Charles Wish

Charles Wish is an American artist best known for visually fusing Regionalism imagery with 16th - 19th century South Asian, Tantra & Buddhist symbolism and motifs.

Confronting the information age challenges of extreme, cultural contrariety, cross-cultural interaction and America’s own internal culture war, Wish draws from a diverse range of influences to deliver his style of "surregional" paintings. Citing local artists including Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton (as well as many anonymous artisans of a foreign, primal world) Wish thoughtfully combines the ontological symbolism of an esoteric philosophy with some of rural-America’s most selfsame figures and scenes.

After spending four years (1999–2003) at a Ramakrishna, Hindu monastery (as a student of South-Asian symbolism and iconography) Wish would return to the San Fernando Valley, California not far from where he spent his formative years. Wish now resides and maintains a studio in Elk County, PA, where he and his wife are restoring and converting a large, Federal-style building into a cultural center and creative space.