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Daily Sound November 30, 2007 Santa Barbara
‘Tis the season for reindeer art.
By Steven Libowitz, Daily Sound Art Editor

Andy Warhol once famously said that everyone in the future would be famous for 15 minutes. Its hard to tell if Santa Barbara artist Brad Nack’s moment will last longer, or whether he’s even arrived at all much beyond our fair city, but the time span of a quarter-hour certainly has meaning for him: that exactly how long it took got every single painting in his annual “100 Percent Reindeer Art” show to sell out last year.

Nack, a longtime resident also known locally as something of a Renaissance man for his interests in music (he once managed Toad The Wet Sprocket and played in a hugely popular outfit The Tan) and now film, in his eighth year of painting the whimsical antlered animals, which will be unveiled tonight at Frame, 901 De La Vina St. beginning at 6 p.m.

But truth be known, the whole thing came about by accident.

“It was a mixture of being both unprepared and then greedy,” said Nack.
About 10 years ago, Nack was invited to a Christmas party at a friend’s house, but he’d neglected to buy a present to bring along, so he decided to throw together a small painting of a reindeer.  The recipient loved it and put the painting above the fireplace, which is where Elaine Esbeck, the owner of Frame, a local frame shop and part time art gallery, saw it a few years later.

Esbeck asked Nack to provide her with a small piece to include in her first Christmas show at her store opening that winter, but he was working exclusively on large paintings at the time, so instead she borrowed the original for display purposes only.

“More than 25 people asked if they could buy it,” Nack recalled. “A light bulb went off in our heads. I thought, ‘Hmmm, why don’t I paint 25 more for next year?’ and we could both make a little money.”

Actually, Nack, a prolific artist who works quickly came up with nearly twice as many mini masterpieces of reindeers, while Esbeck surrounded them with unusual frames that showed off the quirky pieces to best advantage.
“They all sold pretty quickly,” Nack recalled. “So we were off to the races.”

Nowadays, the reindeer art has become a big part of Nack’s at life, taking up 40 percent of his working time (the rest is devoted to much larger and often even more abstract painting. All told he’s painted enough of the antlered beasts to probably pull hundreds of Santa’s sleighs, yet he still manages to come up with new ideas for each year, including 100 fresh works for this year’s show (which runs until Dec. 20.

“I start in right after the New Year’s,” he said. “I order new the canvas boards and colors and then paint the background colors and let them dry. Then I do so thin outlines, getting about 25 going at first. I work on them about three or four times a month, so I get to them about once a week. I’ll work on some other big painting and then go over there and check out the reindeer again. So they evolve and develop over course of a year, and that’s why the expressions are so different. I might do 10 in one day and they have similar expressions and then three weeks later I start another batch and they come out different.”

Fans of Nack’s work are taken by his unique perspective, which although certain unique perspective, which although certainly influenced by a modern art manage to capture the warmth and personality of each animal. Bright colors and odd shapes give each work a unique quality, and taken as a whole offer a full portrait of emotions and personalities.
“They eventually reveal themselves to me,” Nack said. “I don’t sit down and say ‘I want to do a sad or upbeat one,’ I just start with a line and it may be the mouth, or the nose, or an antler or ear, and then all of a sudden I get an inspiration. So they can be morose or quizzical, happy or sad, confused or angry. And if I’m not happy with where it’s going. I just put it aside and rework it later.”

The paintings are generally quite small, usually no more than 5X7 inches in any direction, and often even smaller, and despite the extensive work, the prices are kept commensurately low, with majority priced between $125-$300.
“I put one at $500 because I thought it was so great and it has this beautiful rustic Spanish style frame,” Nack said. “If it doesn’t sell I’ll be happy to keep it. But I’m breaking the mold here because usually if you can make a nice image and paint, your friends with buy it for up to $300. That’s just like the price of a couple good dinners out. Your relatives will say sure, I’ll put it in the bathroom. But anything over $300 and they really have to think about it, it’s real money.
Of course, Nack would love to break into that segment of the art world where his works sell in the thousands of dollars or more- and having simultaneous showing of his reindeer art in New York for the last few years has been a big first step.

“It’s not like I always want to be known as ‘The Reindeer Guy’” Nack said. “But then again, Andy Warhol was the Campbell Soup Guy and he went onto some pretty good places after that.”

- Steven Libowitz/Daily Sound Art Editor

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