Open Studio:
Guy Stanley Philoche
Monday, November 16, 2009
I took a class trip to New York’s Museum of Modern Art third grade and was impressed by the Picassos, Pollocks and Rothkos there. Wait, impressed wasn’t the word. Transfixed? Transformed? As Oprah puts it, it was my “Ah-Ha” moment, the day when I decided what I wanted to become and do for the rest of my life. I wanted to become a painter. Some see it as a blessing to be so focused at such a young age—to have complete and total ‘horse blinders’ on. But the flip side of that is that nothing else mattered, and as my life went on, I had to face the consequence of that vision in my personal relationships.
Fast-forward to the last semester of my junior year in college where I was taking an abstract art course. I had already decided that I was going to be a serious portrait or landscape artist, so this course was simply a technicality for me. We had the assignment to bring an object to class and to be very selective in our choice because we would have to work with that piece for the entire semester. I had slacked off so much that the day we were to begin working on the piece, I didn’t have anything to show. I ran to my car and grabbed the rosary beads hanging from my rear view mirror. My parents had given it to me as a gift for my eighth grade graduation. Stripping down the rosary beads to a single visual reference led me to the using the Cross --and it has been the template for my designs for the past 15 years.
The cross has evolved in my work since then, but its symmetry is still the basis for the elements of my paintings: religion, color, composition and structure. Because I come from a positive home environment and up-bringing, I wanted my paintings to have a positive emotion, yet be attractive and sexy.
My dream began at the MoMA, and I hope to bring it full circle by having my work hung there one day. - Guy Stanley Philoche
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