Los Angeles Artist Torkaz, Los Angeles Artists Directory on artlanow

Rob Tokarz is a production designer and fine artist who has worked as a scenic designer in many TV, movie and theater sets in the Los Angeles entertainment industry. e has published a book called “Fixations,” a collection of his paintings from 2007-2008 which includes selections from his sketchbook and a chapter outlining his unique painting process.

In life drawing classes we're taught to reduce the body into shape and shadow, form and line, negative and positive spaces. The figure becomes merely a still life vase or a landscape, a mere design element. A way to break up the space of a page or a canvas stretched so thin and pushed and pulled as loosely and haphazardly as paint drips. Bah. Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. The reduction of people into lines and shapes may be what drawing can be essentially, but it's not an approach that should be accepted. This strips down the humanity of an individual, simmers it in some olive oil, and serves it over angel hair pasta to be consumed to the passive delight of a paying customer. While my work takes into consideration the formal approach of figure drawing, it uses it only as a means to an end, the end being to find again the lifeblood of a person. My paintings center on the individual. My focus becomes the people I paint. The brushstroke allowed to pull out the individuality of a life and the subtlety of a personality rather than merely the way a shadow shapes a cheek.

Still no work exists in a vacuum, mine not being an exception. My work is very much a product of the past pavers of the painting path. My passion for verve and variety stems much from the line and color work of Picasso and Matisse. My search deep into the eyes of the figures of Egon Schiele's work is a strong source of my desire to maintain an effective lock with the eyes of my models, even when they're turned away. More contemporarily there is the amusing portraiture and figure work of John Currin and expressive style of Jenny Saville. There are countless other elements of the world that are absorbed into my world. From the people I meet in my travels, to the movies I watch, the theatre I see, the life I lead. Every scrap of my brief existence finds a way onto my canvas.

California Institute of the Arts (Valencia, CA) –MFA Scenic Painting (Graduation May 2009)

Bradley University (Peoria, IL) B.S. Painting & Graphic Design; Minor Business & Multimedia 2006

* None of the artworks may be copied or reproduced without the written permission of the Artist