100 Boston Painters
Julia Zanes and Donald Saaf, both included in the book '100 Boston Painters' by Chawky Frenn published 2012.
http://www.amazon.com/100-Boston-Painter
Here is the description:
100 Boston Painters celebrates the wide-ranging talents, approaches, and personalities of the vibrant world of Boston arts. A labor of love by George Mason University Art Professor Chawky Frenn, this exciting new book features the work of artists selected by an extensive review of Boston arts, both past and present. Including an introductory essay by art critic Charles Giuliano, this volume provides insights into the roots of the arts in Boston, the city s tradition of painting, and the new directions that painters are pursuing. Brief statements supplement each artist s work with reflections about their inspirations and perspectives on their philosophies, influences, and accomplishments. From realism to expressionism and abstraction, this book covers a remarkable variety of works from well-known as well as upcoming and less recognized artists. This book is a valuable, enriching resource and a must-have for all art enthusiasts.
http://www.amazon.com/100-Boston-Painter
Here is the description:
100 Boston Painters celebrates the wide-ranging talents, approaches, and personalities of the vibrant world of Boston arts. A labor of love by George Mason University Art Professor Chawky Frenn, this exciting new book features the work of artists selected by an extensive review of Boston arts, both past and present. Including an introductory essay by art critic Charles Giuliano, this volume provides insights into the roots of the arts in Boston, the city s tradition of painting, and the new directions that painters are pursuing. Brief statements supplement each artist s work with reflections about their inspirations and perspectives on their philosophies, influences, and accomplishments. From realism to expressionism and abstraction, this book covers a remarkable variety of works from well-known as well as upcoming and less recognized artists. This book is a valuable, enriching resource and a must-have for all art enthusiasts.
AUGUST 2012
Selected as finalist for the Bennington, Vermont, Courthouse Art project 2012!
JANUARY 2012
Art New England article 2012 by Pat Bernard
Embedded in Donald Saaf’s work is an exploration of memory- how it is archived and retrieved, how its function guides every aspect of our existence. Saaf’s work is an interrogative journey into what it means to remember, to have memory as a thread that runs through our lives, binding us to our former selves and allowing us to make sense of who we are.
Each painting chronicles a collapsing of time through the compounding layers of experience. Ghosts remain evident, which amplify the artist’s intricate, expansive thought process. Memory is remixed, re-imagined, relived. The resulting, sometimes whimsical narratives convey their experience through the artist’s enactment on the canvas- an amalgam of that experience, through memory itself, and of the visceral process as memory is explored. Though translucent, overlain, and fractured, these works nevertheless achieve unity, as well as suggest the process we use to achieve that unity. They are comprehensible, accessible, limpid, and immensely satisfying and engaging.
It takes a flexible mind to imagine such things, to think them through, then bring them to a state of visual coherence. Saaf is up to the task. A painter, sculptor, composer and musician, Saaf is a complex of talents. Yet this central theme thrums beneath all his creative output, and it provides a rich source of material.
Among many philosophical strategies evident in contemporary artwork, Saaf’s is perhaps a twenty-first century transcendentalism. At the center of his process is a recognition of the ceaseless flow of our simply being. Emerson held that a fundalmental continuity exists between man, nature, and the divine. For Saaf, that radical correspondence is located firmly within us, as uniquely layered and richly textured as we are.
For Rilke, the world was a confounding mirror, yet he was able to grasp, in language, that conundrum. In his poem, “ Archaic Torso of Apollo,” for example, he says; there is no place that does not see you. For Saaf as well, the visible, knowable world is too narrow a realm to explain the vastness of experience; yet, it contains that vastness- in memory.
Embedded in Donald Saaf’s work is an exploration of memory- how it is archived and retrieved, how its function guides every aspect of our existence. Saaf’s work is an interrogative journey into what it means to remember, to have memory as a thread that runs through our lives, binding us to our former selves and allowing us to make sense of who we are.
Each painting chronicles a collapsing of time through the compounding layers of experience. Ghosts remain evident, which amplify the artist’s intricate, expansive thought process. Memory is remixed, re-imagined, relived. The resulting, sometimes whimsical narratives convey their experience through the artist’s enactment on the canvas- an amalgam of that experience, through memory itself, and of the visceral process as memory is explored. Though translucent, overlain, and fractured, these works nevertheless achieve unity, as well as suggest the process we use to achieve that unity. They are comprehensible, accessible, limpid, and immensely satisfying and engaging.
It takes a flexible mind to imagine such things, to think them through, then bring them to a state of visual coherence. Saaf is up to the task. A painter, sculptor, composer and musician, Saaf is a complex of talents. Yet this central theme thrums beneath all his creative output, and it provides a rich source of material.
Among many philosophical strategies evident in contemporary artwork, Saaf’s is perhaps a twenty-first century transcendentalism. At the center of his process is a recognition of the ceaseless flow of our simply being. Emerson held that a fundalmental continuity exists between man, nature, and the divine. For Saaf, that radical correspondence is located firmly within us, as uniquely layered and richly textured as we are.
For Rilke, the world was a confounding mirror, yet he was able to grasp, in language, that conundrum. In his poem, “ Archaic Torso of Apollo,” for example, he says; there is no place that does not see you. For Saaf as well, the visible, knowable world is too narrow a realm to explain the vastness of experience; yet, it contains that vastness- in memory.
