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Gordon Sizelove is a painter who uses geometric forms and vivid color to express universal themes. Working with acrylic paints, pastels, charcoal, and pencil, he creates mysterious interlocking patterns which could be biomorphic forms wriggling under a microscope, a dappled forest floor, or objects hurtling through space. Influenced by 20th century movements in art, architecture, and science, Sizelove's sensibility is all his own.
Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Sizelove knew from a very young age that he wanted to paint and draw. His family later moved to Springfield and then Worcester, Mass.. He took classes at those city's Art Museums. He decided to be a painter. He became a commercial artist for the rock band Albatross in 1971, but left the commercial field after deciding he wanted to make his own decisions about his art. Emigrating to the West Coast in 1972, Sizelove attended the San Francisco Art Institute, where he encountered a vibrant cultural scene. He studied with second generation American abstractionists, and with members of the emerging Funk Art movement, which focused on figuration. Artists he studied with and who influenced him include Sam Tchakalian, Julius Hatofsky, Tom Holland, and Robert Hudson. Sizelove met his wife, Barbara Johnson, in a class taught by Robert Colescott, who made well-known transgressive paintings about race. After receiving a Masters Degree in Painting in 1979, Sizelove earned a teaching credential in Art Education from San Francisco State University in 1987. He then taught art and special education for the San Francisco Unified School District, retiring in 2014. This enabled him to return to painting full time, to develop his art in new directions, and to deepen his studies in science, philosophy, and psychology. Sizelove's work converges with thinking both old and new. Exploring the work of Renaissance artists while studying at the Rhode Island School of Design’s Rome campus during the summer of 1972, he found that much of the architecture, sculpture, and painting of the time was focused on human proportion and used various forms of geometry to produce an underlying harmony in the works of art themselves. Harmony and proportion were also found in innovative architect Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes. Fuller's concept of synergy is evident in Sizelove's work, in which hundreds of individual parts combine in wavelike or dancelike patterns, creating a unified field of perception. That process of perception has been a lifelong subject of study for Sizelove, both theoretical and practical. As an art educator and then a special education teacher who taught students with dyslexia or had other perceptual differences, he realized the wide range of methods by which people make meaning. "People have to realize that their own minds are constructing what they are seeing," he comments. This correlates with the discoveries of relativity theory and quantum mechanics, both of which emphasize the process of acquiring knowledge rather than settling on any final meaning. "These kinds of things really intrigue me," Sizelove says. "Where do people's ideas come from? What do they think is true?" His paintings are a way to study "the interface between humans, our minds, and the universe," the inter-relations of which are inextricable. "We're not rulers," he adds, "but beings in an interdependent way." Sizelove lives with his wife in San Francisco's South of Market district, where he maintains a studio, paints, and participates in local art exhibitions. Exhibitions Live Worms Gallery 1345 Grant Ave., San Francisco, CA, Group Show June 30 - July 8, 2023 Completely Color: Color and Human Experience Inter-Society Color Council Jurors: Mark Fairchild, Danielle Siembieda Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, N.Y. June 12 - July 14, 2023 Abstract is Abstract HMVC Gallery NYC hmvcgallery.com May 1 - May 31, 2023 ArtSpan Juried Benefit Art Auction 111 Minna Gallery, 111 Minna St., San Francisco, CA March 30 - April 15, 2023 Creative Revel, Live Worms Gallery 1345 Grant Ave., San Francisco, CA Nov. 17, 2022 - January 8, 2023 Small Works Exhibit, Art Works Downtown Gallery 1337 4th Street, San Rafael, CA Nov. 19, 2022 - Jan. 21, 2023 Juror: Emebet B. Korn, Gallerist, Desta Gallery SFOS Exhibition, ArtSpan, 934 Brannan Street, San Francisco, CA October 22 - November 13, 2022 Colors, Marin Society of Artists, 1515 Third Street, San Raphael, CA Group Show, Juror - Karen Leoni October 28 - November 19, 2022 San Francisco Open Studios, November 5 - 6, 2022, 721 Tehama Street, San Francisco, CA The Spring Show, Live Worms Gallery, 1345 Grant Ave., San Francisco, CA, May 19, 2022 - June 12, 2022 Mission Bowling Club as part of ArtSpan's Art-In-Neighborhoods Program 3176 17th Street, San Francisco, CA November 30, 2021 - March 1, 2022 Pure Paint, Arts Benicia, 991 Tyler Street, Suite 114, Benicia, CA, November 13 - December 19, 2021, Juror - Artist Nicholas Wilton 7th Annual Juried Show Piedmont Center for the Arts, Piedmont, CA. April 16 - May 16, 2021, Jurors: René de Guzman, Senior Curator, Oakland Art Museum and Danielle Fox, Principal of Slate Gallery, Oakland, CA The Pleasure of Color, Artworks Downtown Gallery, San Rafael, CA, March 5, 2021 - April 11, 2021, Curator Susan Press Yes Art!, ArtSpans Benefit Art Auction April 18 - April 28, 2022 Jurors -Marcy Coburn, Lena Conley, Donna Camille Davis, John James Hartford V, Don Ross SFOS Showcase Exhibition, October 22 - November 21, 2021, SOMArts Cultural Center, San Francisco, CA. Group Show San Francisco Open Studios, October 16 - 17, 2021, 721 Tehama Street, San Francisco, CA Live Worms Gallery, 1345 Grant Ave., San Francisco, CA, One Year Anniversary Show, August 27 - September 12, 2021 Arts in the Neighborhoods, ArtSpan, Cumaica Coffee House, 4726 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA, June 9 - August 25, 2021 The February Group Show, Live Worms Gallery, 1345 Grant Ave., San Francisco, CA, Jan. 29 - Feb. 21, 2021 The Creative Revel, Live Worms Gallery, 1345 Grant Ave., San Francisco, CA Dec. 18, 2020 - Jan. 10, 2021, also Nov. 17, 2022 - Jan. 8, 2023 Art in the Neighborhoods show, The Mosser Hotel, 44 Fourth Street, San Francisco, CA, March 5, 2020 - Dec. 18, 2020 (Closed for Pandemic March 16, 2020) San Francisco Open Studios (Virtual), October 2020 Award for Campaign Collateral Competition SFOS Open Studios, ArtSpan 2022 |