The two constants in my work have been the narrative and the intensity of the  visual. I want the viewer to be intoxicated and perplexed by how I make my  paintings and intrigued by the stories I’m trying to tell. I’m interested in human  dynamics whether they be social, political, or emotional. 

- Art needs to have meaning, to be done as if it’s existence can change the world. A  lot  of  art  gets  too  caught  up  in  the  weeds  of  “art  for  arts  sake”,  art  about  art, and  art  lingo/jargon.  I  don’t  know  much  about  that  other  than  the  endeavor  of making art, at its core, should be pure. When it’s done with that motive it takes the artist as he/she is making it and subsequently the viewer, to somewhere new and exhilarating.  

-  Fashion  is  ephemeral,  so  I  never  concern  myself  with  what  is  fashionable, which  in  the  end  puts  me  in  and  out  of  fashion  depending  on what  decade  my work is being considered. I’ve been doing some version of the same thing for 50 years – narrative as the frame combined with the visual as the draw, the hook.  

- At the elemental level of life itself, if you stop and think, everything is essentially something  we  do  to  keep  ourselves  busy  between  birth  and  death.  The  in between  is  the  variable  from  one  person  to  the  next.  Are  you  decent,  are  you compassionate,  do  you  seek  truth  and  a  clear  understanding  of  reality?  Those are the questions I ponder to justify my life and what I do with my time.  - What makes us what we are? 

- I relate to this quote by Fellini “I put myself at the service of my fantasies.”  

- Art should have quality of craft, clarity of purpose, and meaning.

Ira Upin was born in Chicago in 1948, left for college in 1966. He got his BFA in painting from the University of Illinois in 1971, got his MFA in painting at the Hoffberger School of Painting at MICA in 1973, left Baltimore with a Tiffany Foundation Grant in hand and moved to Philadelphia where he has lived and worked ever since.