Artist's Profile
Born in 1947 in Toronto, Hillel Kagan has been a professional artist since graduation from Central Technical School Art Institute in 1967. He began showing works in 1975 and has been a full time painter since 1985. He has had shows, both solo and group in private and public galleries. Hillel is currently self represented and if you're interested in more information please feel free to contact him directly.
For additional information and images please go to the following links:
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/yourgallery/artist/details.php?id=522
http://www.artprocess.com/portfolio?artist_id=403&fname=HILLEL&lname=KAGAN
http://www.ccca.ca/artists/artist_info.html?languagePref=en&link_id=2400&artist=Hillel+Kagan
E-Mail Address: dhkagan@yahoo.com
About The Subway Paintings
I have lived and worked in Toronto all my life. I am a painter of figurative works, particularly the human figure within enclosed spaces. That's what the city is to me, a series of enclosed spaces linked together by sidewalks, roads, underground malls, buses and subways. There are a few spaces where we give ourselves a reprieve from all this enclosement. Some parks and ravines to give ourselves the illusion of being outdoors in nature. As an urban person this lack of so called nature is quite natural for me. To paraphrase Jackson Pollock "We are nature".
I'm a "paint what I see" kind of artist. A believer in the struggle to achieve the purely innocent eye while honing the faculties of measurement of the creative physicist. That is, the inner clock as opposed to the exterior clocks and devices of grids and plumb lines and computers. In this manner the potential to discover fresh form is infinite. Art can't change the world but it can change an individual's perceptive abilities thereby increasing their interest and enhancing their lives.
The paintings I'm displaying here are from a series of works produced from 1996-2005. They were generally exhibited as "The Subway Paintings". The motif has no special meaning or social significance for me other than the fact that while riding the subway one day,it occured to me that I was in this long rectangularly shaped cubic room that was hurtling through space and time. The train was moving and the people in it were moving. The human figure, deep space and movement. These are all the things that are of interest to me. Anonymous people busily moving about their enclosed urban environment.
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All images © Hillel Kagan
