Faces, uninhibited
ARTIST Les Overlock’s new exhibit is inspired by African themes.
Keri Luiz/Staff
New art exhibit by Les Overlock inspired by African images
By Keri Luiz
Assistant Editor
Artist Les Overlock’s latest exhibit is a departure of sorts for the artist — and an arrival, too. In it, colorfully diverse faces evoke the African palette as they gaze from the walls of a downtown restaurant.
A year ago, the artist and longtime contributor to The Herald was inspired by an email from a friend. The former colleague sent a picture from a book titled “Natural Fashion: Tribal Decoration From Africa,” by Hans Silvester.
The book is about the Mursi and Surma tribes in the Omo Valley near Ethiopia, Kenya and Sudan. Overlock was inspired by the breathtaking images.
The result is something far different from — and yet containing many of the trademarks of — his previous work.
“This here represents the way I am,” he said as he stood among the paintings. “I am diversified but I’m also focused.”
The paintings are as diverse as the people Overlock portrays.
They include small pieces created in clay by way of carving the image first into soft wood, to large paintings on masonite and large pieces of plywood. Most are done with acrylic, but there are also a few clay prints.
“This show probably is as diversified as anything I could do, using all the things (techniques) that I have,” he said.
He also found inspiration in how members of the Mursi and Surma tribes were uninhibited in their art — and found similarities with his own work, too. “In reading about them, the art on their bodies is very similar to my (art style) in that they don’t look at boundaries,” he said.
Overlock started painting the faces on wood blocks and displayed some at local coffee shop Java Point. “I just put them up. I really wasn’t worried about selling them,” he said. Yet people started buying them. “So I’ve got a whole bunch that are out there in the universe.”
LES OVERLOCK’S art will be on display at Vino Paladini’s Restaurant at the Inn and Spa at Benicia Bay through Oct. 5.
Keri Luiz/Staff
Overlock loves to paint faces and has always been fascinated by them. “My faces take on their own persona,” he said. “The one thing I stopped ever trying to do was duplicate. The kids at the school (Liberty High, where he taught for many years) would have me draw their faces and I would tell them that it is not going to look like you think you look. It’s how I think you look.
“These guys here,” he said, gesturing toward his new work, “they are very pure, they’re out there. There’s a childlike innocence in the way they paint themselves because they don’t have any inhibitions whatsoever in how they do it.
“They don’t see it as art. They’re having fun.”
Overlock is the “product of an artist mother and a well-known pen-and-ink artist grandfather. I always wondered where that genetic mix was gonna kick in, and at the ripe age of 50 I was invited to a sculpture class.
“I’m 68 now, so that’s 18 years ago I started, and I never stopped.”
What’s next? Also a poet, Les Overlock said he would like to combine writing with his art in a form different than The Buzz, the weekly drawing he publishes in The Herald.
“The idea of being able to represent not only the art but also the statement,” he said, “is something I am thinking about.”
If You Go
A reception for Les Overlock’s exhibit will be held Sunday at the Inn & Spa at Benicia Bay, 145 East D St., from 4:30-6:30 p.m. There will be food and music by Darlyn Phillips and Guy Arrostuto. The art will be on display through Oct. 5.
