I submitted three similar paintings to this juried show organized by the Artist Guild of San Diego Museum of Art and curated by Max Presneill, Director of the Torrance Art Museum in the South Bay city of Torrence in Los Angeles, California.
Of the three submitted, the one chosen is the most light-hearted one.
It and the others reference faces in Francis Bacon paintings. Which face, I can’t say. I did several preliminary drawings of various faces and lost track of which was from what paintings.
In my rendering, this one has a whimsical mushroom nose dissolving into a spiraling confusion where the mouth would be.
The first Francis Bacon painting I saw was in a 1968 Art History class at Sonoma State University, it was a slide of one of his Popes with it’s mouth open .
Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X
Is he screaming? Is he submitting to a dental exam? Is he in pain or just amazed? These questions intrigued me, but even more impressive to me were the lines and smears from vertical scraping that created a sort of screen between the surface and the face. I guess I liked that effect quite a bit, because I’ve been painting faces and figures seen through patterned, active surfaces since.
In Francis’ paintings there is a feeling of horror, terror, or fear which titillates me (it is only paint, you know).
As I learned of his life, poor Francis had much to be fearful of, as most of us have.
He was an adult and painting during WWII and no saw, as we all did, the photojournalism published after the horrific events. The evidence of mass-murder in the German camps and the American bombing of Japan. He was grown and able to express through his art his reactions to reality.
I was young, just beginning to understand the world I was in. These images were just one part of what I learned about where I was growing up, having been placed in this situation by my parents’ desire to be normal and birth children as society expected.
No one asked me about being part of this crazy, dangerous world.
Mock killing and real violence was a big part of children’s games in my neighborhood on Pescadero Avenue in South Gate, California. War, hate, and death were around us all as I came of age in the 1950s.
Becoming an adult in the 1960s, I desired to find resolution for society’s awful legacies of mistreatments. This led myself and others to cocoon ourselves in drug-induced fantasies of peace and harmonies.
Continuing to be battered through the decades by useless wars, political corruption, popular intolerance, and environmental poisoning, I’m now in my eighties, living in a retirement community in the greater San Diego Bay area.
I have the above painting, of lord knows why, accepted into an exhibit of Contemporary Art called “Art of Now: Pushing Boundaries.”
As I write this, I’m planning to go to the Opening Reception at 5pm tonight for the show at Union Hall Gallery, 24th & Broadway, Golden Hill, San Diego, California. The group show drawn from artists of all ages throughout California will remain viewable by the public until June 28, 2026.
The San Diego Museum of Art Artists Guild presents
The Art of Now: Pushing Boundaries, curated by Max Presneill of The Torrance Art Museum.
Exhibition Dates: June 5–28, 2026, and online through August 5, 2026.
Opening Reception:
Saturday, June 6, 5–9 PM.
Gallery Hours: 11 AM -6 PM Wednesday- Sunday
Location: Union Hall Gallery at 2323 Broadway #201, San Diego, CA 92102
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