There is only one Old City bastion of Cool Art that gives props to the past when Pop Art was top art and Kennedy was King of Camelot. Of course, the place is Mixed Company (www.themixedcompany.com ), 60 North Third Street. However, don't count this joint out when it comes to cultivating all sorts of art and artists. Take painter Gary Bernard, for example. This guy is as today as you can get, but his work is imbued with an Old School Continental flair that overflows with class and sophistication. An effortless elegance courses through his work, and in any genre he puts his mind to, be it portraiture, still life or landscape.

On the portraiture front, Bernard favors the total body workup. He fills his figures with angst by posing them in absurd ways that find their pain our own. He also shies away from affording his females faces, instead having them look away into some distance, perhaps a load of dead yesterdays that keep their myriad scars ever fresh. The postmodernism that courses through the work is how a nod to history can be deflected with the simplest of gestures that is so right now.

Whereas his portraitures are in oil, Bernard favors watercolor for his cityscapes, and here, the hustle and bustle of France is in full force. He still finds fascination with the Gallic land and could care less about freedom fries. Politics is politics and art is art; people are people and rednecks are less than people. Bernard conjures up a land that remains viable on all fronts cultural and aesthetic, yet he affords a subtle distance to every building he lends his muse to, so check this guy out on First Friday.


PRESS/REVIEW page 9 - August 9 • 2005 - R.B. Strauss