Bash, as he is affectionately - and ironically - known to his friends, has never pulled a punch in his life - not at least, when it comes to his art. Whether he is evoking the beauty of his native environment or the poignance of an expression, capturing the essence of an individual or the signposts of a culture, or wryly satirizing some of our modern - and perennial - obsessions and insanities, his artistic vision cuts to the heart of the matter - even if radical surgery is required to accomplish it. All of his artistic strategy and skill is directed toward making you feel what he has to say. Which is as it should be, since Bash - the artist and individual - says what he feels. This is an eye who looks at the world a little closer than most, sometimes applauding, sometimes lifting the rug of our fragile facades to reveal what we have swept beneath it, willingly or not. On the whole, he manages to successfully escape easy classification. He is neither the follower of any particular "school" of artistic though nor the guru of a new one. His art is his personal medium of communication to the rest of humanity, though the code necessary to interpret it is as the artist intended may sometimes be equally as personal. Both great and small are captured by his brush, in what ever light he sees them. The genuine he memorializes; the hypocritical facade he crucifies. Even his own image is portrayed both ways.

He is neither a pessimist nor an optimist, for his eye sees that the whole world contains both the laudable and the detestable, and that the fate of the future is still waiting for us to decide it. Born in Culver City, California in 1946, Bash began drawing and painting as a child, and like many young boys in the 1950's, he built models, and read comics, science fiction and hot rod magazines. He Imagined that one day he might become a cartoonist, automobile designer or science fiction artist, but Bash's visionary journey to become a serious fine artist did not truly begin until shortly after a close encounter with the military of the Vietnam era opened his eyes to some of the insanities that to many of us call normal. The eye, once opened, never allowed itself to close again.       Steven Reed Porter

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VISIT ARTIST: Kevin Beeson | Jesse Clark

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