Marc Zimmerman "Long Face Totem Sculpture 1" Glazed Ceramic, 65 Inches Tall, Elongated Face, Earth Tones, Blue Accents, Contemporary Art West Coast

Details

Description

The elongated face element in the upper section of this totem gives it a gravity and contemplative quality that connects … Read more The elongated face element in the upper section of this totem gives it a gravity and contemplative quality that connects it to ancient sculptural traditions from Africa, the Pacific, and pre-Columbian America, without quoting any of them directly. Zimmerman has absorbed these traditions through a lifetime of looking and found a way to work with their emotional vocabulary in a language that is entirely his own. Deep earth tones warm throughout the column while blue sphere elements provide punctuation and rhythm. The face looks outward with a composed, unhurried gaze that gives the room it inhabits a different quality of attention. An ideal work for an interior setting where it can be encountered at eye level: an entryway, a study, a bedroom where you want something with genuine sculptural presence and spiritual weight.

ARTIST BIO:
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