Paul Levitt, Artist

Like many artists living in Hawaii, Paul Levitt is an expatriate from another world and culture. Living most of his life on the gritty streets of the lower New York City warehouse district known as Soho, Levitt was witness to and a participant in several of the art movements that define late 20th century art in America.

Raised by an art teacher mother and a building contractor father, Levitt grew up along the Passaic River In New Jersey, just minutes away from the throbbing cultural Mecca of Manhattan. He attended Tyler School of Art in Rome and Philadelphia and received his MFA from Rutgers University in New Jersey. Levitt began his professional art career as a printmaker, assisting artists like Joan Snyder and Italo Scanga with complex etchings and lithographs. Eventually Levitt abandoned printmaking to concentrate more on found-objects sculpture and painting.

His wife who is originally from the islands first introduced Levitt to Hawaii. After making annual visits to Hawaii for ten years, he and his wife decided to make it their home and relocated to Oahu in 1997. Since arriving in Hawaii, Levitt has become a part of the thriving local art scene, teaching painting classes at the Honolulu Academy of Arts and exhibiting his paintings at several Honolulu galleries. His recent paintings and photographs of tropical flowers are a departure from the abstract images he has been known for, but all of his work exhibits the same obsession with color, patterns, and unexpected combinations.

Paul was the Laser Eye Center of Hawaii’s ‘Art of Vision’ Gallery’s inaugural artist. Being a patient of Laser Eye Center of Hawaii, it was only fitting to feature his beautiful artwork first. His show titled, “Listen With Your Eyes” was on display from May 10 through September 27, 2002. His wife and poet, Robin Lung, wrote the following in honor of his show:

Listen With Your Eyes

Just listen with your eyes,
Said the blind man
Who painted masterpieces of sound,
Blowing shimmering visions
From every instrument he touched,
Singing from the bottom
Of his gut and the heights
Of his mind, and with one
Long, masterful note,
Opening your groin, your heart,
And every pore along
The length of your spine.

Please tell me, he said,
With a master’s curiosity,
How the color green can sing
So clearly at times and then
Groan in muffled misery?

Just when does a landscape
Begin to play its overture
As you approach it on the train,
And how softly does it chant
As it reemerges after
A sultry summer rain?

And in the moments when you
Stand in front of a vision
So true that the world
Comes easily to a stop
And you begin to listen with your eyes,
How silent is the stillness
That envelops your heart?

Robin Lung – May 2002