About the Artist
In the spring of 1936, with four feet of snow on the ground, in a tar paper shanty and to a hopeful half Indian daughter of the farm, one Wilfred Sarr was born. "You'll be darn lucky to raise this one", was about all the Dr. could say.
At kindergarten Miss Coolin noticed Wilfred drew only two sides of a building while everyone else was drawing three. Two sides were all one could see from any point of view. Ah, he had some grasp of perspective.
Waking up one morning in California at the base of the Sierras was, for Wil, ARRIVING. During the grades, his desk was the center of attention for the whole class from ten to eleven every Friday, as they watched Wilfred draw. The rest was all black and white. He was a non-issue.
His sophomore year of high school saw the first of Mad Comics. Wilfred wanted to join Ernie Kovacs and crew...who were having fun...not picking cotton.
College saw him as a psych major ( he just knew he was crazy ). School was easy, but it had no interest in his persistent questions. He'd best appeal to naked space than the finite university for unsolid answers.
Driving back to Germany from Barcelona on September 30, 1960, Wilfred Sarr had a realization. He would never be an M.D. nor a Shrink with all those perks. He'd do what he had always wanted to do; what he had to do....his calling...he'd come in the back door...be an artist by default.
Like most of us starting out, Wilfred desperately wanted to be noticed. The work needed to be arresting; shocking. He settled for an x-ray look at torture; that would work.
In 1967 he had another realization; he returned to Fun. Levity to outweigh gravity. Wil never looked back. But levity required REAL work...lots of work..but fun work.
In 1968, another epiphany. He began to see beauty for itself. Somehow it seemed beauty was the foundation...the support...for levity. The experience of beauty was primal... PRIMEVIL... FIRST... then, levity. He couldn't stand the intensity. He unraveled in series of nervous breakdowns. LIBERATING!
In 1969 Wilfred had the great good fortune to recognize in a happy, funny, kind, older man "something else and beyond ". This man could laugh in the face of atom bombs. Old Man George knew about fun and beauty and how to live that way. He, being a true artist of living, showed Wilfred how to approach that art with mere paint and canvas. Crude as it was, it was the starting place.
Stage by stage, from "Shock and Awe" to light heartedness, and some 5000 paintings later ( not one of which impressed George, the art-guru), Wilfred Sarr stands on the threshold of yet another self re-invention. With no looking back and no expectations, he looks to each new, pregnant day for its message and a way to convey that to others.