About
About The Artist
Tom Kranjac (1949-2016) was born in New York and studied Art History at NYU. He was a faculty member of the Columbia University Psychoanalytic Center and a Psychiatrist and Psychoanalyst trained at Columbia Physicians and Surgeons.
As excerpted by Joan Baum’s Art Review in Hamptons.com ’07, Tom Kranjac’s large acrylic and smaller oil-stick abstracts on paper can rightly be called “doctored art”. Painting and photography, early passions, led to the study of art, though a close second, medicine and in particular, psychiatry.
Kranjac, she notes, whose work has been exhibited in several art galleries in NYC and whose striking, blue-hued Oceanscape ’83 appeared on the cover of Dan’s Papers in Southampton also held a premier show at The Gallery at The Southampton Inn with smaller works as well.
Per Baum, ‘The word ‘rhythm’ comes naturally to this multi-talented man who since high school has also been playing jazz guitar. It was clearly painting, however, among all the arts, that claimed his constant and evolving attention, challenging him further to see how he could establish texture and mood with “the least painterly information”.
"You know, life's a lot like improvising jazz", poem by Tom Kranjac, 1963
You know, life's a lot like improvising jazz.
You start with a certain idea,
a motif, a foundation.
You build, you add, you broaden
'til you're flying -breathless.
You grab hold of a run that's you,
It's alive; and
It's like you're breathing, feeling,
and hearing things for the first time;
And it's all beautiful.
Artist’s statement
Art is a passion that has been part of me since my youth. Abstraction is one of my deep and abiding concerns. Recent paintings and drawings explore a nuanced imagery that for me represents a synthesis of longstanding interests in exploring color and gesture and shape and structure-elements that be seen as abstract and those that can be taken as being suggestive of nature. It’s still amazing to me that you can paint, or you can draw a horizontal line, done one close by – widen it, widen it, widen it – and the viewer will most likely relate it to a landscape – almost no matter what you do between those lines. I find joy in creating imagery that’s interesting to me and engaging to others.
Both the single panels and diptychs with their layered surfaces reflect interests I have in the physicality and the sensuousness, the “thingness” of the art object and in the materials and process of painting. The highlighting of brushstrokes is related to my liking of the notion of showing the hand of the artist. Balance and harmony, beauty and lyricism are qualities important to my compositions.
a note from artists wife:
Tom began his work as an artist at age 8 using his father's house paints to paint "target of circles" on a wooden block.
Anecdotally speaking, Tom had a phenomenal eye for art and balance and was asked early on to become a professional photographer, but was on the road to college/pre-med instead.
His small posters sold during the March on Washington in 1966 were very popular. When will War End?
At 20 years of age, Tom became friend and apprentice to the late Helene Aylon while he was at NYU. Ms. Aylon was an American multimedia and eco-feminist artist. Her work can be divided into three phases: process art, anti-nuclear art, and The G-d Project, a feminist commentary on the Hebrew Bible and other established traditions. During that time he was also influenced by the work of Mark Rothko.
Tom's love of jazz was further highlighted when I, reaching out to the late Tal Farlow to see if he would honor Tom's entering his fourth decade...began study with Tal and the late Jack Wilkens as well. Our family became friends with Mr. Farlow and he became the Grand God Father to our son born in the mid 1990's.
In the early 2000's, when I visited Ivan Karp at Okay Harris with Tom's portfolio in hand his comment was: Tom's work is "replete with wholesome goodness". I had Mr. Karp wait while I wrote his words down for fear I would not recall.
The 50th Anniversary Show at Terrain Gallery, 2005 was an honor to be shown with the likes of Robert Motherwell, Ad Reinhardt, Will Barnett, Red Grooms and others.
And it was as well, an honor as well to have a review from Eric Ernst, grandson of Max Ernst with the show at Southampton Inn in 2007.
Tom's art spans six decades. Tom's work is multimedia. From larger abstracts many of which are offered here, to smaller works of collages, drawings, sketches, charcoal, ink, wax marker on cardboard and paper, a vast array of photography, wire sculpture
Where Tom Kranjac Exhibited
Westbeth Gallery, NYC (1970) Group Show
Kraine Club Gallery, NYC (1985), (1986) Group Shows
Riverside Studio, Potterville, NJ (2005)
Terrain Gallery, NYC (2005) 50th Anniversary Exhibition
Terrain Gallery, NYC (2006) “Abstract/Concrete” Exhibition
Terrain Gallery, NYC (2007) “Art: The Criticism That Is Love” Group Exhibition
Terrain Gallery, NYC (Fall 2007) “Line, Shape, Color” Group Exhibition
The Gallery at Southampton Inn, NY (Fall 2007) “Sounds of Summer: The Rush of Autumn” Solo Exhibition
Elaine Benson Gallery, Southampton, NY (2008) “Landscape Treasures” Group Show
Various corporate, institutional and private collections
Publications
Artspeak (1985) “Haiku”
APM Newsletter (2006) “On Internal and Natural Landscapes”
Dan’s Papers (March 2, 2007) Cover art and interview with Marion Wolberg Weiss
Hamptons.com (October 1, 2007) Art Review “Tom Kranjac: Sounds of Summer: The Rush of Autumn”, by Joan Baum
Southampton Press (Oct. 11, 2007) Art Review “Art Offered in Unusual Locations”, by Eric Ernst