EDUCATION

1968-1971   Ringling School of Art, Sarasota, Florida

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

1993   "Family Values" Couturier Gallery, Los Angeles, Ca.
1991   B-1 Gallery, Santa Monica, Ca.

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

1993   "Present Art II," Couturier Gallery, Los Angeles, Ca.
1992   "Present Art," Couturier Gallery, Los Angeles, Ca.
1991   Marina Market Place, Marina Del Rey, Ca.
          "Celebrations and Ceremonies," Security Pacific Bank, Seattle, Wa.
1990   "Contemporary Artists' Artists at Contempo," Los Angeles Open Arts Festival, Los Angeles, Ca.

PUBLICATIONS

1993   Maleski, Stash "Acts Of Painting," Artweek, March 4, 1993, vol. 24, no. 5, page 28-29 (color and black and white photos)

SELECTED PRIVATE COLLECTIONS

Mr. Todd A. Bergeson, Brentwood, Ca.
President and Mrs. Jimmy Carter, Plains, Ga.
Ms. Linda Goldstein, New York, N.Y.
Ms. Linda Hartwick
Mr. Bent Kopf, Boras, Sweden
Mr. Tom McCleery and Ms. Gunnel Humphreys, Jacksonville, Fl.

SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS

Barnett Bank, Venice, Fl.

About OSCAR SENN's Work

   A mother and son pose (looking like a movie still from any 1950 movie) smiling brightly for the camera. Dressed in their Sunday finery (the mother in her hat and white gloves, the boy in his little suit and bow tie, they remind us how formal and repressed the fifties really were. Oscar Senn paints this nostalgic scene with painterly gusto obviously relishing the juicy and liquid quality of the paint itself. The mother and young boy standing in dappled sunlight are painted with a soft focus as if they were a blurred and dim memory. This bucolic, dream-like scene would appear quite normal, if it were not for the dinosaurs which are hidden by the foliage in the background.

   Oscar Senn's paintings, like the movies of Stephen Spielberg and David Lynch, frequently are not what they seem. Apparently normal towns are invaded by terrapins flying in formation, many times larger than their usual size. Strangely, the townspeople are oblivious to the armadillos, turtles or dinosaurs (all shelled ancient survivors) who fly over or crawl around their world.

   Some of Senn's work is openly surrealistic. In one painting, a flock of turtles fly over a clean, middle-America, white-picket fence community while a man, holding his infant daughter, never notices. Unlike the grade "B" sci-fi movies of the fifties, where giant reptiles take over and terrify large cities, Senn's creatures and humans pay no mind to each other.

   Some of Senn's work is poignant. In one nighttime painting, filled with eerie illumination, a lone, large tortoise appears to be stranded atop a telephone pole. The elements also play an important part in Senn's work as the viewer is always aware of water, air and the earth.

   Many paintings feature children in relation to parents and siblings. Though all are shown smiling or squinting into the camera (the works are photographically derived), there is a sense of unease. Though tamer than Eric Fischl's paintings and drawings of suburbia, Senn's work hints at something hidden, something not quite right. These enigmatic, painterly images conjure up myth, magic, memory, nature and a bygone era.