What's Next ???

It's almost December which means it's time for Satchel to show his latest work.
For years he shared the space with the late Lennie Kesl.
This year he has invited Shawn Maschino to join him.

Here are the statements of
Satchel Raye
&
Shawn Maschino--

Satchel--

My brain gets overloaded often enough for me to need a reset.

Painting is my favorite reset for the over-stimulated world I often create for myself. When I sit at the easel my goal is to become more blank, quiet, reflective, centered, and devoted.

I have gotten into the habit of painting for a year asymmetrically, and a year symmetrically. By painting I often mean collage elements also.  While I consider them chiefly paintings, the collage pieces help me establish a design quickly and with texture and pattern. This year is a “symmetrical” year.

The symmetrical paintings are somehow more fun and easy for me, and they reflect the joy I feel in my life, work, and family.  The asymmetrical ones are more tedious and abstract, and tend to speak of landscapes, still life’s, and invented machines.  I enjoy both pursuits equally, and feel excited when I get to put my latest 11 months of work on display.

Our world gets fuller and fuller of quick on-screen images for us to consume, and these paintings reflect my 46th year of life quite slowly.

I like to remember what a friend once told me… “You can do anything, but you can’t do everything.”  I am deliberately trying to transform that “anything” into a tangible something that takes the form of framed paintings.

satch

Shawn--

I am a thirty seven year old man.  I have lived in Gainesville for seventeen years.  I started showing my work almost immediately after arriving here.  My first show was at Terranova Catering Company. Since then I have regularly shown at E'lan Hair Salon, Satchel's, 2nd St. Bakery, Circle Square Studios, The Bull, and The Wooly.  I always struggle with this part of the process...the artist statement. Answering this question is no easier than explaining what a tattoo means.  It should be fairly straight forward.  It should be easy for someone to explain something that is a part of them, but herein lies the "artist struggle".  I don't find it difficult to be an artist.  I find it difficult to define my work.  I do not buy art supplies.  I inherit them.  I find them on the street.  They are trickled down to me in the most bizarre circumstances.  They are passed when I am driving, only to be contemplated briefly while I look for a place to make a U-turn.  They are taken from the "free junk" table behind this restaurant.  Once they are in my environment it could be a matter of hours, or a matter of years before they are either turned into something to look at, or turned into trash.  

This year was a year of loss for me.  I lost my father on December 6 2013.  I also lost a six year battle with Bank of America on November 18 2014, a battle that started when I was working within the walls of this restaurant.  We, as a community, lost Lennie Kesl, who's work has classically hung here along with Satchel Rayes'.   So this show is some sort of vague anniversary and modest celebration of life after death for me.  The end of an exhausting drive through mountain hills lined with cork trees, painted and numbered.  My father was estranged for nearly 20 years. Just before his death he contacted me and wanted me to collect all of the belongings of his "studio", a small guest room in his shared home.  All of his life he painted.  The most beautiful seascapes and landscapes eventually filled his attic, some still wet with thick oils as I loaded them into a rented truck.  He thought that I could sand them down and Gesso over his work to paint my own.  I started taking those that were not finished and painting directly on top of them with spray paint and stencil.  Finishing them with my work. Painting portraits on top of seascapes allowing elements of his painting to fill in some of the space. My father never showed his work to any avail, but I did have a few shows with this body of work, and he did get to be present for one.  He ran his fingers over the paintings several times before fully realizing that his work was there as well, behind the faces.  A few months later, he was gone.  I went and gathered the remaining work.  Several hundred canvases in various states of completion, but mostly unfinished.  Frames, brushes, paint, pencils, pastels, every issue of Playboy from 1963 to today, and very few photographs or anything of personal value.  That is what I have to work with now.