Oscar Bernal dazzled by stilt-dancers appearing to have
stepped out of his paintings at his exhibition at Volakis Gallery.

The Stunning Paintings of Oscar Bernal

Oscar Bernal is a painter of enormous power and originality. The power of his paintings is not to be disputed. His originality may perhaps be momentarily challenged by his frequent use of and reference to historic (and sometimes insidious) personages and painters whose works hang in the great museums and collections throughout the world. Velásquez, Francis Bacon, Carpaccio (the fabulous 15th Century painter whose frequent use of the color red gave edible raw meat its name), Caravaggio, Titian, Leonardo da Vinci and Rembrandt are, by example, a few of the great artists that he touches on while at the same time, Hitler and his henchmen, Torquemada and his fellow Spanish Inquisitors, the Pope and his Cardinals, Stalin and his gulags, George Washington and his cabinet, and even George Bush and his handlers can sometimes be found lurking in the shadows of Bernal's paintings and drawings.

But in the same sense that there is nothing unique about paint and canvas in itself, that it is what the artist does with it that counts, Bernal's use of powerful historical figures harnesses their significance to his amazing own ends in such an original and startling pictorial manner that the unquestionable uniqueness of his painterly approach becomes multiplied over time by what we know of (or are about to know of) the people depicted in his paintings. This, so much so, that when it is an unknown person that is represented, that figure becomes instantly imbued with a suggestion of historical significance whether or not it is actually yet the case that he or she is widely known.

Turning to his graphic work, one glance at one of his numerous editions of unique print drawings is enough to allow one to recognize the fact that here is a master draftsman of the 20th and 21st Century. Bernal printed these small works on German Etching Paper and with his facile pen, further added an additional entirely different, unique figure or shape to each and every individual print that he created, thus the rather unusual term of unique print drawing. Here again, power, fluidity, and outrageous invention pervade his graphic work with never the need of a single fleck of color.

I recently overheard someone trying to describe his paintings by referring to them as a marriage between Velásquez and Francis Bacon. That description is a good start. Leonardo wrote in his journals that a worthy student must always surpass his master. In my opinion Oscar Bernal has accomplished just that. __Muldoon Elder