Exuberant color, energetic execution and delicate balance characterize Andrew Saftel’s mixed media paintings on wood. Each chronicles the artist’s passion for object-making and his desire to create in a way that is reflective of life. While conjuring the past, Saftel’s densely populated works speak of sensory overload and other symptoms of contemporary existence. Instead of succumbing to the profusion of imagery, however, he orchestrates it to create objects of surprising coherence and remarkable elegance.

At close range, the eye takes a winding trek across rugged surfaces. Volcanic red-oranges smolder beside pale violet-grays in broad streaks here, thick clumps there. Hovering amid turbulent seas of paint are carved inscriptions, stenciled patterns and embedded cultural debris derived from sources far-ranging in time and place. Letters from relatives, old manuscripts and found objects all hold potential significance for Saftel’s sweeping expressions of experience. He distills each element in works that resemble well traveled, archaic tablets bearing the cryptic traces of untold generations.

Saftel’s creative process is driven both by conscious choice and impulsive reaction, a combination that enables the paintings to assume a dual character….

In each work Saftel gathers bits and pieces of color and culture, and interweaves them in distinctive compositions that resonate with the senses and stir the imagination. Though not unlike monuments to the history of human activity, the works vividly document his personal “treasure hunt of being alive” and, thus, demonstrate that art need not mimic the visual world to reflect human experience. Opposing realities – personal and universal, internal and external – somehow exist simultaneously, reminding us of the inexplicable interconnectedness of life.

Stephen C. Wicks
Knoxville Museum of Art
Knoxville, Tennessee

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