Here’s a vid by the peeps over at The Art Trade I’m their calendar boy for the month of May.

I was featured today over on the Escape Into Life website. A great website with a lot of really great talent being shown off. I’m very honored to be placed up with the likes of them. Take a look!

Here’s my latest live number that I banged out in 4 hours in the sweltering New York heat at the entrance to ‘The Highline’. It’s a 5 by 6 foot canvas that I covered with two portraits of Miss Emily Caldwell for the new Vio softdrink.

Artist Pete Nawara at work. Photo by Lauren Ruth / North by Northwestern.

Conversing with Chicago artist Pete Nawara
By Lauren C. Ruth

Artist Pete Nawara lives and works in Logan Square, which can be described as the next Wicker Park due to the rising numbers of artistically-inclined young residents (but it’s not too expensive…yet). In a typical Nawara piece, faces and clothing become colorful topographic maps — think Photoshop in your head. Now try painting that on the Rock.

Read the whole article

Photograph by Nick Gerber

Check out the Artisan Creative Blog for a look at their post documenting the Match That Gives Back event where I was invited to do a live painting.

A new interview with Camel is up on their website. Take a look at the video portion from youtube.

Pete Nawara in the Picturing Mary Group Exhibition March 22 to May 24, 2008

Annunciation
Mixed Media on Canvas – 2004

PICTURING MARY: CONTEMPORARY IMAGES OF THE MADONNA

The Orleans Street Gallery presents Picturing Mary: Contemporary Images of the Madonna from March 22 to May 24, 2008. This group exhibition will feature fresh interpretations of the Virgin Mary, stretching traditional representations and crossing cultural boundaries. Through painting, photography and mixed media, Chicago-area artists reflect upon and rephrase the Marian image. Selections span the allegorical and the literal, the maternal and the divine. Curated by Ruth Nelson.

Artists include: Diana Arrieta, Chantal Baros, Dorisa Camps, Margaret Carsello, Alicia Chester, Brian Dortmund, Makeba Kedem-DuBose, Elisabeth Dzuricsko, Bro. Mark Elder CM, Valerie Fuqua, Felipe Garcia, LeeAnn Gause, Diane Green, Violet Jaffe, Aphrodite Navab and Richard Jochum, Pete Nawara, Kristine O’Reilly, Enrique Ortiz, Elizabeth Parker, Rosie Presti, Cheryl Quick, Ben Speckmann, and Rachel Weaver Rivera.

The Picturing Mary Opening Reception will be held on Saturday, March 29, 2008 from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. Orleans Street Gallery is located in the Bourbon Street section of Pheasant Run Resort, 4051 East Main Street, St. Charles, IL 60174. Gallery hours are Thursday 12-7 p.m., Friday and Saturday 12-8 p.m., Sunday 11 a.m . – 4 p.m. For more information contact Gallery Director Anni Holm at art@orleansStreetGallery.com or 630.524.5048

Here’s a write up about the show in the Daily Herald.

© Pete Nawara

American artist Pete Nawara is fascinated by one thing: beauty. It’s possible that he finds other stuff interesting too, but basically, for him, beauty is the thing. Beauty, of course, can mean a number of different things: a pretty face, a hot body, a great painting… But beauty also always has to do with concepts of beauty. Ok, so that sounds obvious, but beauty is not just intrinsic: concepts of beauty vary (often quite dramatically) according to society, culture, historical period etc. You wouldn’t see Titian’s plump white ladies on the front cover of Vogue, for example.

Nawara’s is quite a straightforward concept. He has his subjects pose in front of a camera as if it were a mirror. They ‘check themselves out’: they pout, frown, style their hair, smooth their wrinkles, adjust their ties… Nawara then takes these images, fiddles with them on a computer for a bit, projects the finished composition onto a canvas, and colours it with thinned acrylic paint, gouache markers, and gold leaf.
This process is interesting in that the finished images portray individuals engaging with themselves, worrying about the parts they don’t like or admiring the parts they do. Nawara explores the way in which people see themselves, and how this can never be direct or objective. The way in which he distorts the images and lends them a kind of computerized pop-art aesthetic echoes the way in which identity is always (at least, in part) an effect of the consumption of media.

One major thing that Nawara can be admired for is that he seeks quite resolutely to leave excessive theorising to others. Not for him the nonsensical po-mo claptrap spouted by those whose work cannot stand alone without lengthy paragraphs of sub-Deleuzean explanatory flim-flam. Nawara rejects what he describes as “endless babbling” in favour of this simple statement: “I strive to make objects that are aesthetically pleasing”.

So, on these terms, does he succeed? Well, there’s quite a heavy pop-art vibe. If you hate Warhol, then you might not like this stuff. But there’s more too: Nawara’s work is not simply slick or advert-flat. Man in a Houndstooth Suit, for example, shows both boldly clashing patterns and a sensitivity in the depiction of differing facial expressions. And the use of gold leaf in works such as St. Peter imbues the subject with an almost kitsch quasi-Catholic beauty. Direct but also quite subtle, intelligent but mercifully not over-theorized, Nawara’s paintings are definitely worthy of greater attention.

To see Pete in action, head on down to uptownboogiedown on 9th March.

[From http://www.spoonfed.co.uk/articles/Tom/123 ]

For Pete’s Sake – Pete Nawara Portraits

The closest thing to art in your apartment is the installation of assorted deodorants in your bathroom. (You call it “Still Life with Wetness Protection.”)

Time to redecorate.

Start with a portrait from artist Pete Nawara.

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