DESCRIPTION AND METHOD OF WORK

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Despite their apparent accessibility, Saftel's lively mixed-media works on wood defy classification (Saftel, left, with "Water," 2002, an 86-inch by 78-inch mixed media on wood.) "If anyone can come up with a good word to describe them, I would accept it," says the artist, whose collections of old letters, historical documents and found objects serve as fodder for his compositions. His carved, scored, painted and collaged wood panels are a fusion of elements (symbols, words, metal, fabric, paper and more) that Saftel sets adrift in a sea of intense color. Laden with personal and universal meanings, the works' visual and verbal motifs represent meandering thoughts and memories. Saftel is a landscape artist of sorts, who instead of painting expansive vistas focuses his keen eye on the terrain of our collective psyche.

FAVORITE MEDIUM

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In addition to his works on wood, Saftel also creates Giacometti-esque wood and metal sculptures, as well as works on paper. "I respond to and approach each medium in a different way," he says. "In sculpture, I 'see' an image and then make it, whereas in painting I 'find' an image as I work." Though what's most enjoyable for Saftel changes, he currently prefers works on paper, which he says allow him to "include everything that is happening--what I'm imagining, day-to-day information--as I'm working."

SUBJECT MATTER

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"My subject matter is all-inclusive," Saftel says. "I think about all that it has taken for civilization to arrive at this point in time. American history, in all its glory and sadness, especially interests me." Aware that "we are the result of all that has preceded us," Saftel cautions his viewers to pay more attention to their present, thereby creating a better future, but he avoids sermonizing. "I don't want to create mad, political art," he asserts. "I don't want to say, 'I know more than you.'"

FIRST ARTISTIC INSPIRATION

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"I've always loved art," Saftel says. "I never liked watching television, so it was my way of keeping busy." As a child, he drew endlessly, copying picture books, comic books and nature photography. His mother enrolled him in an art class at an early age, and he says his instructor's copy of Renoir's "Luncheon of the Boating Party" impressed him because the canvas "looked just like it." This initial impression that art had to be an exact copy of the material world was dispelled in 1978, when Saftel attended a Dada and Surrealism exhibit at London's Hayward Gallery. "My whole understanding of art was blown totally open," he says. "It could be an idea or something that represents an idea."

ARTISTIC EVOLUTION

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Saftel started incorporating words into his art around 1992. Dissatisfied with his then-purely abstract paintings, he searched for ways to include personal experiences in his work. "I love to read, and I would get together with friends and talk about all that was going on in the world," he says. "None of that was in my work." One day, he stumbled upon a brief letter from his grandmother, Helen Saftel, which he decided to transcribe onto a work-in-progress. "Lost Letters to H.S.," the resulting panel, "was a revelation," Saftel says.

BIGGEST BREAK

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Saftel points to his move to the South in 1986 as his break. "I've always felt like I was a bit late: I moved to California in 1978 [after the Bay Area's creative explosion in the 1950s and '60s], but when I moved to the South the timing was just right." In Knoxville, Tennessee, Saftel met an artist who offered to show slides of his work to Carlton Cobb, owner of a now-defunct eponymous gallery in Atlanta. Impressed, Cobb began showing Saftel's work, exposing him to a new audience. Another timely introduction was to Cobb's friend Bill Lowe, who later opened The Lowe Gallery in Atlanta. Saftel has exhibited there for the past 12 years. "Bill saw all these spiritual aspects to the purely abstract works I was creating at the time, and it motivated me," Saftel remembers.

MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE

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While working at a carnival in California after graduating from high school, he befriended several Bay Area art students, including Jack O'Brien, whom Saftel cites as a major influence. O'Brien encouraged Saftel to follow his dream of becoming an artist. "I went to art school because of Jack," he says. "I always wanted to, but I might have drifted off if I didn't have an example [to follow]." Saftel also credits Timothy Berry, an instructor at the San Francisco Art Institute, where he earned a B.F.A. in printmaking, saying, "Tim pushed me into the art world. He encouraged me to go to different exhibits and learn about other contemporary artists." Another influence is California artist William Wiley, whom he first met at a post office in California's Marin County. "I had seen his retrospective at [San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art] and told him how much I enjoyed his work," he says. Saftel enthusiastically accepted an invitation to the well-known artist's studio that afternoon. "He was very generous. He gave me a drawing as I was leaving, which he had already rolled up and had by the door before I got there."

AWARDS AND ACCOLADES

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The Tennessee Art Commissions Artist Fellowship, 1999; Tennessee-Israel Visual Artists Exchange, 1998.