August Issue 2001
Columbia Painter Gives New Life to Classic Literature in Exhibition at the McMaster Gallery at USC in Columbia, SC
by Martin Evans
Henry Ward Beecher, a nineteenth century American clergyman, was once quoted as saying that, "Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures."
The paintings of David Voros represent a person who like many of us is striving to better know his own soul and the soul of man. His work explores the timeless questions that we as humans continue to confront-questions concerning the concepts of good and evil, what it means to sin, our own sense of guilt, and the issues surrounding love and sex.
Encountering the paintings of Voros for the
first time, one is immediately struck by the life-like scale and
classical style. The influence of Italian painters such as Titian
and Caravaggio, from the Late Renaissance and Baroque periods
respectively, is highly evident in Voros's own work. In fact,
many of his paintings resemble those that one might find in the
chapel of an Italian church.
The strongest influences that are reflected in Voros's paintings
are derived from his strong Catholic upbringing and his great
interest and knowledge of classic literature. In a recent interview
he said, "I draw a lot from literature, I think mostly from
Greek literature. I've always had an interest in Dante, and I
was raised in a Roman Catholic tradition-sort of an Eastern European,
Roman Catholic tradition - and so before I read Dante I sort of
knew Dante. I'm interested in the polarization of good and evil.
I like to think about that issue as a focus in Dante."
Two of the works featured in the upcoming exhibition
at the McMaster Gallery, Allegory of Love and Reflections
on Good and Evil, were commissioned by Mark Musa the Dante
scholar and translator of the three works composing the Divine
Comedie: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. Voros met Dr.
Musa while living in Italy, and later did graduate studies with
him at Indiana University where he received his MFA in 1994.
Reflections on Good and Evil is Voros's most recent painting.
While it is a portrait of the Musa family seated around a table
in their home in Italy, it is also a representation of Dante's
Divine Comedie. Like Dante's epic poem, the painting contains
layer-upon-layer of both classic and modern-day symbols employed
to depict Dante's concept of Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio),
and Heaven (Paradiso).
While Voros's work depicts figures from classical literature and mythology, it is his sincere desire that viewers are not intimidated by those classic stories with which they may not be familiar. "A few years ago I re-read Homer - the Iliad and the Odyssey - and I found that re-reading the Iliad, I really got a great sense of Hector's humanity that I missed when I read it as a high school student. I grew to see it as a book that's about this guy who had to perform something that he didn't want to perform, and he had this sense of obligation, the way a human reacts in that situation. It's unfortunate that people see a book like that in such a lofty sense-that they can't empathize - that they can't find themselves in those characters. To me, I think it's very comforting to find another individual from another time who I can comisserate with in a sense."
By painting in a life-like scale, Voros hopes that his work can act in a manner similar to that of theatre whereby the viewers feel a part of an event in which they can actually participate. It is through the viewer's sense of participation, even if it is that of a bystander or witness of an actual event, that Voros hopes to create that sense of empathy.
In addition to the works related to Dante, Voros has been exploring two other themes: Saints and Fools and Scenes from Ovid. In the Saints and Fools series he examines the question of what makes a selfless act one deserving sainthood or being labeled as foolish. The painting entitled, The Things We Do for Love, which depicts a woman holding a pair of pliers with her bloody teeth spread before her, is part of this series. Sisyphus Discovering the Head of Orpheus comes from the Scenes from Ovid series. In this series, Voros utilizes tales from classic literature to depict personal experiences. He believes, however, that one must not be familiar with these classic stories to appreciate the painting on a human level, "My work starts from personal experiences. I think I make the paintings about things that I feel compelled to get off my chest-you know, things that have occurred in my life. I guess the connection to literature in one sense is that it's a device for concealing the exact facts and sort of generalizing in a way that I can express certain things to people. I make that connection (to classical literature) because it gives me a sense of anonymity."
Voros joined the Art Studio faculty within the University of South Carolina's Department of Art as an Assistant Professor in the fall of 2000. He comes from the Mid-West, growing up primarily in the Chicago area. He studied painting, drawing, art history and classical literature at the Art Institute of Chicago where he received his BFA in the 1980's.
An exhibition of his recent paintings will be on display Sept. 4 through Oct. 2, 2001 at the McMaster Art Gallery, USC Department of Art, University of South Carolina in Columbia, SC.
For further information check our SC Institutional Gallery listings or call Mana Hewitt, Gallery Director at 803/777-7480.
Martin Evans is an independent media design consultant living in Columbia. He has a great interest in the use of multimedia technologies within museum settings for arts education, and is currently working on his Ph.D. at the University of South Carolina. He may be contacted at (evansmarty@earthlink.net).
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