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Speak No Evil | John Gurbacs | Original Oil Painting
Speak No Evil | John Gurbacs | Original Oil Painting
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Payment plans available · Ships worldwide · Certificate of Authenticity included · Contact us to discuss options
Original oil painting by John Gurbacs · Available at Marcolina's Fine Arts Gallery, Tampa, Florida · Ships worldwide
A face fills the canvas close enough to see every line in weathered skin, real eyes looking out from beneath a strange inset in the upper corner, an anatomical cutaway rendered in the colors and detail of a dissection illustration. Lower in the frame, a hand covers the mouth in the classic speak no evil gesture, except the hand isn't painted as skin, it's painted as its own bone structure, green and yellow phalanges outlined in purple and pink.
The gesture itself is a social one, restraint, silence, the choice not to say something. But the hand performing it is stripped down to what's actually there underneath, and the eye carries its own cutaway too. The painting takes a familiar social behavior and shows the literal anatomy running underneath it, the same instinct for finding what connects different realms turned inward, onto the body doing the gesturing.
| Artist | John Gurbacs |
| Medium | Oil on Canvas, Thin Wooden Frame |
| Dimensions | 31 x 24 in |
| Certificate | Certificate of Authenticity included |
| Shipping | Ships worldwide with full insurance |
| Payment | Payment plans available |
Collector's Note
A more introspective piece than the artist's nature studies, applying the same logic of hidden structure to the human body instead of the natural world.
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.
