Stan Welsh

Artist email: stan.welsh@gmail.com
Website: www.stanwelsh.com
To purchase artwork, please contact the artist directly.

Biography

Stan Welsh was born in 1951 and grew up in Southern California in the town of Claremont where he first met Paul Soldner at Scripps College in 1968.  In 1974 Stan earned his BFA degree from Kansas City Art Institute in Kansas City Missouri and in 1978 he earned his MFA degree from Alfred University in New York State. Stan has been a professor in the School of Art and Art History at San Jose State University since 1981. In 2005, Stan received the Arts Council Silicon Valley Artist Fellowship Award in 1990. He received a California Arts Council Award and in 1986 he received a National Endowment for the Arts Award. Stan’s work has been included in numerous exhibitions nationally and internationally and his work is represented in many important permanent collections including the Fred Marer collection (CA), Oakland Museum (CA), San Jose Museum (CA), Daum Museum (MO), Ceramic Research Center A.S.U. Art Museum (AZ) and the Sandy Besser Collection (NM).

Statement

Formally, I would like this work to portray a sense of clarity, simplicity, beauty and balance. Conversely and conceptually, as sea levels rise and populations grow across the planet, people find themselves displaced and homeless. In this series of anonymous portraits, I pay homage to these victims of global circumstances adrift in an unforgiving world. I try to render the figures in a way that dignifies their situation and pays respect to their circumstances. The brightly colored backgrounds are used to isolate and celebrate each character. This work is part of a larger Migration Series that is currently in progress in my studio. 

I like to think of these figures as pilgrims or travelers who have come great distance on foot to a place of special significance. In various spiritual literatures the concept of pilgrim and pilgrimage may refer to the experience of life in the world (considered as a period of exile) or to the inner path of the spiritual sojourner from a state of wretchedness to a state of beatitude.

Featured Art

Reflection: Migration Series
Glazed clay, photograph, and plywood
23" x 55" x 10"
2020
$3,800

Pilgrim #1 with Hands
Ceramic and wood panel
28” x 21” x 2”
2018
$1,800

Pilgrim #2 with Bird
Ceramic and wood panel
28” x 21” x 2”
2018
$1,800

Pilgrim #3 with Paint Brush
Ceramic and wood panel
28” x 21” x 2”
2018
$1,800

Listen to the Wind
Clay and wood
27" x 13” x 12"
2021
$3,200

Canary
Clay and wood
26" x 12” x 13"
2021
$3,200