Self Taught – The art of Michele Guttenberg and Neil Besignano

Michele Guttenberg
Artists Statement

As a child I spent many hours going through the photographs my mother had of her family and friends from the twenties, thirties , forties and fifties.  I thought my mother and her sisters were so glamorous.  They had wonderful hair styles; spit curls and marcel waves.  Beautiful hats and gloves.  The men wore hats too and wonderful overcoats.  Even though they were quite poor they looked so sophisticated.  Many of the pictures were taken on rooftops.  My parents were from the lower East Side.  A very colorful area.  Pushcarts with every conceivable type of food and fashion.  I have painted most of those photographs.  Most of them are done in black and white, but I did quite a few in color.  It was a great way to learn how to paint fabric.

The Holocaust is another subject that I am very interested in.  I remember a couple that used to come to the house to sell my mother linens and such.  My mother told me they were in a concentration camp.  She explained what that meant.  Their daughter was the only child that survived the camp that they were in.  We lived in an anti-Semitic neighborhood so I experienced first hand what it meant to be the butt of this kind of hatred.  I could not understand why being Jewish brought out such cruelty in people.  I didn’t understand it then, I don’t understand it now.

I spent a lot of time studying the Holocaust.  I read many books on the subject  When I came across a book of photographs taken by Roman Vishniac I had to paint them.  The faces are haunting and show such sorrow.  The photographs are so evocative.  I hope that my paintings have done them justice.  Without words they explain so much of what these people lived through.  Unfortunately anti-semitism is on the rise again.  It is never very far away.

On a lighter note; I had an idea that I would paint everyone I new.  I have done at least 100 so far.  The collection keeps growing.  Recently I decided to paint dead singers.  That series is also growing rapidly.  I usually paint in series.  That way I always have a subject.

I teach painting now in the local art school where I continue to learn.  My students are a wonderful source of learning. 
I hope I never stoplearning.

Michele Guttenberg – Bio

My artistic journey began when I was a 23 year old young mother who was searching for something to fulfill me.  Being a wife and the mother of three young children was not enough.  At the same time my brother Steven had begun to draw rock stars.  They were quite good and he had sold a few.  He suggested I give drawing a try.  We talked on the phone and he gave me pointers.  I was amazed that I was actually good at it.  The drawings of faces seemed to flow out of me.  At first I drew American Indians.  Their faces are so expressive.  I couldn’t believe that I was doing this.  I would look at a finished drawing and was flabbergasted that it came from me.

After a while I wanted to expand so I took up watercolor.  My cousin Alice Perline was kind enough to to impart her knowledge of the medium.  Again I was astounded.  Art was giving me the sense of accomplishment that I yearned for.  My watercolor portraits were pretty good.  I even had two one woman shows.  After some time I felt that watercolor was too confining for me.  I wanted to paint large pieces and did not think I could do that in watercolor.  My husband Neil and I began to paint in oil.  We were each others teacher.  It was great.  When I began painting in oil I never looked back.  I love this medium.  It moves.  I love the feel of the paint, the way it candors everything I ask of it.

I never went to school for art but I studied on my own.  I read about color theory and use it in my paintings.  I go to museums and study the paintings there.  The compositions, the brushstrokes, the colors.  One of the first artists that I fell in love with was Chuck Close.  His early work of faces, done in watercolor amazed me.  They look alive.  I saw a self portrait of him with a cigarette in his mouth in the Brooklyn Museum.  I couldn’t believe he could get such detail.  There is a painting in the Brooklyn Museum that I love.  Niagara Falls.  I swear you can hear the water.  I love to look at it.  It never loses its splendor.

I owe my life and sanity to art.  Without it I think I would still be searching for something to fulfill me.  I feel I am very lucky to have found my life purpose.  I am grateful to each person who helped me and believes in me.  It has been and continues to be a great journey.

Statement and Bio
Neil Besignano
This is what happened-

It started in 1954…

     From the very beginning there was drawing with chalk on blackboards, and fountain pens and pencils and paper- then the pencils became no. 2 Ticonderoga sharpened to fine points that brought great effects of shading to the MARVEL comic book characters, then to the Knicks and Mets and the Joe Namaths’ that were drawn…

     Then a present from an aunt named Lala: an 18 x 24 drawing pad, a kneaded eraser, a can of fixative spray paint, and charcoal pencils that brought to the drawings an unforeseen richer and darker dimension than the lead pencils could ever attain. With this welcomed surprise there was no going back…

     And then the introduction to oil pastels, with their texture and colors…

     At this time, intertwined with all this, was a writer named H. P. Lovecraft, and a vinyl double-album titled Hot August Night and these new discoveries of stories and songs were very motivating…

     But the one thing that remained constant through school, sports, dating, people coming and going into and out of life, was that the drawing never stopped.

     Later came the ‘Horizon Line’ and perspective and the drawings of live models- a bit of sculpting- and trips to the art museums in New York where virgin eyes spent hours looking open-mouthed at the Reubens and Titians and especially the anonymous painters of that time- who were hey and how could they have painted such wonderful pictures- while the ochres and umbers and siennas drenched the canvases and seeped into the mind…

     And a whole new world opened up- maybe an epiphany of sorts…

     Later, perhaps inevitably, all of this led to oil paints and countless different sized stretcher

frames to stretch canvas over- and then the camera, and photos taken of subjects from different perspectives and used as references that now become paintings painted upside-down, right-side up, sideways, this way and that- and now have the versatility to be hung any way the eye likes, then hung in another way when or if the eye gets tired of it…

     And interspersed with all of this through the years have been many, many art shows, and meeting and conversing with many amazingly gifted local and non-local artists who not only give insights and motivations of their own work, but also their own criticisms and adulations of others…

     And to this point right now, right here, that one constant still remains- the drawing and painting has never stopped…