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Charles Wish and Surregionalism Unbound

Born in Los Angeles (1971) as Frederick Charles Peters and raised in the San Fernando Valley area, Charles Wish began his artistic journey as the child of divorced parents, exploring both the cornfields and music subcultures of Van Nuys.  Following a serious bicycling accident at age thirteen, Wish endured brain surgery coupled with a long recovery, later completing high school in 1989.  He received his Bachelors of Fine Arts (BFA) in painting and visual arts from the University of Arizona, Tucson (1993) after transferring from Pierce College in Woodland Hills, California.  Six years passed in a series of jobs to pay student loans; in late 1994, the artist began his informal studies of the regionalists, immediately noticing similarities in the works of Christo Javacheff, Grant Wood, and Tibetan art.  During 1995-1998, while employed at a Los Angeles-based screen printing company, Wish worked on a single, large painting that set the early tones for his later work.  He corresponded with monks at the Ramakrishna Monastery in Trabuco County, attended lectures, and took Sanskrit classes, continually expanding his knowledge of Tantric Buddhism, Indian history, and Hindu thought. 

Unable to find a graduate art program to meet his unique interests in regionalism and Asian art, Wish agreed to stay at the monastery as an extended guest worker, first employed as primary caregiver to the aging parents of the senior, American swami (1997-1999).  A second job opportunity arose in 2001, that of personal assistant to the head of the Vedanta Society of Southern California, Swami Swahananda.  Wish accepted the position, managing the Swami's daily affairs while handling larger, hospitality demands for the monastery.  He continued with his religious instruction, actively meditated, designed several book jackets, and won an international illustration award.  After roughly thirty months in this demanding job, Wish left the monastery in 2003, and then launched his formal life as a professional artist. 

A core of Wish's significant paintings pair South Asian religious symbols with classic Americana or seminal works associated with Grant Wood or Thomas Hart Benton.  The Asian tradition of infusing landscapes with rolling lines, color, and shading was first proposed in landmark art instruction texts by Arthur Wesley Dow (1899), founder of the arts and crafts movement.  Both Wood and Benton would have been highly familiar with Dow's theories and techniques; each man would later immortalize common Midwestern scenes, celebrating the beauty of local people and environments, rising to become leaders of the American regionalist art movement.  As boundaries for world cultures have dissolved, Wish capitalizes on the reality that every culture has been affected and changed by outside influence; the common ground of modern man is to harmonize multiple cultures, to essentially create his own individuality from an infinite repository of choices.  For Wood, Midwestern (and American) culture divined its power from the lives of ordinary men; for Wish, blending Asian motifs with American ideals creates a universal culture, a Promethean effect blending time and space.

Wish's impetus in leaving the monastery, the visions of Tantric goddesses having intense relationships with regionalist landscapes, manifested itself in the mid 1990s.  The two distinct schools of thought are described by the artist as "the dominating characters in my conflicted, visual vocabulary."  Even as they seem diametrically opposed, Wish pairs South Asian themes evoking infinite possibilities, mystery, and chance, with provincial scenes embracing cultural preservation and long-standing tradition.  The cumulative effect, for both the artist and the viewer, results in an inclusive approach, seeking the substantial essence in everything until only the divine remains.  For Wish, all elements are worthy of exploration and use in his artistic efforts to address cross-cultural individuality and existentialism. 

A series of 2004-2005 exhibitions in Hollywood, California (Alternative Space) and in Culver City, California (Copro Gallery) mark the genesis of Wish's professional success.  His first solo show at the C-Pop Gallery in Detroit, Michigan (2005) garnered much critical attention, with his method described as surregionalism by the gallery's founder, Rick Manore.  Represented by L'Imagerie Gallery in Studio City, California and married to Abbigail Cooke, Wish maintains a private studio and recently purchased a northwestern Pennsylvania schoolhouse that will be restored and converted into summer art colony and retreat space.  

Kristy Raine 
Reference Librarian and Archivist,
Mount Mercy College

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