Marc Zimmerman "Paws in Play" Oil Painting, Two Cats in Tropical Jungle, Black and Gold Cats, Pink Hibiscus, Contemporary Art West Coast

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Two cats are locked in a moment of play among dense tropical foliage, a sleek black cat and a golden … Read more Two cats are locked in a moment of play among dense tropical foliage, a sleek black cat and a golden one intertwined in the way cats intertwine, with total physical commitment and total mutual absorption. Large pink hibiscus flowers and deep green leaves frame the scene in Zimmerman's most lush botanical mode. The black cat's dark form against all that vivid botanical color creates one of the strongest graphic contrasts in the collection, while the golden cat brings the warmth that keeps the composition from becoming too stark. The animals are painted with genuine naturalism and affection within a setting that is pure invented fantasy. For a collector who wants figurative animal painting handled with real skill and genuine joy in a setting worthy of the subjects.

Marc Zimmerman is an American painter and ceramic sculptor based in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. For more than four decades, his work has opened doors into imagined worlds: lush jungles filled with fantastical botanical forms, sun-drenched Mediterranean villages, vibrant florals, and ceramic totems that blend ancient influences with a distinctly contemporary vision. Zimmerman's artistic language was shaped by an unusually varied career. His background as a woodcut printmaker brought compositional clarity and strong graphic structure to his paintings, while the influence of Henri Rousseau and Paul Gauguin inspired his richly imagined landscapes. Time spent living and painting in Kauai, along with extensive travel throughout Mexico and Europe, infused his work with the saturated light, color, and atmosphere that define his celebrated Jungle, Village, and Tropical Floral series.

In recent years, Zimmerman returned to his earliest passion, clay, creating his Garden Totem series from hand-sculpted and individually glazed ceramic elements stacked into spontaneous vertical compositions. Rooted in his pottery experience in Venice Beach during the 1960s and 70s, these works bring the same exuberance, movement, and inventive use of color found throughout his paintings into three-dimensional form. His work is represented by galleries in California, Florida, and New York, and is held in private collections throughout the United States and internationally. See less