Sundra painting show reception Saturday at New Haven Public Library

New Haven Free Public Library Art Gallery
133 Elm St., New Haven
Michael Sundra: Relationship With Time
Through June 18, 2012.
Artist's reception: Sat., May 12, 2—4:30 p.m.

Press release

"I respond to things that are in relationship with time," says Michael Sundra. "Words in a dream that came one morning in early 2007 soon after I began investigating the arch form (the oldest man-made form in the world), as subject matter for a new direction in my work: 'More than geometry, strength, mystical meaning in sacred western architecture. Vesica Piscis (Pisces).'

"In painting, the object, the idea is only pretext. The act of painting is in direct relationship with time. The essence of which (not only form) is really what is being explored. The painting usually finds its way—if you allow it to happen."

Michael Sundra was born in 1948 in Cleveland, Ohio and resides in Farmington, Connecticut. In 1972 he graduated from the Paier College of Art in New Haven with a degree in Photography. His work has been featured in national and international exhibits. One of the most notable appearances of his work was as a part of “Americans on Americans,” the photographic tour that opened at the Kiev Museum of Art in Kiev, Ukraine in 1997, and featured work from his Venice Beach, California series where his art was displayed alongside works by Annie Liebowitz, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Herb Ritts, Berenice Abbot, and “Beat” poet Allen Ginsberg.

As a photographer, Sundra is most known for his black and white conceptual portraits and mixed media art that incorporate his B&W portraits as pretext for painting. He has worked commercially for many national clients and Fortune 500 companies, out of his former Colt building studio, in Hartford, for twenty years. Many of his fine art photographs reside in corporate and private collections.

Sundra’s interest in painting began in 1990 in mixed media and he has gradually made painting his primary focus as an artist. In "Relationship With Time," his current work embraces ancient architectural forms, primarily the arch, in it’s relationship to primordial, mystical, and spiritual energies; it’s strength, and the influence the arch has had on civilization over time as both aesthetic and utilitarian elements.