ongoing – Feb. 7

   “Nothing will bring you closer to reality than facing your own mortality,” says artist David Rosen.
       This is something he knows intimately.  We caught up with the 50-year-old South African native and Somerville resident as he was hosting a party in January, celebrating his art show at the restaurant/bar Tremont 647.  The exhibit, up through Feb. 7, is called “David Rosen: Paintings 2008-2009, Zen and the Art of Painting Fearlessly.”  The painter and T-shirt designer was candid about what brought him to this point: Lung cancer. He was diagnosed in late 2008 and went through three months of what he called “full-frontal intensive radiation and chemotherapy” at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
     “I’m still dealing with side effects,” Rosen says, “but look how healthy I am. Cancer was good for my life.”
     Rosen came of note making political t-shirts in South Africa. So much so, that the apartheid government labeled him a “communist” and a “deviant.” His work was banned.  He moved to New York in 1986, just before apartheid ended. In New York, Rosen became part of the fashion industry and worked in graphic design.
   “I did well for myself,” he says, but there were some bad habits going on. “I was a pretty bad boy. I was killing myself. I was not respecting my body.”
      Relocating to the Boston area in the late ‘90s, he again created more T-shirts, mixing words and design. He also shed some bad habits. In 2003, he scrawled “got democracy?” on the back of a leather jacket and wore it to an anti-war protest on Boston Common. A friend suggested he turn it into a T-shirt design. Using the ubiquitous “got milk?” font, he did just that. REASON8 was born. REEASON 8 Clothing as the fashion arm and REASON8, the shadow-group for his guerilla art.

     The commercial success of that "got democracy?" shirt, Rosen said, “enabled me to do more risqué stuff. It was a free pass to do all this other work without compromising.” Other shirts read “One Nation Under Surveillance” and “Silence is Complicity.”
    Currently, his painting life co-exists with his life as a T-shirt designer.
    “They work in tandem with each other,” says Rosen. “I was trained as a painter, but I’ve made a living as a fashion designer using my graphics. I’ve always been interested in mixing image and words.” I’m such a political animal. I use my medium as a vehicle for dissent.”
     The 23 paintings that hang at Tremont 647 came from the 100-plus he made during his chemo and post-chemo period. They are mostly colorful surrealist works, but also some illustrative paintings. Said Rosen: “It’s an experiment in color and line and where the two meet.”
    “The paintings give me a spiritual joy and the graphics pay the rent and allow me to have this guerilla art voice,” he continued. “My spirituality is connected through the paint brush. This is what I discovered during the chemo. It unhinges you emotionally and it’s an incredible journey.”
      His treatment was, of course, excruciating. “But the upside,” Rosen says, “is you get to question everything you took for granted. Suddenly you’re forced to look at things differently. I am much more in the present moment I’m fine, I’m happy - though I’m still scared of pain.”
   Prices for Rosen’s art at Tremont 647 range from $200-$2000. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to the children at Dana-Faber for art equipment and to help fund art therapy. The exhibit is free; you might want to grab a bite or a drink, too, and that'll cost you a few greenbacks.
    Check out Rosen’s art at www.reason8.net .
   “Art,” he says, “can be used as a way to heal.” (This is an expanded version of a story that ran in the Boston Herald, www.bostonherald.com)

647 Tremont St., 617-266-4600 www.tremont647.com