Dimensions & Medium: 20x24 in. -- Acrylic on Canvas.
Description: As the crops wither, Persephone and Hades look east west to realize the ultimate harvest is within. If someone makes you an offer that sounds too good to be true, be sure to take them up on it, especially if there’s an imaginary fugue involved. Omerica solo show, C-pop Gallery, 2005.
17) Title & Date: Novus Ordo Seclorum, A New Order of The Ages. (2004)
Dimensions & Medium: 24x28 in. -- Acrylic on canvas.
Description: There’s other ways of learning about the confines of a theocratic plutocracy than creating one. Omerica solo show, C-pop Gallery, 2005.
18) Title & Date: War of the Goo-nuhs. (2004)
Dimensions & Medium: 20x24 in. -- Acrylic on Canvas.
Description: Guna: Sanskrit-cord or strand, The only three perceptual qualities of our illusionary existence. 1) The total, concealing quality of tamas, 2) The false, projecting quality of rajas, 3) The semi-revealing quality of sattva. According to certain circles, the bulk of humanity exists in a stinted dream. Constantly bound by varying degrees of the three gunas, we live out our lives like blind marionettes, manipulated by stimuli that, at best, offers only pale reflections of our true, unlimited nature. Eye of The Illuminati group show, Copro Gallery, 2005.
19) Title & Date: Victorian Sacrifice. (2005)
Dimensions & Medium: 20x28 in. -- Acrylic on Canvas.
Description: The consecration of the cultural harvest. To receive everything, one must be willing to give the same. Samhain group show, Copro Gallery, 2005.
20) Title & Date: Iowan Tragedy, The Necrotic Ringtones of Noreen Gosch. (2007)
Dimensions & Medium: 18x24 in. -- Oil on Canvas.
Description: No description provided.
21) Title & Date: Ganapati Ice Creams. (2005)
Dimensions & Medium: 20x24 in. -- Acrylic on Canvas.
Description: All I know is that in my neighborhood, every once in a while, this amazingly cool guy comes around. He drives an ice cream truck, loves his job, and even has a pretty good singing voice … for an elephant god.
22) Title & Date: The Ballad of Anissa Jones. (2006)
Dimensions & Medium: 8x12 in. -- Oil on Wood.
Description: Small oil painting of one of my favorite T.V. child stars.
23) Title & Date: Daughters of Evolution I. (2006)
Dimensions & Medium: 18x24 in. -- Acrylic on Canvas.
Description: Daughters of Evolution: One of three paintings (based on Grant Wood’s “Daughters of Revolution”) which explore some of the changes in American feminine dynamism -- from stuffy, ultra-national tea sippers to suicide goddesses gone weird. Bergamot Invasion II group show, Copro Gallery, 2006.
Drawings:
1) currently unavailable
2) currently unavailable
3) currently unavailable
4) currently unavailable
5) currently unavailable
6) Accompanies the Painting: Chamunda & The Om Fields. (2007)
Dimensions & Medium: 9x11 in. -- Graphite & Watercolor on Paper.
7) Accompanies the Painting: War of The Goo-nuhs. (2005)
Dimensions & Medium: 9x12 in. -- Graphite & Watercolor on Paper.
8) Accompanies the Painting: De-evolution Dunny. (2005)
Dimensions & Medium: 8x7 in. -- Graphite & Watercolor on Paper.
9) Accompanies the Paintings in the National Narcissist series. (2005)
Dimensions & Medium: 8x10 in. -- Graphite & Watercolor on Paper.
10) Accompanies the Paintings in the National Narcissist series. (2005)
Dimensions & Medium: 9x12 in. -- Graphite & Watercolor on Paper.
11) Accompanies the Painting: American Tara -- In White. (2004)
Dimensions & Medium: 9x12 in. -- Graphite & Watercolor on Paper.
12) Accompanies the Painting: American Tara -- In White. (2004)
Dimensions & Medium: 5x6 in. -- Graphite & Watercolor on Paper.
13) Accompanies the Painting: Patsy Cline. (2004)
Dimensions & Medium: 7x9 in. -- Graphite & Watercolor on Paper.
14) Accompanies the Painting: Patsy Cline. (2004)
Dimensions & Medium: 5x6 in. -- Graphite & Watercolor on Paper.
15) Accompanies the Painting: La Negra de La Luna. (2005)
Dimensions & Medium: 7x9 in. -- Graphite & Watercolor on Paper.
16) Accompanies the Painting: La Negra de La Luna. (2005)
Dimensions & Medium: 7x9 in. -- Graphite & Watercolor on Paper.
17) Accompanies the Painting: Victorian Sacrifice. (2005)
Dimensions & Medium: 10x10 in. -- Graphite & Watercolor on Paper.
18) Accompanies the Painting: Victorian Sacrifice. (2005)
Dimensions & Medium: 10x10 in. -- Graphite & Watercolor on Paper.
19) Accompanies the Painting: Goddesses of Evolution I. (2007)
Dimensions & Medium: 9x12 in. -- Graphite & Watercolor on Paper.
20) Accompanies the Painting: Ganapati Ice Creams. (2005)
Dimensions & Medium: 8x12 in. -- Graphite & Watercolor on Paper.
21) Accompanies the Painting: Annuit Coeptis. (2004)
Dimensions & Medium: 4x5 in. -- Graphite & Watercolor on Paper.
22) Tri-Guna Stew. (1995)
Dimensions & Medium: 30x40 in. -- Graphite, Colored Pencil & Ink on Paper.
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updated January 2025
