Lewis Bangham

Lewis began his career studying art at Ball State College. Later he studied fine art at the Center for Creative Studies in Detroit Michigan where he also exhibited paintings and drawings at various galleries. In New York City he attended the Art Students League studying with, among others, Paul Jenkins the abstract phenomenist and George Tooker a figurative painter associated with the magic realism movement. After moving to Los Angeles he studied figure drawing under Charles White at Otis Art institute. After graduating from Art Center College he has worked as an artist and illustrator for a variety of clients including for 20th Century Fox, Capital Records, Motown Records, and NASA. He has exhibited at several group shows and is represented in private collections, recently exhibiting at the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco.

Currently Lewis is painting and teaching at the California College of Art and the Art Academy University.

Beyond simple representation or abstraction my current work explores the political and social concerns of today through the perspective of American subcultutre. The images function as a mode for understanding and contextualizing one’s relation to changing cultural history. I want the viewer find something new in the familiar, to viscerally connect with the subject in a way that takes them off the path of normal experience and places them into an alternate narrative of critical reflection. The interaction between art and the viewer can be transformative in the sense that it can influence change.