The Fort Wayne Museum of Art focuses its collection around American art of all kinds from the 19th Century to the present day.
I asked Charles Shepard, museum director, to select a favorite painting for this month’s column.
“My favorite painting is Stephen Lack’s Parked Impala, a super example of this artist’s ability to render an ordinary vehicle (a circa 1963 Chevrolet Impala) in an ordinary, park-like setting in a manner that implies mystery and possible menace,” Shepard says.
Lack, born 1946, is a Canadian painter and a film actor best known for his role as the lead character, Cameron Vale, in David Cronenberg’s 1981 science fiction film Scanners.
Lack has been praised as a colorist. In this painting, we can see a large swath of orange against deep green, with notes of violet and blue in the car windows and the night sky. His execution is swift and very broad.
He has been exhibiting his paintings both nationally and internationally – Canada, Europe, Japan, Australia – with more than 35 one-man shows during the past 30 years. As one of the founding participants of New York City’s “East Village Scene” during the 1980s, his work received attention and reviews from the major art critical venues, The New York Times, Art in America, Art News, ArtForum, Arts Magazine, Flash Art International and The Toronto Globe and Mail, among others.
Lack and his work have been the subject of a profile on Bravo TV’s Arts & Minds. He has had two museum retrospectives: The Edge of Innocence at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum in New London, Conn., and AUTONATION at the Illinois State University School of Art in Normal, Ill.
Nationally renowned local artist Michael McEwan teaches painting and drawing classes at his Clintonville area studio.
