Berberian at the artistic gate

by Angelo Marinosci, Jr.

Excerpted from Motif Magazine

John Berberian, admitted to me that all his life he was surrounded by all this: the arts, opera music, large screen movies and a full range of other expressive forms, yet was not quite sure of how any of it has influenced his own great talents in drawing... I mean drawing... finely crafted, traditional drawing of life sized detailed full-figure portraiture... and all with the simplest of tools charcoal, and fine point pencil. We are talking about native, uncultivated, instinctual talent of scale: proportion line and shade... all capturing the essence of what his gaze falls upon... "When I draw people from the past... I'm bringing them back to life... I'm experiencing a connection to them... They pop off the page and speak to me" says John Berberian. Usually his stuff results from researching them in books, flims, photos... the Civil War characters, the victims/survivors of the RMS Titanic sinking, etc... some of which is on permanent display at the main museum in Fall River's, Battleship Cove.

Berberian specializes in doing important historical characters at a life-size scale, people like the portrait of "Buffalo Bill Cody" that was on view at the Powers building across from our own state capital... John is a self-made, self-taught, very dedicated and refreshingly ego-less artist.