August 2011
The European JAF Magazine (Journalism, Art , Film) launched with me as their first featured artist. It’s my first feature article as well and was written by the marvelously talented Sid Cocain. His insights were revelatory and I can’t thank him enough for his wonderful work! Thanks Sid, you’re a stand up gent!
The Shattering, 24"x48" Egg tempera, oil and ground glass on board
THIS IS LAZARUS NAZARIO
The Magical Reality of Lazarus Nazario Written by Sid Cocain- JAF Magazine Issue One 2011
Sometimes you have to work hard to subject an article. Finding someone or something that inspires you enough that you can think of little else, that you need to write about at all costs and to hell with the consequences, that you can spend hours and hours chasing and researching to reach that end product you don’t so much visualize in your imagination, but feel deep within your heart. It’s like discovering the secret of alchemy, committing a great escape and falling in love all at once.
On the flip side, sometimes those subjects sneak up to you from behind, and you are casually unaware of their presence until tight hands grasp your head and you collapse backwards, airways plunged into a depth of sweet pungency and your mind makes that grim connection: chloroform. You’re already drifting off into an empty fear-laden sleep. Waking up later with no sense of the time that’s past, and looming over you is the subject with a knowing smile, knowing you cannot escape from it. This is how it happened with Lazarus.
The day I met Lazarus was full of average adjectives, and I wasn’t particularly looking for a new project as I already had deadlines up to my eyeballs and my imagination was running on fumes. As such things occur however, distraction was the dish of the day and I found myself stumbling onto Twitter. Scoping some new followers that a very good friend had recommended. One of them was @LazarusNazario. Her profile mentioned her being an artist and being curious of nature, I clicked to her website.
I had found another project.
Conducting communications from 3652 miles away must be a thoroughbred example of the miracles technology can bring, with Lazarus based in New Jersey and myself bunkered down in Amsterdam, waiting for the revolution to happen. Lazarus Nazario hails from Staten Island, studying at National Academy of Design School of Fine Arts as well as the Art Students League and the School of Visual Arts, New York City.
The ritualistic beauty of her Puerto Rican heritage encourages her escape of expression and yet her ability to inspire pieces with instantly relatable realism within a dreamlike condition of clarity has us asking questions of the composition and it’s precluding events. Each piece speaks to us almost as much as we wish to speak with it.
Photo/Styling Nikki Jumper H/Jennifer McGovern MU/Hannah Stockton
Her subjects are contemporary however her medium is expressed in the classical. Her oil paintings remarkably capture vivid, sometimes vitriolic scenes of modern society and harken to imprisoned feelings. Lazarus brings these scenes to us with an under-lying tenacity in her palette, displaying a flair for the dramatic in the strokes of her brush with a whisper of something Frida Khalo in her color and scape. There is another unfortunate similarity to the great Frida that I was to find out later.
Her canvas are the objects that she finds throughout her life. ‘I love the history that can come with a found object. That feeling of either years of neglect or devotion in finding something junky or something very beautiful.’
‘I generally try not to get something that I don’t already have a purpose for, …but I end up getting all kinds of unnecessary stuff anyway!’
Lazarus has utilized discarded doors and other paraphernalia to extenuate the voice behind each piece, which adds a unique dimension to her work and connecting the viewer with her world in a way lily-white canvas tends not to yield.
‘Old wooden doors are akin to the wooden panels that artisans would use to create altarpieces for centuries, so for me it’s a contemporary version of that. An aged piece of wood has gone through most of it’s warping already. So shutters, cabbage cutters, old boxes, tools, all kinds o’ stuff. If it speaks to me I get it. That way I don’t get bored.’
There was no pun intended. And with inspiration being the sister of necessity, sometimes the object precludes the work:
‘I’ve had an idea in my head about a painting and then suddenly found what I needed to paint it on. But also there’ve been times that I just really liked the object and knew if it sat in my studio something would find it’s way onto it.’
Nightmare of Fallujah, Oil on board with found object.
Her Nightmare of Fallujah is a fine example, within worn wood walls an Arabic man wails with pain, but what we cannot tell is why. The consolatory hand on his shoulder would suggest the loss of a loved one, perhaps a wife or a son, while the brown background blur within the ethers could be the owner of the hand with their face in their other. Or perhaps the figure is a victim of violence himself, be it a bullet or other premeditated method. The thin spatters of blood would seem to insinuate the latter through equally suit the former interpretation. The ethereal quality surrounding the man makes it difficult to know for sure.
Tremors from my own feelings on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan colour my perception of this painting, and it is on these personal levels that Lazarus’s work makes a personal connection with us, and involves us in their message.
‘I keep up with current events, especially the Iraq war. I prowled sites for images of what was really happening out there and it was horrific. So much that I began having nightmares that I was in Fallujah. One in particular left me breathless upon waking, and that nightmare fueled the piece. To some it looks like an icon painting which makes sense to me.’
Nightmare of Fallujah has earned distinction as one of Lazarus’s signature pieces, being chosen by Peter Selz Professor Emeritus of Art History at the University of California of Berkley to be included in a show called Visual Politics: Art & the American Experience in Santa Cruz, CA. It was also part of the exhibition Learn Promote Defend by the Center for Civil Human Rights Partnership, held in conjunction of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Atlanta, Georgia. It also hung in Lazarus’s own show , Full Disclosure in the aptly named Show gallery in New York city.
Cop- Out, 20" x 16", Oil and acrylic on board
Almost polar opposite in subject is Cop-Out:
‘I’m really getting into pop surrealism these days. Mashing up recognizable ads with dreamy imagery and tweeking them with a new message. The funny thing about Cop-Out is the way it came to me. I was on my way to Govenors Island (a small island off the tip of Manhattan) for the first time that it had been opened to the public when I saw a guy carrying some folded up Coca-Cola boxes crossing the street.’
‘It looked to me like it said Cop-Out instead and that made me laugh! I thought how perfect! That’s exactly what happens when you believe all the advertisements we get fed on a daily basis. You essentially cop-out or opt-out…of life!’
It seems to almost mock the popular Street Art scene, a scene that has since jumped from the tall commercial tower it had climbed, leaving only a black hooded sweater over an ugly smear of red. In this respect Cop-Out appeals as a mockery of a mockery. The infamous invasive red and cocky font of Coca-Cola and a falling figure, perhaps a skateboarder or dancer performing their skill and passion for the sale of a soft drink.
‘I love that it looks like an enormous light up billboard with someone about to break it! People aren’t thinking for themselves. Read the labels. What’s in it? Where did it come from? Wake up. Zero Cop-Out….Fuck Cop-Out I say! Viva La Revolucion!!’
Truly a woman after my own heart.
Screengrab, Egg tempera, oil and ground glass on board
Following on from Cop-Out are 2 powerful pieces that particularly appealed to me, Screen Grab and The Shattering. Both translated to me orally fixated violent pain which demonstrates the primal fear of voicing unpopular opinions in today’s society where freedom of speech can rarely be realised to it’s true extent:
‘Screen Grab and The Shattering are deeply personal paintings; besides depicting a female suicide bomber, they’re also self portraits from an emotional perspective.’
Lazarus tells me of the grant she was awarded from the George Sugarman Foundation for a series about the Iraq war. While exploring the concept of a female suicide bomber, Lazarus had also been to see a fertility doctor:
‘I was told I had a 20% chance of conception even with IVF, after years of trying. The images of this young woman whose mission was thwarted despite her dream to become a martyr converged with my own fading dream of motherhood. I began to really understand how Frida Kahlo felt when she couldn’t conceive, and how that fueled her work. I went into my studio with an all bets are off attitude that I don’t think I’d explored before. Painting became ALL that I would leave behind. Painting felt different. The world somehow changed, when really it was just my perspective. Now that I was ready I couldn’t get pregnant. I get Frida on a much more personal level now.’
Lazarus is working on the final painting, forming a triptych that Lazarus calls part of her Underground Black Market Devotional Propaganda:
‘Once you call something a devotional image you can make it as graphic as you want in the name of that devotion. Similar to those bleeding Jesus paintings in Mexico or the work of Hieronymous Bosch!
The Shattering was chosen by the journalist Morly Safer to be in a show called In the News at the Pen & Brush Gallery, New York City.
Aparecido appears as a large scale retablo; Latin American devotional painting giving thanks for getting through a particular episode. It has a dream like quality, mistily morphing from a snapshot scene of a child on a beach that may be seeing the last of the good weather, with seas beginning to toil and clouds beginning to form. A trinity of pomegranates congregate at the forefront and what may be a whale, disturbed by ocean spray, lingers within eye shot. As the spray mingles with the clouds it forms a borealis of a male with a hollow in his chest, displaying an oversized yet unconnected heart. Above him a ribbon flutters like a reapers sythe.
Lazarus went on to tell me of this particular inspiration, from photographer Jack Delano:
‘He was taking photographs of the people in Puerto Rico in 1941, the year and place my mother was born. I found his work while researching my ancestry and was so struck by these photos that a few of my paintings take their riffs from them. It represents the burning away of idles and the exalting of the human heart/spirit itself. They’re my ‘residual memory time lines’ I string together images that resonate with me to tell my story visually.’
Aparecido won first prize for portraiture at the National Academy of Design School of Fine Arts and was also featured in a show at the National Arts Club in New York City. The works of Lazarus also feature within several prominent collections. Dennis Rivera, president of the NY SEIU and Joshua White, renowned light and installation artist, are 2 noted examples of her sponsors.
Lazarus is currently working on a large scale pop surrealism / magical realism altarpiece entitled Momento Critico: The Altarpiece Project. Made possible in part by an Original Work Grant from the New York State Council for the Arts and the Council for the Art & Humanities of Staten Island, NY. Lazarus has her new website and online exhibition space, www.lazarusd.com. This goes live in April and JAF will bring you more of Lazarus, with the exclusive first peek of her forthcoming additions to the Brand Name and Devotional Image series.
Yours digitally,
Sid Cocain
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