The ancient stories told through the work of Savannah, Georgia, artist Phil Starks unfolded in a very modern setting with the opening of his Gaia Earth Goddess and Her 7 Matriarchal Daughters exhibition, scheduled to run from October 23 to November 19, 2009, at the Savannah State University (SSU) Art Gallery.

Starks has participated in a number of group shows over the past few years, including the critically acclaimed Seeing Sounds exhibit and the Savannah Area Artists Fine Art exhibition, both in 2009. The SSU event is his first solo-artist exhibition. The path that has led him to this point, like the spiritually-charged subject of his art itself, has been an exceptional one.

A native of Columbus, Ohio, Starks is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force (1968-1972) whose studies at Columbus State and New York University were geared more towards preparing him for his career in dental technology than for one as an artist. Ironically, it was while working over the course of some twenty years as a top-notch dental lab technologist that he first began to work with a waxer, a small hand-held machine that allows you to control the application and the molding of heated wax.


Artist Phil Starks at Tybee Beach, Geogia. (photo by Gwendolyn Glover)


As a dental lab technologist, Starks used the waxer to create appealing smiles. As an artist, he began using it as part of a finely-tuned process that would lead to the physical creation of his artistic visions. “Over the years, over time, as I developed technically, learning more carving skills, casting skills, and material skills, it just grew from there,” said the artist.

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Phil Starks is the third artist featured in the Portraits of U.S. Artists in the Southeast Series by Aberjhani, the African American Art Examiner and author/co-author of eight books, including Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance and The American Poet Who Went Home Again.

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I have one favorite scene in the film VINCENT AND THEO, the late Robert Altman's highly acclaimed masterwork on the life of Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh. It is a short brutal scene in the first half of the movie when Van Gogh's model and mistress is leaving him: she slaps him witless, and then kisses him hard on the mouth before storming out of the apartment.

That double action of pained frustration and loving adoration seems a sad but accurate metaphor for the entire film and possibly for Van Gogh himself. Whereas life bestowed upon him a bliss-filled kiss of exceptional artistic and spiritual vision, the hand of fate slapped him so hard that he was robbed of any lasting personal joy that might have come from this great gift.

The whole point of Altman's film seems to be to illustrate how Vincent's genius found refuge for a while in his brother Theo's love. It is well known that even though Theo (who is played with mesmerizing neurotic precision by Paul Rhys) was a relatively successful art dealer, he was unable to manipulate the market to his brother's advantage. That did not, however, stop him from financially supporting him throughout his short adult life as a painter. Altman makes that point clear enough when Theo informs his brother that the money Vincent thought their father had been sending him had in fact been provided by Theo. Rather than belaboring this aspect of their relationship, director Altman moves his camera back and forth between scenes that show us how very much alike, and yet simultaneously different, Vincent and Theo were in their thwarted pursuits of a triumphant life.

As Theo eagerly courted "respectable ladies," Vincent just as eagerly enjoyed women of a certain profession. Whereas Vincent yearned to prove himself an artist worthy of the name, Theo yearned to prove himself a businessman worthy of prominence and prosperity. Vincent's descent into madness manifests more tangibly because it takes on the more graphically visual qualities associated with art itself: we see him court and then violently alienate the attentions of his equally genius friend Paul Gauguin; watch him stick knives menacingly in his mouth, cut off his earlobe, meekly endure his stay in an asylum, stand in a sunlit field where he has been painting black birds and calmly shoot himself. All the while, some of the most celebrated canvases in art history, depicting a virtual of ecstasy of sunflowers, starry nights, and golden wheat fields, rapidly pile up.

Theo is actually able to resist the powerful tug of debilitating madness until after his brother succumbs to it. That he does fall prey to it is tragically ironic because despite the syphilis that mars his happiness, he achieves some measure of the "ideal life" with a wife, new baby, and modest advancement in his career. He therefore appears to have all the motivation necessary to sustain a stable existence. But when he places all of Vincent's work (after the artist's death) in a suite of rooms for an exhibit, he screams at his wife that "This is the most important thing in my life!" and forces her to leave. It would seem at that point that he not only loved Vincent and believed deeply in his talent, but was in fact a kind of extension of him, and vice versa. The loss of Vincent on July 29, 1890, at the age of only 37, triggered in Theo a mental and physical collapse. He died less than a year later on January 25, 1891, at the age of 33.

This 1990 movie (released on DVD in 2005) is 138 minutes long so no one can claim it's too short. I only wish Altman had included somewhere in it the story of how--after studying for the ministry and before he became a painter--Vincent spent forty days nursing back to health a miner who had been injured in an explosion and whom doctors had expected to die. The miner's recovery was described as a miracle and, from the scars left on his face, Van Gogh experienced a vision of the wounds that Christ suffered from the crown of thorns placed on his head. Some allusion to this may have added greater understanding to the intense spiritual impulses that drove Van Gogh's devotion to his art and helped clarify what he hoped to communicate through it. Even so, the film as it stands is itself a remarkable painting of two extraordinary brothers who shared one profound and astonishing destiny.


by Artist-Author Aberjhani

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I'm new to Terminartors and actually much more of a literary artist than a visual one at this stage in my life but grateful for the invitation that guided me here. I've started out by uploading some work by Luther E. Vann, a U.S.A. based artist with whom I happen to share the creation of a gift book of his art and my poetry. I plan as well to upload some of my own visual creations but for now would like to share my review of a film on the great Adedeo Modigliani:


Director and writer Mick Davis, in a disclaimer at the beginning of the film MODIGLIANI, cautions viewers that it is a fictional work based loosely on the lives of its historical characters. What the disclaimer does not point out is how brilliantly the film captures the ironies of artistic achievement and the agonies of human failings that characterized the challenging lives of those same historical personages.

At the smoldering core of Modigliani is a love affair between the Jewish-Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani and the French Catholic art student Jeanne Hébuterne. Andy Garcia, who has had many fine hours as an actor, pulls out all the stops in his portrayal of Modigliani as an artist who lives for nothing so much as he does for art and love. Actress Elsa Zylberstein proves his chemistry-stirring match in one compelling scene after another.

Their story unfolds in the community of Montparnasse, Paris, France, just as World War I is coming to an end in 1919. The place and time were remarkable for the sheer concentrated genius of its creative inhabitants, including these artists: Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau, Diego Rivera, Chaim Soutine, Maurice Utrillo, and Modigliani himself. All of them would leave their indelible imprints upon 20th century art through individual works and their stylistic inventions of Surrealism, Dadaism, Fauvism, and Cubism. Likewise, one of their renowned American patrons, Gertrude Stein, would leave hers upon the era's literature.

As the film Modigliani illustrates, these artists were as famed for their ability to endure devastating poverty as they were for their talent and are generally considered, for better or for worse, the quintessential bohemians of their time. Two things made their lives bearable and worth celebrating: one was their passion for their art, and the second was their passion for each other. They painted on anything and everything: doors, napkins, tabletops, menus, walls, themselves, and even other paintings. Their passions at times could be as devastating as they were inspiring.

Virtually every scene in this film could be paused at any point and framed as a work of art itself. There is Modi performing his bear dance around a statue; Utrillo chained up in an asylum smoking hashish with Modi; a furious Picasso holding a gun to his friend Modi's head then switching hats and joking with him; and softly glowing blue snowflakes falling in the dark of night. Some of the most extraordinary images come toward the end when the artists are hard at work preparing new paintings for a grand competition. The frenzy, stress, and excitement of the competition, which carries a prize of 5,000 francs, are driven by a powerful soundtrack and the hope that Modigliani will triumph.

More than one reviewer has noted the difference between the end of director Davis' film and the historical account of Modigliani's death. For the sake of those who have yet to see the movie, that ending will not be revealed here. Nevertheless, I will suggest that those who view the film (and perhaps those who already have as well) consider that Davis' ending was never intended to represent factual history but serves as a symbolic representation of what many gifted artists tend to experience in societies where their labors are more valued upon their deaths than while they live. If that statement sounds like exaggerated drama, we might further consider this: while Modigliani struggled through poverty and illness all his life, his paintings in recent years have sold in excess of $10 million for a single canvas, including a sale of $31.3 million for his portrait of Jeanne Hébuterne.






by Artist-Poet Aberjhani
author of The Bridge of Silver Wings 2009
and Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (Facts on File Library of American History)

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