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Andrea Rushing (right) and his Take a Bite painting
But eight months ago, Rushing made some major changes. He closed his gallery, quit teaching at SDAD and opened his own school and gallery, Andrea Rushing Academy of Art (rushingadacemy.com) at 3535 Adams Avenue in Normal Heights.
“We sold a lot of Andrea Rushings and other paintings out of that gallery,” Rushing recalls. “But the downside of Ray Street is it’s a one-way street and you don’t get many people walking by…. And when I left the academy, most of my students came with me. So, I really did have a ready-built school. All I had to do was find a building.”
Rushing’s new digs are nice—high ceilings and lots of wall space for his large-scale work, plus the work of some of his students.
“Take a Bite,” Rushing’s painting on the cover of this week’s CityBeat, is a piece he did for the San Diego Undead zombie-themed group show on view at Visual Art Supply (3524 Adams Ave. in Normal Heights) through Aug. 27. The piece stands out—mostly because the zombie is actually pretty hot.
“My first thought,” Rushing says with a hearty chuckle, “was that, if you do a painting of a zombie, you’re probably going to keep that painting for all of your life because people don’t really hang paintings of zombies on their walls. So, I kind of wanted to paint an attractive zombie, you know, one that might actually be sold. And I have gotten several bites on the piece.”
And what about the hotdog in the painting? Rushing chuckles again, saying he’d rather not tell people the story behind the dog. “I’m going to stay out of it,” he says.
“I’m an open-ended allegorist,” he continues. “I don’t tell anyone what to think about [my paintings] or how to think about them. I want them to trigger thought. That’s really my whole point is to trigger thought in people’s minds.
When Rushing (andrearushingfinearts.com) isn’t painting zombies, he’s painting big pieces with intriguing subject matter. There’s a portrait of a female soldier with balloons floating in the middle of the room and a painting of a businessman with the head of a tiger.
Former Chargers running back LaDainian Tomlinson owns an Andre Rushing original, as does Mayor Jerry Sanders (it was his wife who purchased the piece). Rushing isn’t a starving artist. He’s a working artist who treats painting like the business it is.
“I try to paint images that sell,” Rushing explains. “I have an advertising background, so, I’m almost a marketer who paints.
Someone once told me I was a writer who paints…. I’ve been a very busy guy, I tell you—too busy. About 15 years ago, it was like someone flipped a switch on my life and ever since then, I have just been grooving, you know, which is cool.”
Want to be on the cover of CityBeat? Email kinseem@sdcitybeat.com and adamv@sdcitybeat.com.
