Chuck Staley Gallery

Biographical Statement

 

 

Chuck Staley was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and grew up living in a series of small towns in the South, finally settling as a teenager in Florence, Alabama, where he setup his first darkroom. Not long afterwards he was working for the local newspaper as their staff photographer. After graduating from Coffee High School he studied art at the Memphis Academy of Arts and electronics at Georgia Tech, before being drafted into the army during wartime.

 

Fortunate for Staley, his electronics background placed him into the signal corps, where he studied microwave at Ft. Monmouth, N.J., while having free time to shuttle into New York and visit some of the finest Art Museums in the world. After that, it was off to Europe to more advanced schooling and more Art Museums, including the Louvre, where he saw the one piece of art that convinced him that his life would one day be connected to the art world: the Mona Lisa.

 

“I was lucky to be standing there all alone at closing time, looking at the painting, feeling an energy emitting from that work of art that I had never felt before. Being half scientist, half artist, I had to know: was the energy coming from the artwork, or was it energy bestowed on the painting from the thousands of people who had viewed it in the past?”

 

Whatever it was, Staley vowed that one day he would attempt to produce art that stirred the emotions of viewers the way the Mona Lisa affected him that day in Paris years ago.

 

* - *

 

Cut to: Present day and Staley now lives in Los Angeles and has finally found the time to create art once again.  His work, with over 100 originals in his portfolio, falls mostly within the Expressionist category, with bright colors and Surrealistic touches.

 

Staley has always been an artist of one type or another. When he wasn’t working in movies or writing screenplays he was behind the camera directing countless hours of live television and music videos.

And then there were the six years at Television City, directing for Sixty Minutes and the CBS Evening News while writing a novel.

And when Staley isn’t working on his new movie, "Southern Planter," he’s in his California studio creating the thoughtful and painterly artwork for which he is becoming known.

 

 

Artist Statement

 

With my artwork it’s all about vivid colors. I love color – lots of it!  And somewhere along the way I quit caring about whether my artwork accurately depicts a person or object; my purpose is to reach the emotions of the viewer, just as the Mona Lisa affected me years ago.