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Kurt La Quaglia
- Male
- Van Nuys, CA
- United States
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Very cool. I really really like this, for more reasons than i can cite!
36 X36 oil on linen. SOLD.
Profile Information
- About Me:
- My name is Kurt La Quaglia. I was born on May 31st, 1960 in Los Angeles, California where I still reside.
Being a Gemini, I possess a dual nature. I have been drawing and illustrating from the time I was able to wield a pencil. But, I am not a professional artist by trade. Painting has always been an avocation. I am a cable maintenance technician for a major telecommunications company. My vocation is highly technical as well as extremely physical. I have been climbing telephone poles and lifting manhole lids for the last 26 years. Somehow the avocation of painting to me is just as physically demanding and mentally challenging as my vocation. The artistic temperament is a blessing, as well as a curse. Because artists possess an acute awareness, it has a tendency to breed eccentricity, and many times self-destructive behavior, in these individuals. Seeing and real perception can lead to madness in the artist. For many artists, it is an incredible highwire act that they perform in the course of their daily lives. A precarious balance between the world of the sublime and the mundane of the practical world. Many artists fall firmly on the side of their inner vsions. This is why they appear so strangely eccentric and difficult to us. And, why we are fascinated by their dreams.
My interests are diverse. The aesthetics of life: HUMOR & LAUGHTER, art, music, film, plants & animals, human psychology & Eastern philosophy, physics & metaphysics, ufology, entheogens, the doors of perception, inner experience, shamanic recapitulation, alternate dimensions, writing & words, fast cars & Harley Davidsons, and the most important aesthetic of all... LOVE.
I see the phenomenal world as a projection. An illusion. A hologram. Are we the dreamers? Or are we only the dream?
- About My Art:
- ART THEORY: Although I'm fascinated by philosophy and art theory, I generally dismiss theory as an explanation of artistic expression. Most art theory is subjective intellectual gymnastics. An insolvable Gordian Knot. The Worm Ouroboros. The snake or dragon devouring its own tail. Like many artists, I don't like to pontificate on the meaning of my art. Art is a subjective aesthetic experience. Its meaning is only important to the observer. Everything that Kandinsky postulated in his rambling philosophical discourse, CONCERNING THE SPIRITUAL IN ART, can be epitomized in one lyrical verse by William Blake: "Everything possible to be believed is an image of the truth." There is no need for the artist or the appreciator of art to overly confuse himself with Kandinsky's or anyone else's theories. Unless of course, one enjoys this sort of thing. Even though most artists are inherently philosophical beings, the artist should mostly concern himself with the aesthetics in his art rather than the philosophy that lurks beneath. Schools or methods of artistic expression be damned. They are all equally valid. I am more interested in the process.
ABOUT THE PROCESS: Experiences with entheogens have opened centers of my brain that still remain hidden to modern science. Not just hallucinations, but actual physical realms and worlds that are outside of the assemblage of our normal picture of reality. I see the world as a complicated language of energy, symbols, and geometry. (Like the patterns in an acid trip.) The basic building blocks of the phenomenal world. Even the simplest of my geometric abstractions or designs require hours of rearrangement into, what Professor E.H. Gombrich termed, "Fields of Force." An aesthetic attraction to the line of "least resistance." I also enjoy the unconscious flow of line from my hand that occurs while I'm sketching a painting, detailing, or playing in the paint. Detailing or highlighting in my work often resembles a non-figurative calligraphic, or longhand scripting, and is conducive to my style. Because I am right handed, and my hand can only perform limited movements, I will sometimes turn a canvas on its side or upside down to achieve a different angle of brush flow on the canvas. No drafting implements, such as straight edges, flexible curves, french curves, or triangles are used in my work. They are sketched and painted entirely with a freehand. I work mostly in monochromatic colors (primarily black and gold) and the two-dimensional aesthetic of art nouveau and/or art deco. This was an unconscious choice on my part in the development of my style. Like Paul Gauguin, I pay little, or almost no attention to classic perspective. My work is flat and does not contain any depth of field, implied horizon, or vanishing point. It is highly decorative by nature. I am interested in the representation of form through the use of geometry and line.
ABOUT MY ABSTRACT NUDES: I do not use live models. Obviously, portions of the images are geometrically abstracted. My nudes began as a subconscious search for an imaginary Soul Mate. It was only years later that I discovered that they are projections of my "anima." My feminine side in Jungian psychology.
- Studied? Exhibitions?
- ART EDUCATION: I am self-taught.
- Favorite Music:
- Great Vocalists, Jazz, Reggae, Rockabilly, 50's Doo Wop, 60's Soul, Progressive & Classic 70's Rock, 80's Pop, Power Pop, & New Wave, Hair Metal, Power Metal, Black Metal, and Ambient.
When I paint, I almost always listen to Steve Roach (ambient) or jazz.
- Favorite Films:
- FAVORITE FILMS: American Graffiti, Annie Hall, Apocalypse Now, Basquiat, The Big Lebowski, Bird, Blade Runner, Boogie Nights, Casablanca, Casino, The Cotton Club, Dawn of The Dead, Day of The Dead (the George Romero versions), Diner, Eraserhead, The Exorcist, Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, A Few Good Men, Fight Club, Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers films (all of them), Glengarry Glen Ross, The Godfather Trilogy, Goodfellas, Hannah and Her Sisters, Heat, In The Mood For Love, Inland Empire, Into The Wild, James Bond films (all of them), JFK, The Last Samurai, The Lord of The Rings Trilogy, Lost In Translation, Lust For Life, The Maltese Falcon, The Matrix Trilogy, The Ninth Configuration, Nixon, The Pirates of the Caribbean Trilogy, The Phantom of The Opera (the musical), Pollock, Rear Window, The Road Warrior, Rumble Fish, Saturday Night Fever, Saving Private Ryan, Scarface, Seven Samurai, Sexy Beast, Sid And Nancy, Sorcerer, The Entire Star Wars Saga, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Sweet Smell of Success, Thief, The Thin Red Line, The Thing, 300, Throne of Blood, 2046, Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me, Watchmen, West Side Story, Wild At Heart, Wonderland (with Val Kilmer), The Wrestler, and Vanilla Sky.
FAVORITE FILMMAKERS: Woody Allen, Francis Ford Coppola, Clint Eastwood, David Fincher, Alfred Hitchcock, Akira Kurosawa, David Lynch, George Romero, Michael Mann, Martin Scorsese, Ridley Scott, Zack Snyder, Steven Spielberg, Oliver Stone, and Wong Kar-Wai.
- Favorite Artists:
- Picasso, Pollock, Rothko, Roger Dean, H.R. Giger....
Comment Wall (4 comments)
- At 3:49am on June 1, 2010,
Albertus Joseph said…
- love your work
- At 7:43pm on February 20, 2010,
jeanne wohlers said…
- THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR LOVELY COMMENT..I ESPECIALLY LIKED THE PRIMITIVE COMMENT.......JEANNE...LOOKING FORWARD TO SEEING MORE OF YOUR WORK..JEANNE..
- At 9:17pm on February 16, 2010,
jeanne wohlers said…
- WONDERFUL STUFF I REALLY ENJOYED IT THANK YOU...JEANNE...
- At 3:24am on February 15, 2010,
Philip Letts said…
- Kurt, welcome to b-uncut - the network for artists by artists. We look forward to seeing you load more and rate artworks, post blogs, join Forum discussions and more. Read the 'Notes' (right column - home page) for tips on using the site.
Dive in and enjoy.
And don't let anything stop you expressing your art.
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