Ian Summers

Ian Summers’ Manifesto
In the Manner of Claes Oldenburg

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I am for an art of memories that are chips and fragments, but not nostalgic. Life lived gathering experiences and images that are searching for meaning and connections. Faces conjured forming associations with people living and dead, with persons who may never have lived anywhere but in my mind. Conjured faces.
I am for faces buried for over fifty years or more guessing how I knew them. Faces haunt me in my sleep and when I am awake.

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I am for seas of people on the streets of New York. I am for remembering everyone I have ever met. I am for the rags and bones of my childhood – encountering legends and myths from the moment I broke my first Crayola to my last drip of acrylic paint splashing and peeling it from my toenails.

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I am for not knowing where I am going until the painting wheezes and whines until I alter the course.

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I am for art on tar paper that bleeds and bubbles and smells and ghosts and is unpredictable as life itself.

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I am for projects that respond to life like when I spent three months – mesmerized in front of a television set watching the aftermath of 9/11. Faces flashed for nanoseconds. I tried to paint every ...

University of Bridgeport BA Fine Art 1962

New York University, Painting 1968

Montclair College - Graduate School - Fine Art

Recent shows include Santa Bannon Fine Art Gallery, Bethlehem. PA. Banana Factory, Bethlhem, PA. Pomfret Club, Easton, PA. Oxygen 2 Gallery, Minneapolis MN, Transformation Gallery, Amherst MA, Project Blue, Easton PA, Banana Factory, Bethlehem PA, Keyes Gallery, Springfield MO, and Gallery Aferro, Newark NJ. .Summers work has been exhibited at Silvermine Artists’ Guild, National Arts Club, University of Bridgeport, University of Pennsylvania, Arthur Ross Gallery, Montclair College, Lillian Kornbluth Gallery, National Academy of Design, Society of Illustrators, Leber Katz Partners, Random House, The Creative Black Book, Audubon Painters, Cornell Club, Pfaffman Gallery, and NYU.

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His most recent solo show All the Presidents, Men was exhibited at the Pomfret Club Gallery in Easton PA (October 2015) and included 32 portraits of American Presidents up to but not including George W. Bush.