Author and Visual Artist Stephen T. Vessels Announces His First Solo Art Exhibition in 20 Years

New York, NY, USA, 2016-Aug-04 — /EPR Network/ — Stephen T. Vessels, visual artist and author of the recently released The Mountain & The Vortex and Other Tales, is pleased to announce his first solo art exhibition in more than 20 years. The exhibit, “Recent Works,” will run from August 4, 2016 through August 27, 2016 at the Andre Zarre Gallery in New York City (www.andrezarre.com) and will feature selected works on paper drawn with ballpoint pen. The opening night reception will be held on August 4, 2016 from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.

Vessels was involved in a series of Fluxus exhibits at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in the early 90s. His abstract paintings were exhibited in a number of successful solo and group exhibitions in and around Santa Barbara, California during the same time period before a personal tragedy left him feeling deeply disconnected from his work as an artist and he stopped painting.

“Then I went broke and lost my studio and a lot of my supplies and art,” says Vessels. “My studio had become for years a place of avoidance, filled up with pain and disorder and things in the way. I kept the door closed, most of the time, until I was forced to clear out. Then I painted houses for awhile.

I moved into a place too small for a studio and focused on writing. Joined the community of writers. And one day started drawing again. I took a piece of paper that I respected, not a scrap I considered inconsequential or a page in a journal, but respected, and made marks on it and let that be the thing. I didn’t worry about whether it was art or not, I just let it be the thing I had made and signed it. Direct, immediate and true.

Self-possession – the ability to drop a line in your personal ocean and pull up a fish. The simple truth of that. A person can go to that place directly at any turn, without license.

One thing led to another and I started making scribble fields. And they became the ocean for me, where I dropped my lines and pulled up my fish. In there are all of the things that I love, all the art that has touched me, the pain, the echoes of war, the music I never played, Van Gogh, Monet, all the visual and sensual prayers, and I drop my line and commune.”

For Vessels, art isn’t an argument or a lesson. He tends to talk about it in personal, non-analytical terms.

“I make art because I have made horrible mistakes, and failed at love, and wasted my life, and because somewhere a sad and contemplative man watches cherry blossoms float under a bridge, and because an old artist painted water lilies while war raged all about him, and because Charles Tournemire began a symphony, survived the Battle of Verdun and came home to finish that symphony.

I made these drawings without statement or definition out of the sheer love of ink and paper and life and humanity and this world and this universe and with hope for the future. Mine and everyone’s, unto infinite generations.”

Stephen T. Vessels is a Thriller Award nominated author of SF, dark fantasy and cross-genre fiction. His stories have appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and collections from Grey Matter Press and ShadowSpinners. His story collection, The Mountain & The Vortex and Other Tales (Muse Harbor Publishing, 2016, ISBN: 978-1-61264-240-6, $17.99, www.stephentvessels.com), was released this year by Muse Harbor Publishing (www.museharbor.com). He has written art and music reviews for the Santa Barbara Independent and is a published poet and a visual artist.

To learn more about Stephen T. Vessels, please visit www.stephentvessels.com or email contact@stephentvessels.com.

To learn more about Vessels’ solo art exhibition, “Recent Works,” please contact the Andre Zarre Gallery (www.andrezarre.com) or email contact@stephentvessels.com.

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