Biography
Feldsott is a California-based painter whose intuitive, expressionistic works examine the primordial energies that make up our collective stories. Feldsott’s paintings are continually rife with allusions to various spiritual, political, and environmental movements and atrocities, both ancient and contemporary. His materials, like his subjects, point to natural and human history, incorporating crushed alabaster, human and plant material, handmade paints, metallic substances, and other medicinal elements into his work. Critic Robert C. Morgan writes on Feldsott: “his work holds two important qualities: The use of the intuitive gestures, marks, and forms that carry a highly charged manner of delivery; and, secondly, a sense of critical consciousness derived through the exploration of a fundamental mythical content on which his paintings largely depend.”
The broad timeline of Feldsott’s subject matter asserts a throughline between ancient and contemporary beliefs and systems of power. Topics in his paintings range from early religion and tribal cultures, to the events that dominate current-day news, such as police brutality, ongoing war crimes, and the COVID-19 pandemic. His style, too, aptly suspends his imagery between ancient and contemporary times. Primitive markings call back to early humanity, while neo-expressionist roots point to art of the late 20th century. Deeply spiritual, and often, deeply violent, Feldsott’s imagery is represented with a visceral intensity, revealing for viewers the cyclical nature of humanity.
Early in Feldsott’s career, while he was enrolled in the graduate program at California College of the Arts, despite his lack of undergraduate study, his work was included in two iconic shows at SFMoMA: Fetishes (1975), which focused on artists who incorporated shamanic elements into their work, and The Aesthetics of Graffiti (1979), which showcased artists blending street art with fine art. Despite his early success in the art world, Feldsott was keen to learn the shamanistic practices that were already influencing his artwork. He spent the next few decades in the Western Amazonian Base in Ecuador, where he assisted environmental efforts and trained as a traditional healer with indigenous groups. Today, Feldsott and his partner, Dee, maintain a robust healing practice in their community, focusing their efforts on applying traditional knowledge to modern life.
For Feldsott, healing and painting are connected actions. Feldsott’s understanding of foreign and ancient cultures are absorbed into his holistic art practice and moral perspective, which are, for him, indivisible. With a serious, studied sensitivity, Feldsott continues to approach topics that are far outside of many artists’ comfort zones, and conveys through his marks some of the spiritual knowledge that society has discarded in favor of progress. In Peter Clothier’s words, Feldsott’s works “ask us, urgently, to reconsider the role of the metaphysical in our lives and art in a graver, more demanding way.”
Education
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
California College of the Arts
Exhibitions
2024 My Responsibility, Wienholt Projects, Los Angeles, CA
2023 Looking West, Santa Monica Art Museum, Los Angeles, CA
2022 Howls That Wake Us in the Night, Amelie A. Wallace Gallery, SUNY College at Old Westbury, NY
2020 Love in the Time of Covid 19 GAG Projects, Adelaide, Australia
2020 The de Young Open de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA
2016 My Enemy at Blessed Unrest, Counter Pulse Theatre, San Francisco, CA
2017 Chants of Resistance, Mexican Museum, San Francisco, CA
2015 Feldsott B., Sakata Garo Gallery, Sacramento, CA
2015 Annunciations, Richmond Art Center, Richmond, CA
2015 Bioneer’s Conference, Marin County Civic Center, San Rafael, CA
2013 My Enemy Cross Country Tour
2013 Cries, Chants, Shouts & Whispers, Vendome Gallery, New York City, NY
2013 Cries, Chants, Shouts & Whispers, Meridian Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2011 The Early Works, Paul Mahder Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2011 The LA Art Show, Los Angeles, CA
2008 Still Standing, Paul Mahder Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2004 Untitled, Blue Room Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2004 Untitled, Rachel Darnell Gallery, Santa Fe, AZ
2003 Works from the Permanent Collection, Bolinas Museum, Bolinas, CA
2002 Los Icaros de Los Pinturas, Museo de Guayasamin, Quito, Ecuador
1979 The Aesthetics of Graffiti, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
1978 Gallery Artists, Marianne Deson Gallery, Chicago, IL
1978 Fetish Myth and Legend, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, IL
1978 Drawings USA National Tour, Minnesota Museum of Art, Minneapolis, MN
1977 Six Artists, Diablo Valley College Art Gallery, Pleasant Hill, CA
1976 Surfaces and Image, Walnut Creek Civic Arts Gallery, Walnut Creek, CA
1975 Fetishes, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
1974 Untitled, Michael Wyman Gallery, Chicago, IL
1974 Untitled, E. B. Crocker Art Gallery, Sacramento, CA
Selected Private Collections
Bolinas Museum, Bolinas, CA
David Spon, McLean, VA
The Lannon Foundation, Palm Beach, FL
Museo de Guayasamin, Quito, Ecuador
Peter Selz, Berkeley, CA
Rena Branstein, San Francisco, CA
United Gas and Pipeline Company, Houston, TX