ArtZone 461 Gallery celebrates and sees-in the New Year with a solo / survey show in the Main Gallery for Bay Area Artist, Stan Washburn.  2013 marks the 40th Anniversary of his first solo show at the Bolles Gallery in San Francisco in 1973. 

How does a visual artist offer fresh perspectives and maintain an audience for forty years?  In Washburn’s experience, he articulates the answer:  Style.  In his words, “Style comes from personality and experience—from history, from ancestors, from Adam.  It all gets very tangled and complex.  If it were less so, the results would be much less interesting.”

Fortunately, this isn’t the case for the life Washburn depicts.  He notices patterns of light and dark and color; he sees compositions with textures and brushstrokes.  He has created series of landscapes and works about machines and our relationship with them; museum interiors that reveal conjured spaces with nude participants; fancy restaurants with everyday patrons.  This sense of humor binds the various series together.  These are the sources and inspirations for Washburn’s demonstration of daily life, but with adjustments – as he sees and calls them.

Washburn received a BFA in 1967 and his MFA in 1968, both from the California College of Arts and Crafts; today it is called simply, California College of the Arts (CCA).  He lives and has a studio in Berkeley, CA.