My Message:
“My feelings about guns are that they are scary and dangerous. When I make one of my pieces, I create a background and then I camouflage the gun to make it almost invisible. The gun is still there but it’s hard to see, or you don’t see it for what it really is. Hopefully, my art will get people talking about gun safety and prevention of violence. I wish that guns were only in an art gallery.”
Charles Gitnick, June 2012 (Age 10)
Charles uses a variety of styles and techniques to create his 3D Gun Art. His abstract paintings, created by using a spring-loaded toy air rifle and other techniques, incorporate the gun but make it either disappear into the piece or take on a new association. His art blurs the focus on the gun within it and evokes provocative thought and dialog.
Charles’ homage to Jackson Pollock camouflages the gun so that it disappears. The paint dripped uniformly upon the background and over the protruding gun merges the three-dimensional planes into a single flat plane in which the gun melds into the colored field. This creates a lush depth in which the vicious gun can hide.
For his spray technique, Charles uses an air-powered shotgun to propel the paint onto the canvas, creating a design in which the gun disappears.
In his “association” theme, Charles combines a symbolic iconic gun with happy colors, or with other forms of joviality, which create association by fusing an element of childlike purity with a fierce metal gun.
This work, using three primary colors, exemplifies the theme of association. The work combines the child-like bright pure primary colors found on baby blocks with the extreme element of the iconic gun.
The titles of each piece of Charles’ art capture the essence of his work. He often tributes artists he admires such as Jean Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock as seen in his work “Pollock Pistol.” He adds an extra punch by choosing titles such as “Razor Red Uzi” and “Blood Red Spray.” He also juxtaposes words to set up a counter association as with “Gun Play” and “16 Candles.”
Charles’ art is visually appealing. The colors in “Beautiful Blues” are harmoniously balanced. In “Shooting Music” the black paint on white background resembles sheet music.