Golden Gallery Cotton Exchange
311 North Front Street, 910-762-4651, www.thegoldengallery.com
“Blue Fish”
digital print
For Sale By Owner
40
WBM
WA L K
“March Snow” by Stephen Sebastian, artist’s proof 75/83
18.5” x 26” triple matted and framed.
Signed and dated by artist, also inscribed as follows:
“Best wishes to a real lady and friend Merry Christmas —1983 Stephen”
$999
Privately owned, for sale by owner’s sister.
Can be inspected by appointment only,
at 7232 Wrightsville Avenue, Ste. D, Wilmington, NC
Contact: Pat Bradford 910-367-1137 or 910-256-5830
by
John W. Golden
Eclipse Artisan Boutique
More than 100 local and regional artisans:
203 Racine Drive, 910-799-9883, www.EclipseArtisanBoutique.com
Custom Flag Cases
with
Military Medallion
ONE REMARKABLE stepping
june 2017
stone in Schaefer’s artistic
development was an exciting
and unexpected interaction
during his time in the military
with the American novelist
Henry Miller, who wrote “Tropic of Cancer” and is
known as a breaker of literary and social boundaries.
Miller was also a prolific painter, producing some
2,000 watercolors during his lifetime, which can be
seen in galleries and museums in the United States,
Japan and Europe.
While stationed in California in the 1970s, near
Miller’s Big Sur home, Schaefer determined to send
the author-painter a work of his, eventually decid-ing
on a painting of a historical figure. The note
he received in return, the artist remembers with a
chuckle, read: “Dear Friend, that painting you sent
me is atrocious.”
“That was appealing to me,” Schaefer says. “I’d
rather have someone react in an emotional way to
my work than with disinterest.”
Of course, Schaefer would prefer more positive
emotions.
“I have this concept — I’ve looked at art for over
30 years, looked at thousands of paintings — and
there is a certain thing that draws me to a work of
art,” he says. “It’s not so easily identifiable, so I call it
truth. I see some truth even in children’s and abstract
art; it is an intangible thing that gets communicated
from the artist to the viewer. Since we’ve been in
this area, I’ve started selling and exhibiting and I get
people who say that it speaks to them, they like it
for the same reason I do, they know what I’m trying
to say. It is such a satisfying and profound moment
when people see whatever this intangible thing is. It
makes me really happy.”
In many ways, Schaefer is just getting started.
While he has been an artist his whole life, it is only
in recent years that he has been able to devote the
time he would like to his evolving style and practice.
The trajectory and evolution of his recent body
of work reveals a painter for whom art is life, whose
images are full of energy, life and passion. A pur-suit
of truth and beauty is immediately apparent
in Schaefer’s works. Featuring bold colors, heavy-handed
lines and planes, complex compositions,
and traces of the welcoming, enthusiastic person
behind them, the artist’s paintings catch the eye
and captivate the mind.