Published: The Seattle Times, July 2008

 

 

 

The Paris-based, Seattle-bound portrait painter Sergio Ostroverhy comes off as something of a mystic. He rejects the characterization, but it certainly applies for an artist who dreams about Seattle's "cosmic light," who believes his wife has the power to heal and who says painting the human face is like giving birth. There is certainly something mystical and otherworldly about his hyper-realist, oversized portraits of firefighters and others who are depicted staring directly at the viewer in "a personal moment of revelation." Are they contemplating the abyss? Pondering their destiny? Probing yours? "My faces are trying to see something more," Ostroverhy says. "I'm trying to pass on that feeling of transcendence." That explains his famous firefighter portraits: "When you save another person, you are reaching another level of existence," he says. Speaking by phone from his Warhol-esque, clandestine art space known as "The Territory" in the Montparnasse neighbourhood in Paris, Ostroverhy said he surrounds himself with young artists and has developed a passion for teaching his craft. But in this ex-French Foreign Legionnaire's art classes, his "very militarized" students must do push-ups and jog, not just paint. "They are surprised by the experience - but they get into good art schools," he jokes.