Photo by Michael Donahue // Buy this photo
Artist Elisha Gold with his artwork at Gallery Fifty Six.
When he was 16, Elisha Gold wrote “I Can Draw Anything” on a board and waited for customers at a Mardi Gras event in Biloxi.
“A kid was like, ‘You cannot paint anything,’” Gold said. “That statement was just disturbing to him. I was like, ‘Yes, I can. I’ll prove it.’
Photo by Michael Donahue
Artist Elisha Gold with his artwork at Gallery Fifty Six.
Elisha Gold's "The Force."
The little boy said he wanted a “a blue monster truck jumping over a red, green and pink car with a big flag in the back of the truck with fireworks.”
“I spent at least half an hour. I painted it on his face. His dad gave me five bucks. He’s like, ‘I can’t believe you did that. He was the happiest little kid in the world.’”
Gold, 23, uses bigger canvases for the paintings in his show, “Forgive Your Enemies,” on view through February at Gallery Fifty Six at 2256 Central. Instead of monster cars, the exhibit includes tanks, planes, a helicopter and lots of explosions.
“I used to draw little military soldiers and tanks blowing each other up. I grew up with GI Joe and Transformers. I told my mom when I was 3 I wanted to be a robot. I told her later I wanted to be a robotic engineer. There’s something about this idea of being strong and not dying and being repairable.”
An adjunct professor of fine arts at the University of Memphis, Gold’s creativity doesn’t stop at painting; he’s also a sculptor. His works include a life-sized steel sunflower on a stem commissioned by Memphis Botanic Garden. He used M-16 bullet shells for the seed pods.
Gold, who was born in Maui and grew up in Gulfport, took machine shop and welding shop in high school. “I was making silly stuff like battle axes and body armor.”
He also made life-sized sculptures. “I made a guitarist rocking out with a saw-blade mohawk. I put it in an art contest and it won. Some old people (living in) a nice little white house with little pillars put it in their rose garden.”
His new show contains “probably the most violent work I’ve ever made.”
Works include “Destroyer,” which shows a destroyer firing upon an airfield; “KRAAM,” which features a tank ripping apart; and “Sunday Morning,” which depicts the Pearl Harbor attack with Air Force fighter planes exploding.
His painting, which inspired the title of the show, depicts two soldiers, an older one and a younger one. “They’re shaking hands and they’re both holding automatic rifles. I didn’t give them helmets. You can’t tell if they’re on the same side or not.”
The older soldier says, “Always forgive your enemies!” And the younger one replies, “Nothing annoys them so much.”
“When you look at these paintings you don’t see enemies. I left the idea there’s really no enemies.”
The common theme to the paintings is “ideas that make you think about power, truth and explosions.”
And, he added, “I want to get to the raw, simple aggression. People love explosions. People watch NASCAR ’cause they want to see the cars blow up and fly everywhere.
“There’s violence in our world every day and it’s just a part of life. TV’s always like ‘Violence, violence, violence, violence.’ I’m trying to express it in a more entertaining, beautiful way. Like fireworks. Everybody loves fireworks.”
Many of the paintings are in vivid reds, blacks and yellows. “If you notice, six of these nine paintings have the same yellow. That yellow I love. There’s nothing brighter than that ‘sunrise yellow.’”
Some of Gold’s paintings have the Roy Lichtenstein cartoon look. “I’m not trying to hide that. Everybody’s like, ‘Oh, did you ever hear of Lichtenstein?’ I’m like, ‘I think I have. I did go to art school.’”
Gold is a “huge Lichtenstein fan,” particularly the paintings he did between 1960 to 1965. “I love the energy in those works.”
Most of those paintings “have words and they try to communicate to you.”
Gold shares that quality in his paintings and sculptures. “I want to connect and be direct with the viewer.”
Contact Michael Donahue at 529-2797 or e-mail donahue@commercialappeal.com.
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