Best In Show

My painting BREATHARIAN recently won Best in Show at NASFIC15 - the North American Science Fiction Convention which was held in Winnipeg, Canada this past July.

Pasternak iS UNFOLDING

Hope you can make it out. It'll be a doozy!

DEC 3rd - 28th

FIRST FRIDAY  DEC 6th   OPENING RECEPTION

5:30 - 9:00

Multifaceted Winnipeg artist Robert Pasternak is UNFOLDING in an exhibit of a diverse and fun packed exploration of new work and discoveries at Fleet Galleries, 65 Albert Street, December 3rd-28th, with an opening reception on First Friday December 6th, 5:30pm-9pm.

This curated "group show of one" celebrates Robert's unique diversity in both subject matter and styles under the theme of unfolding. Through a lyrical, metaphysical and literal sensibility, robert culls together a sampling of studio work of surreal paintings, abstract comics, geometric drawings, novelty packaging and sculptural effects.

PAINTING In VIRTUAL REALITY with the WSO

Get Your Crazy Goggles on

because I'll have mine

Project Whitecard
     presents 
Robert Pasternak in 3D in front of the WSO !

Performing / Creating / Live Imagery in VIRTUAL REALITY to a New Music Composition - Migration Patterns by Christos Hatzis

Saturday - January 28th - 7:30pm  (second half approx. 8:30pm)  Tickets $25

Centennial Concert Hall

CHRISTOS HATZIS,  Composer

www.hatzis.com

ROBERT PASTERNAK, Visual Artist

www.robertpasternak.net

Robert Pasternak (NAK) Visual Artist, father, illustrator, graphic designer, novelty product inventor / manufacturer and filmmaker, spanning the themes of the cosmic, surreal, technological, metaphysical and what it means to be human. He has been creating and exhibiting his art in Winnipeg for almost 40 years. His science fiction illustrations have appeared on Amazing Stories and On Spec magazine, on book covers for Guy Vanderhague and Timothy Findley. In 1994 he won the Aurora award in Canadian Sci-Fi art. His short films have played all over the world, with his first experimental short The Affirmation Of Jimmy Brown being selected for the Venice Film Festival in 2004. In 2012 The Wonderful Worlds of Nak , a documentary by Patric Lowe was produced by MTS. In 2015 he performed on stage alongside his daughter Zorya Arrow in her choreographed  theatrical alt-dance Genetics Project. Also in 2015 The Pasternak Award was formed in his honor by the Central Canada Comics Convention (C4) to be given annually to a local Winnipeg Artist who has given back to the community.

Khal Shariff, Creative Director, CEO of Project Whitecard Inc.

www.projectwhitecard.com

Project Whitecard Inc., is an award-winning creative & technical talent. A much-sought-after speaker at industry and forward-looking events, such as the NASA Virtual Worlds Workshop, Khal Shariff is a MacArthur Foundation recipient for his work in Digital Education as a Primary Investigator through the University of California Irvine. Khal Shariff is an alumni of the Banff Center and includes the Canadian Space Agency and NASA as recent collaborators, for whom Project Whitecard has built several 3D immersive learning environments

BLAM!

COMIC ART SHOW OPENING

***************************

Please Join me at the opening this Saturday October 26th at Cre8ery Gallery for a fun-filled evening of comic book mayhem. I will be exhibiting some of my recent comic strips from my Meanwhile... series which will also include some oversized art panels. There are many talented artists in this show who will stretch and twist your imagination into the PoP Comic Book Culture. You can find more info here at Cre8ery .  This is the third installment of BLAM curated by Justin Waterman.

Featuring Artists: Kari-Ann Anderson, Colin Bell, Mark Humphrey, Donovan Yaciuck,

Evan Quiring, Justin Waterman, Victoria Free, Nicholas Burns, Justin Shauf,

Nick Iskierski, Michael Joyal, Robert Pasternak, Chech Abstract

Make up: John R. Izzard

 Poster art by Evan Quiring

Meanwhile... No.7 - 2013 - R.Pasternak

Detail from Justin Waterman's BLAM painting from first Blam Exhibit

From Jungle to Jungle

1981, acrylic on illustration board, 20 x 30 inches, (top part is cut off)

Another 30 Year post for your retro pleasure. This is my 5th painting. ( you can see the first four in my May 2011 post ) As my first four paintings were done while finishing high school, this painting was done in a summer limbo period before an unknown future of not going back to school and not having a job. One can see some obvious influences such as a Frazetta, Whelan or Boris setting and the use of a Kull or Krull figure from a comic magazine Bizarre Adventures #26. I thought at the time I had quite an original idea with the juxtaposition of the two different worlds, a theme that would be prevalent in many future work. Wait a sec, It already has been prevelant in my previous three paintings. Funny. I remember feeling really at home painting the buildings without any reference, but I was stumped by how to paint the vegetation. To this day I still really like this one, though I cringe a little bit for the swipes of reference. Hey, I was only 17. I am amazed that I kept track of how long it took me to paint the different parts of the painting and how long I spent on preliminary drawings etc. In total, 63 hours.    

WIDE OPEN SPACES

30 YEARS OF PAINTING!

Wide Open Spaces May 1981, 24" x 26", acrylic on canvas

This month 30 years ago I was just finishing up High School at West Kildonan Collegiate when I painted the above work. Nobody at school ever really saw my work nor did I ever really show it. In my last half of grade 12 I only had half a day of school. I suppose I spent some of that free time doing art at home or at the Forum Art Institute. No sooner than I finished the painting a dentist by the name of Dr. Sidney Fleisher bought it for 150 bucks. He had lent me a set of teeth for reference after not being able to find an illustrative brochure with a perfect set for me to draw upon. So he said when I had the painting done and upon returning the teeth he wanted to see it. He had a hundred paintings up in his practice making it an alright place to get dental work done.

So now I will show you the three paintings that came before Wide Open Spaces.

Communicative Travel November 1980, 20" x 20", acrylic on paper canvas

This is my first painting I did while my brother and I enrolled in painting classes at the Forum Art Institute under the tutelage of Nickola Bejelejac in the old CPR Station building. What a place that was! Everyone was was twice our age or older. Some were really old by our perspective and have been painting there for years. But boy could some of these folks paint. And there were all sorts too from smooth surrealism by Dan Gregg (one of my favorites) or the rich impasto scenes or the organic flows from a syringe needle by Vicki McBain.  This wasn't really a place to learn to paint as much as it was a place to hang out to paint. I learnt by watching everyone. Yes the instructor had lessons if you wanted or cared, or you just went on your own pace and Nick was there to question and guide you to a finished work. You could not sign a piece until he said so. That's funny.

This first painting was made from a first assignment which my brother and I both thought was pretty cool. It consisted of drawing a series of four squares then adding various lines in each one to divide the space. We then chose our favorite, put it aside, then added more lines to the remaining three squares. Then once again choosing our favorite and putting it aside and continuing to add more lines in the two left and so on until you were left with four drawings you liked. Then you colored them going through this same method of pleasing elimination. So by the end you had four colored drawings that you liked. But now, you had to choose one and do a painting of it. 

But how do you paint? Nobody showed us. You had to figure it out for yourself. If this first painting was going to be a jumping in the deep end learning experience, then I though if I was going to learn something I would give myself a challenge and try to think about the various ways that I could possibly do shading with acrylic paint. Earlier on when I was working with grahite, it was really important for me to know how to shade to give objects a 3 dimensional quality, so I wanted to learn to do this with paint. In this one painting I tried three different blending styles. Wet on wet, thinning with water and dry brushing. I liked dry brushing the most and is the method I would mostly use in years to come.

   

Metal Stones December 1980, 24" x 36" acrylic on canvas

This is my second painting finished just before my 17th birthday. I still really like it! I had been interested in science fiction, fantasy, surrealism and architecture so I guess it kind of got all rolled into this one. I saw a picture of the ruined buildings in a National Geographic magazine and it really sparked the idea. From old to new and having the juxtaposition of the architectures.

 

Hope For One April 1981, 20" x 30", acrylic on illustration board

This is my third painting. I was really quite a loner in school and pretty quiet to. Though my friend Sam was always around and tried to crack my multiple shells I pretty much kept to myself and my thoughts. It was always the end for me in many ways and I suppose this painting illustrates this inner feeling of isolation and of being trapped and held onto, of being at the end of my rope or at the end of the world. I suppose that if I was going to be stuck here, there was still hope for my spirit. "Your spirit shall set you free." One of the first artists that I loved and felt a connection to was Roger Dean of Yes album cover art fame. I had his first book called Views and I loved it, I loved it, I loved it. There is some of him in the rocks and land.   

Envious portrait of the Ages

     Since my last post I had become nostalgic for the paintings of my youth in the time period of 83 - 85  and found myself viewing my these paintings in my binders and remembering all the ideas that I had that I would still like to produce on canvas. Often times I will have an idea for a whole series of work then paint only one of them and go onto something else. Then in time I might come back to that series. Others will never come back to and they remain as single entities. My goodness I liked color!...... and what is with all the green skin? I do know what's up with the hands. They are all mine and to this day are still prominent in my work.

 

AGES . 1984 . acrylic on canvas . 48 x 86 inches . (self portrait)

 

Hi . 1983 . acrylic on canvas . 34 x 40 inches . (self portrait)

Painting For Sale

TREE OF ENVY  .  $3,000  .  acrylic on canvas  .  24 x 26 inches  .  1985  .   framed

I am looking to sell this painting of mine for the current owner who had originally purchased it in 1985 which is also the year in which it was painted when I had a studio at Forum Art Institute in the old CPR Station building.

When I saw the painting again I was struck by it's size and vibrancy of color. The photo I had been viewing all these years certainly was not as bright and I had become accustomed to the darker image. So it was nice to be shaken out of my mist. Pure bright color was a staple of a lot of my work in the 80's, pretty much all of the rainbow colors in  one painting, but I seemed to have had a kNak to combine and blend them in a way as not to be garish I was told once. 

When I took a photo in B & W I was surprised at the melding of the foreground tree with the background sky and this combined with the shapes in the sky was like a memory of seeing nature on magic mushrooms. So no need to take it when you've got the painting.

Ring or e-mail me if your interested. (shipping included)   nak@mts.net   or   204.956.7675