GEORGE STRASBURGER Tucson, Arizona, US

Meet George Strasburger September 7, 2023 We caught up with the brilliant and insightful George Strasburger a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below. Hi George, thanks for joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on? My projects, as a painter, are self chosen. Although each individual painting is a unique project, I would characterize groups of paintings as projects as well. My motivations are usually personal, perhaps having to do with a particular skill set I want to acquire or a scene I encounter in my city. For example, one painting in particular is “Two Men on a Trail”. In this case there was a famous historical painting I want to emulate which inspired me. After I started work, the recent earthquake in Turkey occurred which further inspired my subject. I’m often prodded my current events. Each painting seems to be “my most meaningful” as it happens. George, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do? Artists have a unique vocation, such that at least for me, my motivations are unrelated to clients, but come from a place of personal expression. It’s a luxury to be able to work in this relatively autonomous manner. My artistic efforts began at age 5, trying to draw portraits of baseball players! lol. Probably my first exposure to art was the murals in the Catholic church I attended daily as a child. I would spend my time there admiring the art and envisioning myself painting such things. Being an artist was my goal from that age. What sets me apart from some established artists is the uniqueness of my vision, being a “figurative realist” with a classical style and a philosophical message. My clients are few and select and they are usually moved by my style that they don’t often see in other artists’ work. We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey. Resilience is IMO my most valuable character trait. I think that most people in the creative field need a strong belief in themselves. This trait I didn’t always possess. While I tried to persevere in my art, I honestly didn’t think that it was good enough or smart enough . It was mostly a confidence issue. As a result, I spent many years pursuing other vocations. I was a musician, a gardener, service worker among many other jobs. I always held onto the dream of being an artist and would return to it again. It wasn’t until I was in my 50s that I finally seized the confidence to believe in myself that I needed. That realization made me that artist that I’d always hoped to be. Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey? My mission and my goal is simply to continue to create. Besides the process of painting which has it’s own mission, my goal is to expose people to my work. This involves reaching out to people and possible venues where I can, as I jokingly put it, “spread the good news” of my efforts. This is actually a fun and gratifying part of my job, My successes in that feed further efforts for that as well. The direction of my work is unknown at first, and seems to reveal itself as my work amasses and I can look back on it. www.aglutinart.blogspot.com

DUONG XUAN QUYEN 1987 Vietnam

Born in the Son Duong district of Vietnam in 1987, Dương Xuân Quyền is an artist and educator currently working at Tan Trao University in Tuyen Quang, Vietnam. He is a graduate of the Fine Arts Program at the Hanoi National University of Education. Dương Xuân Quyền works in the Vietnamese tradition of carved-woodblock printing on black paper as a familiar way to express the contemporary issue of gay relationships to the public. Having produced the initial print work, Quyền then enriches the image with colors from acrylic or oil paints. His current work contains images of male couples as well as lush, tropical scenes of natural habitat. From 2011 to 2015, Quyền regularly participated in the Northwest-Viet Bac Exhibition, one of the seven regional contemporary art exhibitions in the country. He also organized a 2015 group exhibition entitled “Sac Autumn” at Hanoi’s Exhibition Hall 16 in Ngo Quyen. Dương Xuân Quyền had his first solo exhibition in 2017 entitled “Love People of the Same Sex”, a collection consisting of twenty-two paintings and embellished wood-carved etchings on paper. In his work, he used tropical foliage and water taro leaves as the background for his presentations of male couples in romantic poses. In 2020, Quyền won the Third-Place Prize at the Northwestern Fine Arts Exhibition-Region III exhibition for his series “Delayed Appointment I,II,III”. In 2021, he again entered the same exhibition and won another Third-Place Prize, this time for his series “My Side Tells Stories About the Days Apart I, II, III”. Quyền’s second solo exhibition was held in Hanoi in 2022 and entitled “Vertical Flowers”. The show consisted of twenty-eight, large oil and acrylic paintings which depicted Duoc Mung leaves, a native plant well-known to the public. Insert Image: Dương Xuân Quyền, “Awakening Lovers”, 2020, Oil on Canvas, 80 x 100 cm, Private Collection www.aglutinart.blogspot.com