WORCESTER, MASS -- August 27, 2002 -- The men are rugged, handsome and have exaggerated muscles. The women have big breasts, impossible waists, high cheek bones and straight noses. Some adults shudder at our culture’s human-toy imagery, arguing against its unrealistic role modeling. In the oil painting exhibition called, "Idoll," Lawrence Strauss has engaged his fascination with ideal forms, a quality he finds in human nature itself. The show has been called "Idoll" because, as Strauss explained, "in these pictures I'm trying to make a relationship between my life-long interest in our culture's idealized images and people’s ancient practice of making human-form idols ... and I launched into my exploration from the starting point of my sons' action figures."

"Idoll" will be at the Prints and the Potter Gallery, 142 Highland St, Worcester, Mass. September 12 - October 5. A reception that’s free and open to the public will be held September 12 from 6 - 8 PM with a talk by the artist at 7 PM.

Strauss said that the reason he chose this subject was a recent visit to his parent’s house. “I was there in about February and my father told me about a portfolio in his basement of my pre-teen and teen-age drawings. It was a revelation, because in these drawings I found that what attracted me to art had nothing to do with making pretty pictures. In this blue vinyl portfolio are monsters and aliens and spacemen and battles and superheroes and rock stars and big-breasted women and handsome-looking men. And these same themes are drawn over and over again, mostly without ever changing my point of view.” Strauss feels that his earliest art-making was about understanding an overwhelming world, as he explained, "what does it mean to be becoming a man? What is a woman? What is death? Drawing was a way for me to answer for myself, as a sheltered, suburban, American, inward-directed child, ‘what is life?’"

After this discovery Strauss said it felt important to him, "when I realized that my early instincts for art-making are probably at the root of all art-making. Ancient idol-makers were trying, in the creation of human-featured deities, to take some control over an uncontrollable world. The idols visually express the qualities needed by the peoples to prosper, or even just survive. Like fertility, represented by large or sometimes cupped breasts or an exaggerated vagina or penis. Also protection, symbolized by broad shoulders, large eyes. And I’ve been wondering about comfort, too." Finding similarity between these ancient inclinations and his own boyhood drawings led him in his new paintings to reconnect with making art as a way to manage life.

And, using his Second Boston School training, which was based on making art from seeing, he found in his sons’ action figures and other toys, the potential for working through his big questions today. "I decided to apply my adult practice of painting from life with my sons' action figures, which was just an easy place for me to find idealized human imagery. And, like my children can't help but reveal their stages of development in how they play with these toys, in my paintings I feel it's a record of my personal development." Strauss considers this series a descent into his roots to discover what he's really all about. "I have found in these pictures that sometimes it's to have the joy of just playing, sometimes it's to love, sometimes it's being sad, sometimes it's asking why. And, a lot of the time it's to record -- really to assert, as clearly as anyway I have found -- who I am today."

As a result of these different attitudes, the paintings, which will be shown alongside other still lifes of things that have special significance to Strauss, offer some variety of approaches to his subject. In some, he has taken an iconic approach as in "Male Hero" which presents a straight-on, head only view against a gold-colored background. In "Self-portrait as Captain Action," Strauss has made an unsettling, whole-figure image of a toy's body, but the head is that of the painter; and the elongated neck positions the painter's head at the top right of the painting and it's cut off just above the eyes. The palette is earth colors throughout, and he has explored its use. Strauss said, "it's a main focus of mine to find color harmonies that work on the levels of beauty and illusion."

Lawrence Strauss is a painter who tries to visually represent his core understanding of his subject; he tries to bring the inside of his subject out. He was schooled by what’s known as the Second School of Boston Painters (also called Expressionists), which includes David Aronson, John Wilson and Arthur Polonsky. His paintings may be seen at www.straussandstrauss.com, click on “our work” and then choose “art retrospective”.

The Prints and The Potter Gallery is at 142 Highland St in Worcester (at the corner of Highland and West Streets). The gallery’s phone is 508-752-2170. Usual gallery hours are 10 AM - 5:30 PM Mondays, Tuesdays, Fridays; Saturdays 10 AM - 5 PM; Wednesdays and Thursdays 10 AM - 7 PM.