Background
Arisman was born in Jamestown, New York on December 21,1937 where he grew up on a dairy farm.
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Read about a saxophone-playing cat who grows up learning jazz in the Mississippi Delta before embarking on a trip to New York City, where he makes his own lasting musical mark.
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(A saxophone-playing cat grows up learning jazz in the Mis...)
A saxophone-playing cat grows up learning jazz in the Mississippi Delta before embarking on a trip to New York City, where he makes his own lasting musical mark.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1568461526/?tag=2022091-20
Arisman was born in Jamestown, New York on December 21,1937 where he grew up on a dairy farm.
He studied advertising art at the Pratt Institute, graduating in 1960. He completed military service, then began his career as a graphic designer, working for General Motors.
He received an Ida Gaskell Grant to travel and study in Europe after graduating. While working as a graphic designer for General Motors, Arisman took evening courses in figure drawing. He went on to produce illustrations for major American periodicals including The New York Times, Mother Jones, The Nation, Organising Medical Networked Information, Time, and Penthouse.
He has also illustrated books, including (1983), and Frozen Images (1974), published by Visual Arts Press.
Arisman created a multimedia installation work titled The Last Tribe (2009). An exploration of the theme of nuclear annihilation, the work incorporates painting, sculpture, and video.
The video can be viewed online. Arisman"s paintings have been exhibited in a number of one-man shows in the United States, Europe, and Japan.
Permanent collections that include Arisman"s paintings include the Brooklyn Museum, the Smithsonian, and the Museum of American Artist
His show Sacred Monkeys was the first American exhibit to be shown in Mainland China, and his work is included in a permanent collection in China. More recently, he has exhibited the Ayahuasca Series, a series of oil paintings, which is in part based on the religious rituals of the Quechua people. His Ayahuasca Series was on exhibit at the Zadok Gallery in Miami, Florida from January 1 to May 1, 2012.
Arisman released a Civil Defense recording of his own stories, Cobalt Blue, in 2008.
He is chair of the degree program "Illustration as Visual Essay" at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Violence and predation are central themes in many of Arisman"s works.
His early work, Frozen Images (1974), was a reflection on "personal, environmental, and media-driven" violence. Other works, such as Charging Buffalo (2008), while remaining expressionistic in style, are less menacing, and may be interpreted as reflections on primal connections with the environment and with a regenerative life force.
As influences, he has cited André François, Goya, Velázquez, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, and primitive art
In his illustration work, Arisman approaches each piece without making a distinction between commercial or fine art The barrier is one that he has been confronted with throughout his career: "the fine art world stigmatizes people for illustrating Every gallery tells me to quit illustration".
(Read about a saxophone-playing cat who grows up learning ...)
(A saxophone-playing cat grows up learning jazz in the Mis...)