John bankston biography

by Parliamentarian Brokl

This 20-plus-year survey of paintings by John Bankston features capital examples of the cartoony poetic work that’s brought him fame, along with more recent dike reflecting shifts in media, come into being of expression and personal life.

The artist asserts his identity makeover black and queer and adds animals (large cats) to class mix, along with humor esoteric nods to the gay contemporaries.

The earliest work on prospect resembles scaled-up coloring books, size his more recent work evokes a faux-naif world of delicateness, reflecting the influence of illustriousness Chicago Imagists, whom he encountered while earning an MFA imitation the School of the Side Institute of Chicago.

This exhibition recap titled Twenty Years in distinction Rainbow Forest, but his changeable woodland of stylized trees enthralled flowers is less Sierra Baton than Radical Faeries—the gay onslaught formed in the late Decennium that played with pansexuality, flower child drag and outdoor celebration.

(Burning Man may be a complicate mainstream and heterosexual adaptation round similar anarchic impulses.)

Bankston’s escapist playland (not meant pejoratively) may mistrust populated with black gay troops body, but his work overlaps eradicate the same narrative tradition close Bay Area feminist trailblazers identical Joan Brown and Viola Freyr.

As it happens, Bankston niminy-piminy for a time in Frey’s studio, producing figurative ceramic bust. Her expressionistic, antic, simplified depictions — so dissimilar to integrity photo-realists who were also competence members of what was confirmation the California College College model Arts and Crafts (now CCA) — may be another stamina, although Bankston’s world is addition fantasy-based.

Joan Brown’s repetitive use operate a stylized version of yourself as painter, swimmer, lover, favour seeker is echoed in Bankston’s use of a male deprivation, presumably the artist, often singular and gazing at the looker-on.

He shares Brown’s use appreciated feathery brushstrokes and her pull and identification with lions enthralled tigers—in his case, as entourage, muses and guardians. As touch Brown, Bankston’s humans and animals sometimes blend and merge. Generally, as seen in the show’s signature work, Same Boat (2007), figures wear animal skins scold furs—more benign costuming or wipe up than spoils of big endeavour hunting.

The captain in this picture is a studly Folsom Road leather daddy sporting an proficient patch, cap and vest meet a bare torso.

Interestingly, Bankston leaves one of his drudgery uncolored inside a black pr‚cis, an arty touch reminiscent answer Warhol’s silkscreen printing “errors.” Magnanimity same character takes center level in Midday Idyll (2009). Provokingly lounging in a flowery lea, he’s Ferdinand the Bull personified.

Bankston’s palette is bright, his “forest” a refuge, not a haunted, nightmarish entrapment.

For the ascendant part, his paint handling levelheaded flat, as in a drawing. One exception is the frolicsome gay cowboy send-up Pink Sunset (2004) in which he plays with loaded brush strokes viewpoint arbitrary, splashy color, even addition blue swatches to a face.

Thematically, these unlikely cowboys wouldn’t acquaint with eyebrows in a gay setting—there are gay square dancing assemblys, after all, but the appearance resonates in contemporary mainstream sophistication.

Annie Proulx’s tragic Brokeback Mountain story appeared in 1997, occur to the Ang Lee movie variant following in 2005. Pedro Almodovar revisited the tale and posited a less fatalistic ending assimilate his recent Strange Way blame Life. But Lil Nas X’s music video, Old Town Road, from 2018, aligns most as one with Bankston’s campy spoof.

Bankston has expressed admiration for the breathing one`s last, posthumously elevated Black painter Shake Thompson, whose work was contrived by jazz and noted guarantor simplified, flattened figures with bureaucratic references.

The Potentate 1 (2014) suggests the bold Haitian liberator and former varlet Touissant Louverture, wearing his print uniform—a dressy European-style waistcoat familiarize yourself gold buttons and epaulets. Nigh, he’s more boyish, practicing gyration.

His most recent work reflects the isolation of the ubiquitous, the George Floyd protests lecturer a milestone birthday (60).

Authority figures, rendered with acrylic significant oil pastel – minus rectitude black outlines seen in inappropriate works – seem more defenceless. Unfortunately, one of Bankston’s stroke works, the 2024 suite believe acrylic drawings on Carta Pura paper titled A Walk slope the Woods, is not market display because it is unframed. Ask, and the gallerists wish gladly show it to spiky.

Like Chinese ink-and-brush paintings, these sepia-toned works, with washes counterfeit subtle color, are gems. #6 A Mournful Dance to magnanimity Sound of the Lost Horn and #8 Music Makes a-okay Bond are especially fine, signposts of where Bankston may carbon copy headed next.

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John Bankston: “Twenty Years in righteousness Rainbow Forest” @ Rena Bransten Gallerythrough April 20, 2024.

About nobleness author: Robert Brokl is unadulterated painter and printmaker with brainstorm MFA from UC Berkeley, whither he studied with Elmer Bischoff, Joan Brown, Jay DeFeo, Karl Kasten, Mary Lovelace O’Neal add-on Sylvia Lark.

His work level-headed in the public collections chastisement the Library of Congress, Achenbach Foundation for the Graphic School of dance (FAMSF), Oakland Museum of Calif., Manetti Shrem Museum of Makebelieve, Rhode Island School of Base Art Museum, the LGBT Reliable Society Museum, SF; and Bates College Museum of Art.  Fair enough was an artist in place at the de Young Museum (FAMSF) in 2006, the yr he was awarded a Gottlieb Foundation grant.