Big Reactions

Donald Forkner doesn’t appear to be a backyard Van Gogh. The 44-year-old father’s gentle brown eyes, salt-and-pepper hair and plain-spoken manner belie a powerful, inner vision that he conveys through his colorful, large-scale paintings.

His works are featured in an exhibition that opened Saturday at the Brand Library Art Galleries in Glendale.

Especially striking is the 6-foot-by-5-foot mural-like canvas titled “Relative Reality.”

The piece is a kaleidoscope of imagery with depictions of pinup Betty Page, the Space Shuttle, Stonehenge, the Hindu goddess Shiva and athlete O.J. Simpson sharing space with a back view of Forkner’s son and his deceased pet beagle, Cody, shown with a halo over his head.

These figures swirl about the central sphere of the Earth, with Einstein’s face and the formula E=mc2painted over it.

“As the painting evolved, images would affect me, and I would put them in,” Forkner said in a recent interview. “It started out as a different painting with my little boy and a sunflower. I drew in that world because this was like my little boy’s world. Then I got the idea of putting Betty Page in there because my little boy’s going to be faced with the temptations of the flesh in life. Page is the woman that epitomizes that for me.”

“Relative Reality” is part of Forkner’s “Therapy Series,” a collection of canvases he has worked on for two years. Forkner, who lives in Whittier and works as a sizing specialist for a Santa Fe Springs supply company, said the series has served as a self-prescribed treatment for daily frustrations.

“They’re kind of my reactions to what’s going on in my life at the time,” Forkner said. “I get kind of discouraged with what I see in our society--almost scared at times with what’s going on.

“So when I go out to my studio for three or four hours at a time, I basically shut off the world.”

The large, expressionistic canvas “Stress,” with its main image of a screaming skull set on a violent background of red, black and brown streaks, was Forkner’s way of dealing with a combination of pressures from family and work that resulted in severe headaches.

“Basically, I felt like screaming,” Forkner said. “That’s why the painting was so emotive. I threw paint at it. I scratched it. I hit it. The image of the screaming skull evolved because that’s the way I felt.”

Up in the left-hand corner of “Stress” is a blue ball with a finch in it--a small circle of peace and happiness in this field of pain--an image of hope in Forkner’s least hopeful work.

Forkner, who earned a bachelor’s degree in fine arts in 1975 from Rio Hondo College in Whittier, has had one-man shows in the Whittier-Santa Fe Springs-La Habra area and has been part of group shows at Cal Poly Pomona and elsewhere.

But his upcoming show at the Brand Library Art Galleries with mixed-media artist Susan Sandler should be special.

“I work big and finding venues where you can show big work is tough,” he said. “That’s why I applied to show at their Skylight Gallery.”

BE THERE

“The Therapy Series” by Donald Forkner and “Hybrid Illusions” by Susan Sandler at the Brand Library Art Galleries, 1601 W. Mountain St., Glendale. Through Sept. 11. Gallery hours: Tuesday and Thursday 1-9 p.m., Wednesday 1-6 p.m., Friday and Saturday 1-5 p.m. Call (818) 548-2051.