As an American abstract artist now living and working in Tucson, AZ, Anita Lewis’ work emulates her international heritage and love of modern design with natural influences. Born in Los Angeles, she grew up bilingual with European cultural influences.
As an American abstract artist now living and working in Tucson, AZ, Anita Lewis’ work emulates her international heritage and love of modern design with natural influences. Born in Los Angeles, she grew up bilingual with European cultural influences.
Anita Lewis is no stranger to the fine arts and architecture, drawing from her ancestral heritage of artists, musicians, draftsmen and engineers. She began oil painting at the tender age of eleven, and selling her first commissioned work at age 14. After graduating in 1979 with a BA in art and interior architectural design at California State University Northridge, shesought to broaden her horizons and left for Europe. Intending to stay only oneyear, she returned to the United States almost 20 years later, having raised adaughter, and launching a successful career of high-end modern interior design,and exhibiting her art in Augsburg, Germany. Once back in the US, she began her own high-profiled design business, pioneering high-end European kitchen design and the import of prominent European brand name furnishings into the San Diego/La Jolla area.
With life-changing events 2005/6, Lewis put her design career to rest, to devote her entire attention to building her art repertoire. She has steadily earned increased international recognition in the art world, participating in internationally renowned art shows such as Art Expo New York, Art Expo Las Vegas, Arte Classica Buenos Aires and Art San Diego. Her art is collected in many countries and represented in fine art galleries throughout the world. She has a collector base of corporations, medical centers, high-end architectural homes, both nationally and internationally. Lewis’ work has been published in various art and design magazines, such as Art Business News, Fine, LUXE, and a featured artist in
American Art Collector. She has been interviewed on San Diego Channel 7NBC, and Fox 5 television. Cliff Johns, cousin to Jasper Johns, has done write-ups on her work.
The art of Anita Lewis embraces the ever increasingly rare use of the classical medium of oils in abstract work. Lewis revels in the challenge of incorporating classical with modern, as she identifies strongly both with modern art and architecture, and the classics. Stark linearity seems to dissolve into abstraction, yet with detail in the obscure. Her work can be described as earthy, textural and emotive, reminding of natural occurrences. There is a freedom to her work, but an underlying structure prevents chaos, pulling the pieces together. Her paintings seem to call out a visual experience of long yearned-for memories or emotions of the viewer.
Lewis has also been exploring the ever-increasing popular world of ballet dance, auto-racing themes, beach details and other “abstract figuratives”. One of her former projects involves an exploratory first-time collaboration with the San Diego Ballet, a fresh endeavor of the “arts supporting the arts”. Her latest project captures the enigmatic world of the Formula One.
Like Norman Rockwell, Seuss personally created every rough sketch, preliminary drawing, final line drawing and finished work for each page of every project he illustrated. Despite the technical and budgetary limitations of color printing during the early and mid-twentieth century, Dr. Seuss the artist was meticulous about color selection. He created specially numbered color charts and elaborate color call-outs to precisely accomplish his vision for each book. Saturated reds and blues, for example, were carefully chosen for The Cat in the Hat to attract and maintain the visual attention of a six-year-old audience. By the time Seuss’s book career took off, sharp draftsman skills were evident in drawings. His ability to move a storyline ahead via illustrations filled with tension, movement and color became a hallmark component of his work, and the surreal images that unfolded over six decades became the catalyst for a humorous and inspired learning experience.
Artist Leo Rijn, the inaugural sculptor for the Dr. Seuss Tribute Collection I, was selected to launch this project due to his prized work with some of today’s top talent in the world of film, entertainment and the visual arts (including Tim Burton, Ang Lee and Steven Spielberg). Rijn has been identified as one of today’s brightest sculpting talents because of his ability to breathe life into the written word and successfully transform two-dimensional ideas into three-dimensional works of art. Universal Studios commissioned Leo to develop and oversee the creation of numerous maquette scale models for the Monumental Dr. Seuss Sculptures at Seuss Landing in Orlando, Florida. Leo was instrumental in the art direction for many of the sculpted characters and buildings now on display at this permanent Seuss attraction. His strikingly accurate Seuss works embody a masterful and intuitive Seussian sensibility, establishing him as a leading talent in interpretive sculpting.
Seuss embarked on an ingenious project in the early 1930s as he evolved from two-dimensional artworks to three-dimensional sculptures. What was most unusual for these mixed-media sculptures was the use of real animal parts including beaks, antlers and horns from deceased Forest Park Zoo animals where Seuss’s father was superintendent. Unorthodox Collection of Taxidermy was born in a cramped New York apartment and included a menagerie of inventive creatures with names like the “Two Horned Drouberhannis,” “Andulovian Grackler,” and “Semi-Normal Green-Lidded Fawn.” Shortly after Seuss created this unique collection of artworks, Look Magazine dubbed Seuss “The World’s Most Eminent Authority on Unheard-Of Animals.” To this day, Seuss’s Unorthodox Collection of Taxidermy remains as some of the finest examples of his inventive and multi-dimensional creativity.
Illustrator by day, surrealist by night, Seuss created a body of irrepressible work that redefines this American icon as an iconographic American artist. Yet, the Secret Art often shows a side of the artist that most readers, familiar with him through his classic children’s books, have never seen. This collection, created over a period of more than 60 years, encompasses the entirety of Seuss’s multi-dimensional talent. The artistic golden thread highlighted throughout this collection is apparent in each wildly imaginative and surreal Secret Art image. The Secret Art of Dr. Seuss is an inimitable collection of artworks created at night for his own personal enjoyment. These works were rarely, if ever, exhibited during his lifetime and provide a deeper glimpse into the art and life of this celebrated American Icon.
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