Inez Storer

"Some wonderful mysteries. Startling disclosures. Strange secrets. The phrases are written in childlike script across a recent work by California artist Inez Storer. To the casual observer, they may seem like promotional pitches from the dust jacket of the latest page-turner. Spend time with Storer, though, and it's soon evident that the phrases directly relate to her life and art, which are influenced by everything from World War II to Hollywood's early film days to the Russian Revolution. At 73, Storer, more than many artists, has an intimate knowledge of the way history turns the world as well as individual lives upside down..."

Amnesia In Color And Line: Inez Storer's Identity Paintings by Menachem Wecker; The Jewish Press, August 2004.

"Amid the rising action in Disney`s "The Lion King," Simba -- already a dashing mature lion -- follows the monkey, Rafiki, through marshland, until arriving at a loch. There, he discovers a vision of his dead father, Mufasa. An exchange follows and Rafiki strikes Simba, but rather than apologizing when Simba expresses pain, Rafiki assures him that it has passed. "Yeah, but it still hurts," insists Simba. "Oh yes, the past can hurt," Rafiki says. "But the way I see it, you can either run from it, or learn from it." Inez Storer, a Santa Monica born painter, opted for the latter part of Rafiki`s advice..."

Evocative art, painted from memory by Jack Fischer; The Mercury News, October 2003.

"Pictures, we like to think, should yield up their meanings easily -- at least pictures of the real world: flowers, animals, people, and the like. So it can be a bit discomfiting when our expectation of such instant understanding is thwarted, as so often happens in the art of Inez Storer..."

Jo Lee Talks To The Amazing Mind of A Famous Father's Daughter by Jo Lee; JOLEE Magazine, Spring 2008.

Her art is about telling tales - a visual raconteur who uses paint and various materials to tell stories... "Inez delivers a heavy message with a light hand. Her work has, at times, been referred to as magic realism." Her art, like the novels by one of her favorite authors, Gabriel Garcia Marquez embraces the lines betwee fantasy and reality -- her multileveled narrivatives exploring the human condition. "My figures often float in precarious positions like tightrope walkers. I find these metaphores can often reflect our own sometimes unsettled lives. I prefer to have a dark aspect underlying the work."

Inez Storer at the de Saisset Museum by Mark Van Proyen; Art in America, October 2004.

"It is worth noting that this 40-year survey of Inez Storer's paintings, works on paper, artist's books and assemblages opened at the same time that the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's Marc Chagall retrospective was attracting record crowds. Both artists imbue experimental forms with a traditional storytelling imperative, and both delight in creating complex compositions made up of seemingly separate figurative vignettes that suggestively elaborate unifying narratives..."

Inez Storer at Montalvo Gallery by Amber Whiteside; Artweek, February 2004.

"Occupying the intimate gallery at Villa Montalvo in Saratoga, Encore Narratives comprises just fourteen of Inez Storer's most recent paintings. The exhibition is part of a collaborative effort with Santa Clara University's de Saisset Museum and the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art to showcase Storer's four decades of artistic production and instruction in the Bay Area. Because Storer's work has changed only subtly in recent years, the thorough, cross-institutional investigation is indispensable..."

Inez Storer's Identity Opera by Bill Berkson; Theatrical Realism: The Art of Inez Storer

"Over the past decade or so, each of Inez Storer's paintings has tended to take the form of a response to a set theme. She assigns herself a subject and completes a painting accordingly, allowing for leaps of faith in her own opulent imagination. The pictures -- like discrete flash-card scenes in an extended opera about identity, history, and gender positionings -- are both fanciful and distinct..."

Painting in the Subjunctive Mode: Inez Storer and the Art of Possibilites by Andrea Pappas; Theatrical Realism: The Art of Inez Storer

"Inez Storer delivers heavy messages with a light hand. Clothing the profound in blithe garments, she contributes to a tradition shared with many other artists on the West Coast. Consonant with that California tradition, her artistic enterprise both joins with the mainstream of contemporary American art centered in New York and emphatically departs from it..."

Philadelphia Inquirer, May 2004.

"Dear Diary, I'm Jewish. The Inez Storer exhibition at the National Museum of American Jewish History is packaged with a compelling narrative of how the California artist discovered her Jewish heritage in her mid-60's, just before her mother died..."

Artillery : May/June 2010; By Barbara Morris

Storer grew up in Southern California and moved to the northern part of the state to attend college. However her formative years in SoCal had a lasting effect on her. Her father was in the movie industry, and she recounted how when she was a child her father would taker to Paramount Studios. “I could watch the process of making a film. It had a profound influence on my later life as an artist, because I could how fantasy and real life commingled. Storer’s poetic compositions use paint, collage and mixed media to create thought provoking tableaux both personal and political, drawing freely from quirky found imagery, as well as her personal history.