Linnea Lenkus, curator at Linus Galleries, is a photographer at her core. As a result, she constantly has an artist’s eye on the world. Meeting new artists almost every two months, Linnea decided it would be perfect to document the experience with her photography. She asked artists that would be attending the show if they would be willing to take a portrait picture for her project. The artists graciously obliged and the result is the following series of portraits by Linnea Lenkus. Below you will find a few words on today’s featured artist, Carlos Grasso.
Artist Carlos Grasso was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina and now lives and works in Ojai, California. He studied music, graphic arts and painting in Buenos Aires, Paris and Los Angeles. His multi-faceted creative career began as a professional flute player in Paris starting in the late 70’s and 80’s eventually transitioning into graphic design and fine arts. His painting apprenticeship started with still life and portraiture in the classical realistic style. Later on, his artwork evolved into pure abstraction, sometimes incorporating figurative elements within the abstraction aiming to create an interesting and new visual field of experience with the interpolation of these two worlds.
Grasso’s paintings are an intriguing mixture of abstract minimalism and geometrical configuration that engage the viewer’s visual cortex as well as their intellect. The viewer’s attention is engaged with recognizable forms that dissipate into a vast void of space intriguing the mind on an emotional and intellectual level. Within his various series Grasso tends to be playful but will also be serious at times. In each painting he plumbs the depths of human emotion with whimsical humor and endeavors to prevent his skill from overwhelming what he is trying to express and how expressive he’s trying to be.
Carlos’ work has been featured in several magazines, represented by many galleries throughout the USA and is part of private collections in the US, Brazil, and France.
