Buffalo, NY
Here’s what I see while surrounded by the artwork of Tony Nash: a live webcam of goldfish swimming in a tank next to a human skull, an oil portrait of a morel mushroom, deftly painted views of a freeway overpass and picturesque grain silos, a bold shark floating in a bright blue sea, neatly outlined and quirkily colored digital busts of people on their birthdays, a whole lot of QR codes, and an irresistibly goofy music video ode to the ice boom. What’s it all got in common? That it’s the world around here. It’s the scene inside and the outside, on the internet and in the forest, peopled by folks and creatures familiar and unknown. Sometimes it needs to be represented by oil on canvas, sometimes with an open-source program called GIMP and a digital synthesizer. Nash, who has been making art for decades, impresses with the open-armed vitality of his vision, and inspires more in return.
—Lori Waxman 11/12/16 12:55 PM