Gary Faigin

Imagination is central to the painterly vision of Gary Faigin. His paintings combine elements depicted from observation with features that are simply invented, and the tension between these two ways of seeing creates a highly-charged visual drama. The illusory nature of reality is a recurring theme – things are not what they seem. Still lives are not still, space is laden with ambiguity, and an overall mood of anticipation or disruption often prevails. Underlying the narrative works are studies from life, never directly referred to but supplying the foundation of his visual vocabulary. In Faigin’s Concentrated series, lined-up, objects seem to extend further outwards as they go back in space, like a time-lapse photograph of a blossoming flower, or a growing tree. Everything is compressed visually, creating a sort of kinetic energy that also animates the imaginary city beyond.

Gary Faigin, co-Founder and Artistic Director of Gage Academy of Art in Seattle, trained at the Art Students League of New York and at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in Paris.

While living in New York (1976-1991), Faigin taught figure drawing upon the retirement of his teacher, Robert Beverly Hale, at the Art Students League, a program he presented continuously over the next decade. Concurrently, he taught Perspective and Portrait Drawing at the newly founded New York Academy of Art, the National Academy School of Design, the School of Visual Art and Parsons School of Design.

Faigin has exhibited widely with solo exhibitions in Seattle and Santa Fe, including a retrospective of his work at Seattle’s Frye Art Museum and the Coos Museum of Art in Oregon. A master of drawing and painting, his images typically explore his two favorite themes: altering one’s perception of the commonplace and developing mood through intense contrasts of light and dark.

As a promoter and observer of historic and contemporary art in the Northwest, Faigin serves on the Board of Director of the newly-opened Cascadia Art Museum in Edmonds and reviews regional museum and gallery exhibits as the Seattle Times guest art critic.