Paintings by a Crystal Lake boxing coach will be on display later this month at the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur, Calif.
Gary Dobry – owner of The School of Hard Knocks Boxing Academy in Crystal Lake – works as a painter, tattoo artist and novelist in his spare time.
In September, Dobry embarked on a series of acrylic-on-canvas paintings focusing on movie actress Brenda Venus, who was a love interest of writer Henry Miller when Venus was in her 20s and Miller was in his 80s. Miller’s 4,000 love letters to Venus between 1976 and 1980 was turned into the book “Dear, Dear Brenda.”
Miller, who died in 1980 at the age of 88, was an exotic intellectual who wrote the novel “Tropic of Cancer,” published in Paris in 1934. The novel is known for its graphic descriptions of sex, but it was also considered a literary masterpiece. Miller, advocate of a free-love society, was a point man for the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. He faced obscenity charges when the book was released in the U.S in 1961.
Dobry said Miller has had a profound impact on his life as an artist. Dobry went to college in Paris in the early 1990s and made money the same way Ernest Hemingway did 70 years before, by giving boxing lessons. And, like Hemingway, Dobry weaves boxing into his artwork and he writes about it.
But his true hero is Miller.
“I moved to Paris because I wanted to walk the same streets Miller walked and breathe the same air Miller breathed,” Dobry said. “Life is like a crooked path through the forest. One just follows where it leads.”
Dobry’s exhibition to be shown in Big Sur is titled: “Life After Henry Miller & Ed Pashcke,” also known as the “Mentors Series.”
Dobry’s personal mentor was Ed Paschke, a renowned Chicago painter who died in 2004. To this day, Paschke influences Dobry’s work. Dobry uses stark colors and strong images the same way Paschke did. Dobry said he was Paschke’s apprentice and lifelong friend. And it was a reference letter from Paschke that helped get Dobry accepted to The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Dobry’s last show was in January at the Galerie L’Art de Rien, Paris, France.
His art has been on exhibition with Paschke’s, Andy Warhol’s and Leon Golub’s.
His three novels “Kingdom Come,” “En La Lona” and “In Good Faith” will also become part of the Henry Miller Library.
Venus just finished up her work on “Love and Sex in L.A.,” a film that she wrote, produced and directed.
Dobry’s artistic statement:
An artist takes in everything, an overload on the senses, and out of that abundance of information must find his own unique voice. Brenda and myself were under the influence of two strong voices, Henry Miller and Ed Paschke. Somehow we were able to liberate ourselves from our mentors and find our own voices. In this body of work we join those voices together to sing praise to Miller and Paschke.
