San Diego Unseen: An Urban Portrait
"Beautiful Begending" by Michael Carini
I wrote about Michael Carini earlier this month. The artist deals with his Tourette syndrome by using some of the physical and mental effects of the disorder in his very precise painting process.
Carini's currently got some of his older, more meticulous work up at Counterpoint in Golden Hill, but his big show is at L Street Fine Art, which is celebrating the opening of its two-man show, Primal Forces: Patterns & Pathos, from 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 29. San Diego artist Michael Maas' work is also on display.
Primal Forces features Carni's new body of work in which the obsessive artist is learning to let go of some control.
What I didn't fit into the article on Carini is the recurring image you'll find in many of his new pieces. What could be described as both a nerve cell or a tree (look for it in the image pictured left) is something Carini says he kept seeing over and over again after being attacked in his University Heights apartment. The image flashed across his eyelid that was swollen shut for several weeks then just sort of stuck with him.
He became so interested in the image that he recently tattooed it on his forearm.
I highly recommend seeing this show and talking to Carini himself. Almost every element in his paintings has an interesting narrative behind it.
