Student Painter not afraid to tell people who he is
by Gregory Shulas, Assistant Entertainment Editor of THE REVIEW. Published October 8, 1996

It is said that every room has its own personality, its own special feel. Take a bedroom or a dorm room, for example; each one has its own special vibe or composition that is different that any other, anywhere else. Entering second year graduate art student Chris Pekarik's studio in the annex of Recitation Hall is a terrific example of the latter observation. The glittery music of David Bowie's "Hunky Dory" album plays. The room is filled with his expressionistic, surreal-like paintings and beams of an energy which has a stronger bond with the imagination than it does with the concrete world outside.

The personality of the 31-year-old Pekarik, who received his bachelor's degree in the arts from Chicago's Columbia College, functions as the spirit that holds the atmosphere together. Dressed in a non-pretentious manner with short, red-blonde hair, he radiates with an unique openness and creative intelligence. 'My work is grown out of isolation, surviving, lots of inner strength', Pekarik says. 'My paintings are not pictures: they are situations.'

Talking freely about his art and the pains of his early life, it is no secret that creativity, and specifically painting, is way of life for him. 'I just don't just paint the canvas and it's finished. I begin things; I don't end them', he says. 'I talk about memories, dreams, thoughts and feelings.'

Within the hustle of everyday life, it seems in Pekarik's eye that every picture tells a story. Every action, social happening and visual stimulus is laced with a mortal history that is ecclectically filled with beauty, thought, emotion and scars. 'In my work, there's a lot of passion, lots of love and there's pain.' Pekarik says. In his own mind, his art gives a glimpse of reality where people are not afraid to show the world exactly who they are, where space is ready not to be defined and where people may loom and love together, without the need to be called by a particular name. After all, none of Pekarik's paintings have a specific title.

'People are too afraid to show each other who they really are in this culture.' Pekarik says. 'In my painting I show my scars; I'm not going to be afraid to tell people who I am' And it is by underpainting (the deliberate fading of certain objects in the painting) that the artist captures those wounds which contribute so much to a person's character. 'Underpainting gives it a sense of history, it is saying that all these thoughts and experiences make up a person. [Through underpainting] I am saying that I am not going to hide my scars from you.'

Like Guagin painting lost in a David Lynch film, Pekarik's paintings are hard to describe in words. 'It has no formula.' Pekarik says referring to his art. 'It pulls you into a narrative and still allows you to think and feel. It asks more questions that it gives answers.' The flowing emotional symbols, the endlessly growing array of colorful designs and the expressive vibrant collage of brush and stroke add to the mystery. It all serves to bring together an imaginative narrative world that hovers above the non-originality of routine industrial living. Like most good art, Pekarik's work inspires a dialogue, a provocative conversation between the viewer and the image. 'There's that quote by the Duchess of Windsor, 'you can never be too rich or too thin.'' Pekarik says. 'Well, I say you can never think too much or feel too much.'

He aspires to provoke this with his work. It can be seen in the warm green, blue and orange colors, his illogical shapes and offbeat electric patterns. One can feel a creative inspiration, weird type of renaissance of existential thought, provoked by the dada decor. Dada preceded surrealism in order to emphasize the irrationality of the modern world. And like that friend who constantly asks what's wrong when you're not smiling, Pekarik cares about the small details.'If you take a crystal from a giant stained-glass window in a cathedral and look at it up closely, it won't have that much beauty or meaning. But when you stare at it from far away when it is in its place, it is part of this amazing big picture.' Pekarik says. And like that giant celestial mosaic, every little ounce of oil, water and dye contributes to a vibrant thought-provoking whole of Chris Pekarik's paintings.

An urge to look at the world with more of a surreal, irrational undertone develops. Pekarik's art can make one question that values of our automated world and to become more aware of the need for color and oddity in everyday living. There are very few brown or gray colors in his work; when he paints he's more interested in applying bright blue, green and orange colors to the canvas. The paint and oil on Pekarik's canvas does not belong to the world that most people are tuned in to. It exists on an emotional and cognitive level that inspires to exist beyond society's empty conventions and institutions.