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First Born | John Gurbacs | Original Oil Painting

First Born | John Gurbacs | Original Oil Painting

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Original oil painting by John Gurbacs · Available at Marcolina's Fine Arts Gallery, Tampa, Florida · Ships worldwide

A primate's face gets split into four quadrants here, each one set against its own flat color, yellow, gray, gray, yellow. The actual features, one watchful eye, a heavy brow, the line of a mouth, are picked out in purple against those blocks. It reads more like a specimen diagram than a portrait, the face sectioned and studied rather than simply looked at.

Cracked eggshells break in from every edge around that central cross, top, left, right, bottom, each one open and showing a different color inside. With that title, the whole thing turns into something about emergence, caught mid-becoming, not finished yet.

Artist John Gurbacs
Medium Oil on Canvas, Framed
Dimensions DIMENSIONS NEEDED
Certificate Certificate of Authenticity included
Shipping Ships worldwide with full insurance
Payment Payment plans available

Collector's Note

One of the more conceptually layered pieces available, closer to the artist's collage-based process than a direct nature study.

Acquisition

Available through Marcolina's Fine Arts Gallery with worldwide shipping, full insurance, and professional art packaging. Payment plans available. Private viewings by appointment in Tampa, Florida. Virtual viewings available for collectors anywhere in the world. Contact us to inquire. New to collecting? Read our collector guide →

A standard shipping rate is charged at checkout. Once your work is packed, we calculate the actual shipping cost for its size and destination. If there is a difference, we will follow up to either invoice the additional amount or refund the difference, whichever applies.

"We can see that the branches of a tree are similar in form to a bolt of lightning, or that rings of Saturn resemble the rings of water in a puddle. Yet they exist separately in time, space, and scale. There exists an order of continuity throughout the different realms."

John Gurbacs


About the Artist

John Gurbacs is a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow with over fifty years of continuous practice exploring the fractal geometry hidden inside nature, the recurring patterns that connect a tree branch to a bolt of lightning, or the rings of Saturn to the rings of water in a puddle.

His process begins in the field. He photographs construction debris, tropical foliage, microscopic patterns, and underwater scenes, then builds collages until a connection reveals itself between forms and scales. From there he draws, then paints, some pieces taking months to complete.

His work sits in the permanent collections of the Tampa Museum of Art, the Leepa Rattner Museum of Art, the Polk Museum of Art, and the USF Contemporary Art Museum, along with commissions for Tampa General Hospital, Holland and Knight, Tampa Electric, and the Volusia County Courthouse. He has completed five major public murals across Florida, including the Sulphur Springs Mural, the largest of his career.

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