Angst whimsy

Tap into the chaotic soul. The tension between the creative and pragmatic, the need to make art and the need to collect a paycheck. Tear the canvas. Put it back together with duct tape. Then paint. Swirls of face and eyes—big eyes. Half of the face depicts imaginative self—a bit bloodshot and worn but packed with latent energy. The other side invokes the staid, responsible self who gets you up in the morning and makes sure you don’t drink too much bourbon.

Display this self-dissection, titled “Right Brain, Left Brain,” on an easel in the art gallery.

“It’s almost a pathetic self-portrait,” says artist Ron Oden. The painting is part of Oden’s new show, Impulse, which opens June 20 at Gallery 516 in downtown Reno. The work pulls at itself like an unmade decision. Its psychological balance feels tenuous. It’s hard to say just how long the metaphoric duct tape will hold.

Since his first show of paintings a year ago, Reno Gazette-Journal graphics guru Oden has been a busy man. He now owns the gallery. When he’s not crafting or overseeing the many illustrations and info-graphics that run in the daily newspaper, he teaches workshops and often paints in a window facing South Virginia Street.

“I’ve been blessed with enormous energy, and I require very little sleep,” he says.

Oden paints one or two new works each week. The artist will turn 50 on Sept. 2, and he’s starting to think about such things as the brevity of life. Impulse is a show, he says, about “moving into a different emotional context” with his work.

“It’s a collection of work that focuses on the elation and angst of being human,” he says. “It’s risky but not risqué.”

Is that good?

“It is,” he says. “At the same time, an artist has to reveal more of himself. That’s part of the risky formula. People who know me, who know my work, might see a little of the darkness inside me—inside all of us.”

The show isn’t all about the universality of despair or creative tension. Or maybe it is. Tragedy and comedy are comfy bedmates at Gallery 516 where the heavier “Right Brain, Left Brain” contrasts with brighter pieces like “Evening of the Comet.”

The painting, with its bursts of oranges and yellows, is eye-catching. Yet its central character is a girl with unearthly blue-tinged skin. Eyes closed, she’s oblivious to her surroundings. Bored and beautiful, she reclines listlessly on a sofa. An untouched glass of wine rests on a table nearby. Outside her window, a comet falls against a starry sky.

“It’s a statement on a non-event,” Oden explains, “a reflection on our expectations that never come to fruition, on melancholy.”

Or maybe bourgeois self-absorption?

Perhaps.

Oden’s latest Impulse is to get out of the work’s way.

“Dismiss the ego and be more of a conduit,” he says. “Let ideas flow freely. If they’re not beautiful, well, they’re valid. There is an honesty behind it, a purity behind it.”

Former Gallery 516 owner Jack Hoyle calls this “uncensored consciousness.”

Hoyle is now an independent art dealer and honorary “gallery manager.” Hoyle predicts that Oden’s tribute to the victims of Sept. 11, 2001, “Liberty’s Children,” will some day be considered the most important work to come out of Nevada. The painting will be displayed at the New York State Museum in Albany, N.Y.

Hoyle is also impressed with Oden’s creative motives.

“Ron embarked on this commercial venture, the gallery, but he hasn’t let that interfere with his artistic goals,” Hoyle says. “At least I haven’t seen any evidence of it. What he paints is what you get.”

What Oden paints is the likes of “Red Meat,” a work that depicts a bulldog chewing on a steak. The head of the dog is the head of a man. The colors are jarring.

“The few people who look at it immediately recoil,” Oden says, happily. The work reflects, he says, on humanity’s will to survive, on selfishness, on hostility.

“That’s honesty on a gut level," he says, "and it’s hard to pull off without people hating you."