Artist Reception for The Oyster Pirate Workshop December 4, 2008

The Vehicles of Emancipation collection of collaborative paintings by The Oyster Pirate Workshop of seven artists opens with a reception for the artists on Thursday December 4, 7-10pm, and will remain on display through January 10, 2009.

The Oyster Pirates are James Lichnovsky, Joel Mejia, Michael Page, Christian Rothenhagen, Shawn Webber, Jason Wheatley, and Sri Zeno Whipple. Brought together by a long relationship of mutual artistic drive and criticism, The Oyster Pirate Workshop pulls the pearl out of the oyster for each individual artist, celebrating the best of each in single harmonious works of art.

With the exception of one European and one out-of-state artist, the Oyster Pirates live and work in San Francisco. Berlin-based Christian Rothenhagen focuses his drawings, paintings and illustrations on the architecture of his beloved city. Raised in Utah where his studio remains, Sri Zeno Whipple combines his love of the masters with comic book art and animation to create bold and fluid hypersexual masterworks which would taste like ginger cookies if you could eat them. Jason Wheatley mixes impeccable brushwork with Oriental motifs and Audubon-quality fantastic tableaux, using electric color and painterly gestures. Tending toward non-representation in his own artwork, James Lichnovsky nevertheless carries with him a background as prop-master and painter for film and a sculptor for the likes of Disney, Warner Bros., and Mattel. Michael Page returns to Varnish as an Oyster Pirate with his increasingly complex, outer-worldly, narrative oil paintings, adding yet another dimension through collaboration to his international career as an artist. Informed by years of sculpting before a return to 2-dimensions and the inspiration of fellow painters/pirates, Shawn Webber allows the paint to direct his representational work. Reminiscent of days-gone-by carnival troupe theatrics, The Oyster Pirate collaboration presents a unified series of easy intensity.

No charge.

Official Website: http://www.varnishfineart.com