As a new artist, with two years yielding a paint brush, Gordon Skinner’s work is big and bold, bright with color, deep with meaning. Strongly influenced by his African-American roots, his work is currently on exhibit at the New Haven Public Library until Saturday, February 18.
His show entitled “Stolen I.D.: Fragmented, Colonized and Lost”
explores his personal search for identity, a subject he claims all artists battle with in one way or another. Skinner does art for the people, his way of developing his "own visual language." Alone, with his anger, he sees the world through honest but questioning eyes, seeking to document that he was here and what he saw.
To Skinner, everything is an experiment, but he fully credits Picasso, Pollock, Lennon, Jean Dubuffet, Joan Mitchell and Tracey Emin, with influencing his art. Working in house acrylics, with collage and spray paint, on canvas and wooden panels, he tries to dispel stereotypes and explore cultural values, poverty, HIV AIDS, drug abuse and, most of all, his own voice. Through his work, he takes risks, using primitive and vigorous strokes, often painting masks that alternately reveal and hide the soul. His works, like Tin Drum, Zulu Warrior, Wise Noble and Crack Baby , allow Skinner’s passions and questions to be examined.
Gordon Skinner is a visiting artist to the Fernando Luis Alvarez Gallery. Go to http://azothgallery.com/ for more information, pictures and a film by Bob Albert of his work, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNR7dt5gOp4
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