Friday, May 23, 2003 | 9:14 a.m.
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737-5965.
Maybe it was the sunshine. Maybe it was the climate reminding him of his childhood in Israel.
Something happened to David Schluss when he moved to Florida 15 years ago: On canvas and with clay, the longtime artist had become a visionary.
His artwork, once monochromatic paintings using earth tones, transformed into richly colored renditions of bulbous-bodied musicians and dancers indulging in life and in music.
"All my work is a celebration, dance, anything that has to do with a positive attitude between human beings," said the 60-year-old Schluss from his studio in Fort Lauderdale.
"That's the way I feel the world should be. I'm seeing the world in a way I would like to see it and everybody else to see it."
Schluss and his work will be at Wentworth Gallery in the Fashion Show mall this weekend, where an exhibit of nearly 200 of his original oil paintings, prints, serigraphs and sculptures will be on display and for sale.
Painting what he refers to as the "joy of life," Schluss depicts robust bodies embracing, dancing, performing and regaling. Applying the paint by using only his fingers and hands, his work is distinctive and somewhat geometric.
Musicians overlap and float into one another, a rounded twosome admire the music each creates, a dreamy full-bodied couple, latched at the arms, regales in the moment.
A painter since childhood, Schluss studied art in the ancient city of Jaffa, inspired by the richness of the picturesque seaport. His family moved to Canada while Schluss was in his 20s. There, he studied art at Ecole des Beaux Arts and earned a fine-arts degree at Sir George Williams University in Montreal.
Years later, warm weather drew Schluss to Florida.
"As soon as I got here I started to take off one coat after another," he said with a laugh and a slight accent.
While the sunshine rejuvenated him, his paintings evolved.
Long disappointed in his work by paintbrush because it resembled everyone else's, Schluss said he one day grabbed a piece of cloth and began to disfigure and distort the subjects in one of his paintings until new ones emerged.
From that moment, his style was sealed. Influenced by Chagall and Miro, the voluptuous figures he paints represent to him, he said, a softer version of humanity. He creates them on canvas using gesso, glue and egg whites, then applies the paint with his fingertips. Idealistic and fantasylike, his paintings tell stories about peace and harmony.
Before, Schluss said, "Through my window I saw the world differently ... I always showed this sad part, which is always more dramatic in art." Now, he said, his paintings represent a universal love of music.
"Everybody loves music," Schluss said. "Music is a part of your life, a part of your soul."
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