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Gordon Sizelove is a painter who uses 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 learned at a very young age that he loved 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 pursue a career in 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 satirical paintings about race and culture. 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 Renaissance 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 vibrant unified image. Consciousness of perception has been a lifelong subject of study for Sizelove, both the theoretical and practical aspects. As an art educator and then a special education teacher who taught students with dyslexia or had other perceptual differences, he came to see that there is a wide range of methods by which people make sense of the world. "Minds are constructing what they are seeing," he comments. This correlates with recent discoveries in science which emphasize the importance of how we acquire knowledge, and examining from what agency does this knowledge come, rather than settling on any final absolute meaning. Sizelove's paintings are a art which brings to focus the interface between our human minds and the universe, The throughput of our consciousness. 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. Recent Exhibitions Ingleside Gallery at the Ballast Café San Francisco, CA February - March 2025 Canessa Building Gallery Group Show Curated by Thomasina DeMaio January 2025 Art Works Downtown Group Show San Raphael, CA December 2025 Kings Galleries at the First Unitarian- Universalist Society of San Francisco with Barbara Sizelove November - December 2024 San Francisco Open Studios In the studio and Brannan Street Gallery October 2024 The Spring Group Exhibition Live Worms Gallery San Francisco, CA April 27 - May 18, 2024 A Gathering of Color Falkirk Cultural Center San Rafael, CA Juror: Ta Vee Lee January 12 - February 16, 2024 Circles, Squares, and Triangles Exhibizone - online January 5 - March 5, 2024 Small Works Exhibit Art Works Downtown San Rafael, CA Juror: Elanor Harwood November 18, 2023 - January 20, 2024 Cornucopia Art Works Downtown Members’ Exhibit San Rafael, CA Nov. 24, 2023 - Jan. 20, 2024 Gordon Sizelove Reveries on the Universal Donor’s Gallery - Art Works Downtown San Rafael, CA October 5, 2023 - November 10, 2023 San Francisco Open Studios, November 11 - 12, 2023 721 Tehama Street, San Francisco, CA 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 |