Entertainment
G R E AT T H I N G S TO D O I N O K L A H O M A
The Different Sides of P.S. Gordon’s Art Gordon’s two art shows in April feature very different subjects.
PHOTOS COURTESY P.S. GORDON.
H
olding two art shows at the same time might seem redundant, but for painter P.S. Gordon it was a necessity. While the two shows, which open April 1, both showcase Gordon’s familiar style, they feature very different subjects. Mrs. Lennox and the Gift of Falling Snow, held at Living Arts in Tulsa, features portraits of male performance artists dressed in women’s clothing and a series of paintings Gordon painted shortly after being diagnosed as HIV positive. Recent Works, at the Hardesty Arts Center in Tulsa, will showcase paintings with Gordon’s more traditional subjects. Mrs. Lennox and the Falling Snow would not have been possible without Gordon’s recent public disclosure of being HIV positive because of how closely the subjects are linked to his experience with the disease, he says. Gordon painted the first Mrs. Lennox painting 20 years ago, though some of the paintings are more recent.. “When I met Mrs. Lennox, we were at a fundraiser [for people with AIDS],” he says. We had friends who were dying. Bankers and realtors and artists, musicians … they were all dying. So we were doing all we could as a group to try to make as much money as we could for those who didn’t have anything. We didn’t know what was going on. We just had no idea, except that part of our friends were dying, and they were young.”
The Gift of Falling Snow series was painted after he was diagnosed as HIV positive. “I couldn’t talk about these paintings without disclosing,” he says. “I don’t know how to talk about them without being able to discuss the force behind them, and that was a really strong, powerful voice in my head that kept screaming at me: ‘You’re going to die. How are you going to deal with this?’” He ended up relating his diagnosis to the idea of falling snow, saying he knew the snow was coming, but not when it was coming, how bad it was going to be or what effect it would have on him. APRIL 2016 | WWW.OKMAG.COM
97