Tribute to Civil Rights

The new addition to my American Patriotic Series is titled Tribute to Civil Rights. Featuring President Obama and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., this 6' x 11' painting symbolizes the transformation of an individual's dream into a nation's reality through two sets of symbolic elements.

First is the interaction between Dr. King and President Obama. Although the two men are 50 years apart in history, it seems they are reflecting on the same issue. Dr. King appears on the wall as graffiti art, in 2D, but his dream emanates across time into a 3-dimensional reality.

The second symbolic element is achieved by the interaction of the sunrise—the symbol of hope—and the overturned paint can. The spilled paint serves as a vehicle to bring the reflection of hope into the realm of the present.

FOLLOW HOW THE PAINTING PROGRESSED OVER 6 MONTHS

The Washington Post's Spring Arts Galleries Preview by Mark Jenkins

Like such precursors as Dali and Magritte, Gabor Szabo grounds his visual impossibilities in strict realism. “Lucid Dreams,” the Hungarian-bred American artist’s Waverly Street Gallery show, includes painstakingly painted people, animals and things, sometimes in the process of becoming something else: classical columns become human arms, a baby emerges from the core of a well-nibbled apple and a nude sports a CRT monitor for a head. Even Szabo’s “Abstract Fantasies,” which recall Futurism’s attempts to depict motion, are hard-edged and cleanly rendered.

In two paintings, the tips of eagles’ wings turn into ribbons. The image, more ceremonial than surrealistic, shows Szabo’s taste for the epic and theatrical. The show’s largest picture is an 11-foot wide portrait of Barack Obama, standing before a wall mural of Martin Luther King, Jr. that’s illuminated by a sunrise. Rather than showing the sly or even subversive eye of a surrealist, the painting reveals an unabashedly earnest vision.

Freelance writer Mark Jenkins

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