PAUL STANLEY: Florida Art Exhibitions Announced

Wentworth Gallery will present two art exhibitions by artist, rock icon and legendary KISS frontman Paul Stanley in March. The details are as follows:

Friday, March 19 from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

Wentworth Gallery - Town Center Mall
6000 Glades Road
Boca Raton, Florida

Saturday, March 20 from noon to 2:00 p.m.

Wentworth Gallery - Las Olas
819 E. Las Olas Blvd.
Ft. Lauderdale, Florida

Stanley told RollingStone.com in 2008 that he takes pleasure in knowing his paintings reach different crowds — both KISS fans and art collectors.

"I see people at the gallery who will never go to a KISS show and people at a KISS show that will never go to the gallery. And then there are some people in between," he said. His pieces, mostly four-by-five foot acrylics done in bold colors with intense strokes, brought in $2 million in 2007. His originals fetch as much as $70,000, with limited-edition prints going to $1,000.

When asked by INsite magazine what encouraged or prompted him to pick up the brushes and begin painting at this stage of his life, Stanley said, "About six or seven years ago I was getting divorced and I really, like many people in that position, had a lot going on and a lot that maybe needed to get released. A friend of mine, my best friend, said that I needed to paint and my having never really applied myself to painting, somehow that connected with me and I went out and bought canvasses and paints and brushes and all kinds of other supplies and just decided to throw caution to the wind. The only thing that I was clear on from the get-go was that I wasn't interested in making a flower pot look like a flower pot. I was more interested in painting a reality that didn't necessarily have to be a literal or visual depiction of something so I wanted to approach it more of a stream of consciousness, where perhaps instead of using words I was using colors and textures to put my emotions, or what was going on inside me, on canvas. It was purely a relief and, I guess, cathartic therapy for me that once other people started seeing clearly connected with them."