Journey of a Thousand Smiles
By Jan Lipetz, Blakely Hall Gallery Curator, Village Green
Come celebrate spring with ‘Journey of a Thousand Smiles’ – a delightful exhibition of whimsical pop-surrealist paintings by local artist (and ArtEast member) Vikram Madan. The show will run from May 1st through July 1st and features oil and acrylic paintings that are sometimes humorous, sometimes quirky, sometimes light-hearted, sometimes metaphorical, sometimes thought-provoking, and sometimes all of these at the same time. With bright colors and fun, engaging imagery, this family-friendly show will appeal to everyone who feels young-at-heart. The opening reception will be held on Wednesday May 13th at 6 p.m. at Blakely Hall.
Artist-Author Vikram Madan was born and raised in India, where he developed an early love for humor and art. An engineer by training, as well as a former award-winning editorial cartoonist, Vikram has studied drawing and painting at Seattle’s Gage Academy of Art. He is also the author and illustrator of ‘The Bubble Collector’, an award-winning book of original humorous poetry that was nominated, by invitation, for the 2014 Washington State Book Awards and is frequently compared to the works of Shel Silverstein.
Vikram Madan: “I paint whimsical invented narratives that engage viewers through the use of humor, color, and imagery that seems both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. My work, at its heart, celebrates the best of what makes us human: curiosity, pluck, persistence, friendship, adventure, laughter, love and more. My style and technique is heavily influenced by both traditional art study and by my own background in illustration and cartooning. In the end, I aspire to create experiences that engage viewers in a light-hearted and thoughtful way, that invite embracing a more innocent view of the world, and that hopefully help make the world a better place one small shared moment of levity at a time.”
