Born in Boulder Colorado in 1953, John Wotipka has spent his whole life pursuing art in one form or another, even when it meant supporting himself as a construction worker or bicycle messenger. The creation of art has always been a matter of necessity rather than choice for Wotipka. His paintings turn traditional landscapes upside down by creating a menagerie of the unexpected and unusual. "I admire the absurd," Wotipka emphasizes, "the paradoxical element that reveals the ambivalent, manic depressive nature of life." Taking inspiration from the Surrealists, Fantastic Realists, and Dadaists, Wotipka's art contains enigmatic figures that both reflect their landscape and are ostracized by it. The smooth flesh of their bodies portrays an innocence contorted and plagued by the environment around them. The faces reveal a knowledge of the extremes of both purity and horror. Wotipka has a passion for details in his work, and is meticulous and methodical in his approach to his art, using patience and technical skill to accumulate the proper intensity for the colors and expressions in his oil paintings. Like a Peter Greenaway film, the exalted and the repulsive are thrown into a disturbing mix, and as one seeks to separate them, the continuity of the whole asserts itself. Wotipka asserts that his art is not constrained by any group definition... it's in a category all its own.

John Wotipka's work has been exhibited in many group and one-man exhibitions throughout Colorado and California, and he has been published in Heavy Metal magazine. A San Francisco gallery show is currently being planned for April 1996. Please call ARA at 415 775-0709 to be placed on the mailing list or for further information.
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