Ferry riders often feel like “outsiders,” using this unique mode of transportation in defiance of the common modes of cramped conveyance.
“Outsider Art” is regarded by critics as art by self-taught or naïve art makers. Typically, those labeled as outsider artists have little or no contact with the mainstream art world or art institutions.
Jordan Gerstman is, by contrast, a university-trained painter and illustrator who is a self-described outsider who works and resides in the Monterey Bay Area.
He will soon be featured at the Felix Kulpa Gallery in Santa Cruz.
Look for homages to German Expressionism, Post Impressionism, Edward Hopper, Tamara De Lempicka and El Greco.
“I often listen to music while I draw or paint,” he says. “In painting I try to translate the same intensity of the high pitched screeches of James Brown and the powerful crescendos of Wagner into the medium of paint. I create my images with the intent that they bleed with the same passion and dynamism of the art that I personally love and to release my less savory impulses; A marriage of the primitive and calculated.”