New web site

Check out the new web site at www.joelklepac.com for recent work.

Lifestyle Celebration Paintings

'Intimacy: God Walks with Adam in the Cool of the Day'

This series of painting were completed in the spring of 2008 for the Word Made Flesh Chapel in Galati Romania. The nine paintings were inspired by the 9 Lifestyle Celebrations of Word Made Flesh, and by collaborations with others working among the poor in the Word Made Flesh communites and our local community in Romania. Here are the Lifestyle Celebration paintings.

Slide Show of Sarcina Paintings

Watch a slide show of Sarcina Paintings

invitation

These Paintings are now displayed at Asbury College in Wilmore KY.

detail from 'Sarcina: The Screamer'

detail of 'Sarcina: The Singer'

Sarcina: The Singer

oil on Linin, 6'4'6'', completed fall 2004

detail from 'Sarcina: Holy Saturday'

Sarcina: Holy Saturday

oil on Linin, 6'x4'6, completed Lent 2005

detail from 'Sarcina: Pilgramage'

Sarcina: Pilgramage

oil on Linen, 6'x4'6'', completed in summer 2005

detail from 'Sarcina: The Storyteller'

Sarcina: The Storyteller

oil on canvas, 6'x4'6'', completed summer of 2005

‘Little Speech’ given on 22 July 2005 ‘Introspectii’ show opening at the Gallery Mantu, Galati Romania

“Thank you again President Murariu (president of the Art Guild of Galati) and and Mrs Cocos Tomosei (Critic from the Contemporary Art Museum in Galati) for allowing me to show work once again,…and that you haven’t thrown me out of the country yet.
An interesting thing I found out in the past six months that my great grandfather ‘Stefan’, a Ruthanian, moved from southern Poland to the US and now a couple generations later we Klepac’s have returned to this part of the world.
As I think of these paintings it is probably good to say that for me a painting is done when every part is connected in some way…and that nothing in it irritates me any more.
I think if you have patience to look and examine these paintings you can find the connecting elements. Everything is done purposefully, so if you think you figured something out you probably did.
I wanted to say something about this painting with Noah from Africa. This guy in the middle painting is of a young man named Noah or ‘Noe’ in Romanian, and is from a country in Africa, Sierra Leone, said to be the poorest country in the world. From the age of 10-20 his country was in civil war.
The canvas was prepared at the time he was here and it was convenient to have him model for me. Through painting him I experienced his personality, his being. As he was a very extroverted person he shared many of these stories from his life.
One more thing should probably be said is an aspect of the civil war which might help to understand the painting is that the gorilla army trying to take control of the diamaonds, which the country if full of, was trying to take over control.
The President at the time made the slogon…’future is in your hands’…because they would vote using their finger prints for personal identification. The Gorilla army in protest began cutting arms and legs, collecting them and then threw them against the president’s house. The national army responded in kind and after a few years the country was left with hundreds of people w/o limbs…you can imagine what it was like…
As I drew him he told me many stories from his life. I did not want it to just be a horrific painting, but my experience of Noah as a person. The painting is about my experience of Noah as a person especially since I drew him, looked carefully at his face, but in it all I experienced the beauty of his personhood through the process.
Up till now Africa was just a continent. Crisis and tragedies of Africa were always just information, but experiencing him as a person made Sierra Leone and Africa in general a personal reality with a face.
As I finished the painting later I was challenged by his being, person, and I realized how much he had changed me.
I would like to finish with a quote from John Dewey, a philosopher from the US as he wrote in his book, Art as Experience…
“Art is the extension of the power of rites and ceremonies to unite men, through a shared celebration, to all incidents and scenes of life. This office is the reward and seal of art. That art weds man and nature is a familiar fact. Art also renders man aware of their union with one another in origin and destiny” p271 Art as Experience John Dewey
Thank you again.

detail from Sarcina: The Vessel

Sarcina:The Vessel

oil on canvas, 6'x4'6'', complete in summer 2005

Sarcina: Baptism

oil on canvas, 6'x4'6'', completed in January 2006

detail from Sarcina 8: The Eighth Day

'Sarcina: The Eighth Day'

oil on canvas, 6'x4'6'', completed in January 2006

detail from 'Sarcina: Baptism'

Sarcina
Oil Paintings from 2004-2006

Artist Statement

Messiaen, the French composer went in into the forest and took down the bird sounds he heard by musical notation. Pieces such as The Symphony for the End of Time carrying cosmic themes were carved out of these simple renderings of bird songs. (see a biography at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivier_Messiaen)

Instead of bird songs, I start onto the white canvas with slow blind contour drawings with pencil. My eye follows edges of the bonsai trees in the studio, the growing beans in the garden outside the window, the grape vines, new blossoms, rags on the studio floor, corners of a wrinkled paper bag, or the mud lines in the drywall above my head. Gradually, I continue with new blind contours in oil paint with different sized brushes and a variety of colors found in the environment. I do look at the canvas occasionally to reposition the brush or pencil into untouched areas of the canvas to give an overall chaos of organic, responsive, and human lines. I am shooting for a well developed organic-chaos ground, which still breathes. When I am satisfied with the balance I stop.

The next step in the process is what I imagine to be entering into my own unconscious, which is now projected before my eyes. The organic chaos mirrors and corresponds with the part of my inner world which has yet to be made conscious. It is something like the old ink blot test. One naturally sees what is inside themselves, projected into the ink blot and reveal themes from their inner worlds. By proceeding in this way there is a natural way to incorporate many layers of reality as I experience it into an integrated whole. When all the elements of the painting seem to relate to the whole I am finished.

My hope is that these paintings are an authentic wrestling with my own layers of present experience, the residues of this swirling, moving, breathing, unpredictable and wonderful existence, as well as both past unconscious and conscious material, as well as present hope for future fulfillment of the Kingdom of God on earth. I pray for the miracle of these painted visions to transcend the personal and touch cords buried deep in all of us.

Painting is an intimate meeting, unbound by time, between persons. More than an intellectual formulation, aesthetic information, or kitsch to salve the tastes of the masses, it somehow participates in the movement and mystery of human life. The burden or responsibility, ‘sarcina’, of the artist is to dive into this mysterious ocean, survive, and surface with some fish to share with the world.

~Joel Klepac~
Lent 2006