Book Signing with Artist Gary Komarin

The Hickory Stick Bookshop is delighted to welcome Connecticut artist Gary Komarin who will be here signing copies of his art book “The Cake” on Saturday, October 7th at 3 pm. This event is free and open to the public. If you are unable to attend this event, you may reserve signed copies of “The Cake” by calling The Hickory Stick Bookshop at (860) 868 0525, or shop our website 24/7 at www.hickorystickbookshop.com.

ABOUT THE BOOK
This monograph is the first full edition of the iconic Cake images that Gary Komarin has been painting since the early 90s. The Cakes have been exhibited in galleries from New York to Tokyo, and are in the permanent collections of contemporary art museums worldwide. Komarin views the Cake as a marriage between the Architectural and the Domestic – Komarin’s father was an Architect who trained in Europe, and his mother a self-taught baker who hailed from Vienna. Komarin shares stories of the lopsided and misshapen cakes produced by his mother, often dripping off the plate, but always delicious and full of love. These domestic scenes became formative iconography in Komarin’s contemporary work.

The book, designed with Payton Heller, shows not only the cakes but various oblique photos of objects in the studio and things and places that Komarin looks at or has touched in some manner. The book also has short essays and quotes about his work to further inform the audience.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
New York born artist Gary Komarin, the son of a Czech architect and Viennese writer, brings influence from both into his iconic work. Komarin has been hailed as a “painter’s painter” for his uncanny ability to continuously produce works that are fresh and alive. Noted for his use of the brush to open new visual doors and ways of seeing, Komarin has been applauded as a risk taker and a modern master in post painterly abstraction.

Komarin says of his work “I simply start somewhere and each mark affects the next. After a while the painting takes on a life of its own and speaks back to me. This is a good thing. My work speaks to all people. For me, the artist’s role is to create beauty and make works that feed the soul. A good painting must also challenge the viewer in a dialogue.”

Gary Komarin lives and works in a house and studio in the wooded hills of Western Connecticut.

PRAISE FOR THE BOOK
“Komarin gets paintings that vibrate with historical memory, echoing such things as Matisse’s driest most empty pictures, Robert Motherwell’s spare abstractions of the 1970’s, or the early New Mexico and Berkeley paintings of Richard Diebenkorn.” – Kenneth Baker, San Francisco

Artist photo credit – Katerina Levoy