Andrew Ogus

I was born in and raised near Washington D.C. The first of two separate year long forays to the Middle East led to a childhood sojourn in Rome. A later visit to Pompeii continues to influence me today: my father was shown certain murals while the women and children waited in an ancient street. He never told me what they were.

In 1970 I spent the first of three summers at the Cummington Community of the Arts in Massachusetts before moving to the West Coast to attend the California College of Arts and Crafts.

In the 1980s I began studying printmaking at Fort Mason, and was among the Fort Mason Printmakers for over twenty years. A drawing class led me to saucing papers with color washes and then adding lithography ink with a press. Now I collage printed scraps on sauced papers. 

After years of interpreting classical mythology in gay male terms, I draw figures from personal family postcards from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, cartes de visite from the 19th century, or old photos found on line, sometimes in combination with modern models. Birds, fish, or animals appear as each drawing demands.

All my subjects are a conduit for exploring my fascination with different kinds of marks, and how a simple variation in a line or a tiny stroke can be transformational. 

Rather than create an idealized perfection, my drawings are an attempt to explore the extraordinary beauty of ordinary people, to recapture those ancient and more recently vanished lives, and to preserve our own.

And I am always hoping to make something beautiful.