Posts Tagged ‘john f. kennedy’
Alen Salerian’s JFK Paintings
Washington psychiatrist Alen Salerian is no stranger to the visual arts. His mother, Kristin Saleri, was a painter of some note in his native Turkey, and two years ago he got into a dustup with his landlord about a statuary garden he placed in front of his Friendship Heights office. Saleri died in 2006; Salerian told City Paper’s Jessica Gould at the time that the garden was a tribute to her.
Her death also helped trigger Salerian’s most recent artistic impulse, the more than 100 paintings he’s done about President Kennedy. That, and the death of Salerian’s friend Hrant Dink, the Turkish-Armenian newspaper editor who was assassinated in early 2007.
“I’m not a painter,” Salerian says in the offices of the Washington Center for Psychiatry, where his paintings adorn most of the public surfaces—the foyer, the reception desk, two reception rooms. There are 38 paintings on view here, and Salerian has plans for an exhibit of his complete JFK oeuvre at a different venue to coincide with the 46th anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination on Nov. 22. “I do Kennedy research. I began investigating his life, and the discoveries I made profoundly affected me and depressed me,” he says.
