Gene Stirm's wonderful mixed media art will be featured at Gallery 'N' Gifts for the month of May. The First Friday artist reception will be from 5 to 8 p.m. May 4, 2018 at the Gallery, 100 W. Tehachapi Blvd.

"The Mixed Media Art of Gene Stirm" he explains, "is visual art which is made up of more than one medium. In an art gallery show, it is when art of different mediums is shown together. This show is both." "After a career in art, the mixing of different media became natural and at times necessary to achieve the look or results I wanted."

Gene's study of art began under John Dalton, a graduate of the Art Institute of Chicago, when Gene was in sixth grade and continued through high school. From Dalton, Gene learned the basics of art; shape, form, perspective and so on, along with working in various mediums to create works of art. Gene continued on to a degree in commercial art and his life long career in the arts.

Favorite mediums are oil and watercolor, but working as a commercial artist and in graphic design he had to adapt to client's needs. Printing, photography and later digital reproduction also became tools in his toolbox. His work in menu design in the 1980s and 90s afforded him the flexibility to mix fine art and graphic art, which led him further in the mixing of media.

The 1970s saw computers used as art producing tools, but it was 20 years later that technology advanced to produce images directly on paper.

Gene worked with Artco Lithography and Printing Co. in Anaheim, Calif., consulting with Graham Nash when the first quality digital works of art were produced on fine paper and the process known as "giclee prints" was born.

Photo Provided

Sunflowers by Gene Stirm.

Now 73, much of Gene's mixed media art comes from "blending of giclee prints, watercolor and acrylic paints, photography, fine paper and lots of imagination". Gene controls every step of his art process in his studio,"from capturing the digital image of my original art through computer processing the art, sometimes taking out portions of a painting to be hand reapplied after printing. I image the new art on paper or canvas with my Epson SureColor archival inkjet printer. I then rework the image making it a one of a kind original or cutting up the images and applying them in collage style with other images and paint to create a new original work of art."

Gene invites you to "come by the Gallery and enjoy".