Embed Size (px)
DESCRIPTION
So, everyone is wanting to know: what is your new “mystery medium”? What can you share with us about how you create your beautifully vibrant abstracts? Demian: Well, the short answer is abstract macro photography, hybridized with traditional painting using acrylics, watercolors, and whatnot. I apply these painted media on what I call a screen, often film paper or plastic, and then I spend ridiculous amounts of time finding the perfect field to capture a photographic image. This image is then transferred to panel. Many people don’t realize that the photographed field is often less than an inch square when they look at the wall art. On some of the final works I will add further layers of paint, or use chips of diamonds, meteorite dust, rose quartz or other minerals, some gold leaf, or whatever lends itself to the piece.
Citation preview
DEMIAN DRESSLER
Visual Language contemporary fine art
VLJanuary 2015 Volume 4 No. 1
VL
VLVL
NOT SURE IF WE HAVE A FEA-TURE FOR HERE>
http://www.demianart.net/ http://www.demianart.net/
NOT SURE IF WE HAVE A FEA-TURE FOR HERE>
http://www.demianart.net/ http://www.demianart.net/
VLGetting Intimate
with Demian Dressler
“It’s the little things that count.”
VL Intimate with Demian Dressler
VL: So, congratulations on your selection as a Top Master of Contemporary Art by Art Tour International, and your upcoming exhibition in the Museum of Fine Art in Las Vegas. So, everyone is wanting to know: what is your new “mystery medium”? What can you share with us about how you create your beautifully vibrant abstracts?
Demian: Well, the short answer is abstract macro photography, hybridized with traditional painting using acrylics, watercolors, and whatnot. I apply these painted media on what I call a screen, often film paper or plastic, and then I spend ridiculous amounts of time finding the perfect field to capture a photographic image. This image is then transferred to panel. Many people don’t realize that the photographed field is often less than an inch square when they look at the wall art. On some of the final works I will add further layers of paint, or use chips of diamonds, meteorite dust, rose quartz or other minerals, some gold leaf, or whatever lends itself to the piece.
VL: You were raised on Maui, graduated with an Ivy League doctorate and still are a practicing veteri-narian, as well as a full time artist. How has this influenced your creative process?
Demian: Well, I know Maui has been a big influence. I’ve always been attracted to the rawness, the intensity, and the brilliance found in natural things, and my childhood was filled with this, the colors and forms of Hawaii. This art is created with a very organic and natural process, in spite of the lens and paintbrush, and what is brilliant or intense is what ends up in the final pieces. So there is a correspon-dence there. I grew up without running water or electricity, so when I was not doing art I was surfing, spending time with animals, and exploring the natural world. There is some magical essence, some-thing vital that is found both in good art and in the natural world. This has always been my inspiration. It could also be that I am very restless and I constantly seek, which I suppose assists innovation a bit. As to the veterinarian hat, I have done quite a bit of surgery for many years…here we work with the hands, look closely at things, and go by feel a lot. People think of medicine as science, but it is equally art, it is intuitive, there is a sensitivity that must come with it, an empathy, and the hands are a channel in this capacity, and feeling is central. So I suppose its an amalgam of all of these life experiences.
VL: On your website (www.demianart.net), you have a quote: “Art should bring magic into our daily lives, an escape to a different place, maybe even a different world, somewhere delightful, exciting and alive. This is why I create.” Tell us about this.
Demian: Well, you’ve heard the saying, “It’s the little things that count”? Sometimes it can be a moment in time, when suddenly everything stops and this fantastic and wonderful image separates itself from its surroundings and presents itself to us. It captures us, our attention. And it may take us away, some-where far off, an escape to something better than the day to day, the grind, the mill. This is what I want to convey or produce for the viewer or collector. This is really why I am an artist- to offer this feeling, this magic, this alive-ness and make it an accessible part of day-to-day living.
http://www.demianart.net/ http://www.demianart.net/
“It’s the little things that count.”
http://www.demianart.net/ http://www.demianart.net/
Homecoming
VL
Right Page: Intermezzo Divinus
Intimate with Demian Dressler
VL: Obviously your art has deep philosophical undertones. Would you say there is a larger purpose to it?
Demian: Yes, I would say there is. So much of our time is consumed being driven (or forced) doing things that deaden us, and each moment is like currency- “time is money”, right? Moments are the cur-rency of our lives in this way. And they are being spent, right now, and they are finite since we are only given so many in a life. And all of this enforced moment-spending doing things can leave behind a dull heaviness that weighs us down- it dims our vision and outlook. I offer my art as a way of bringing that propulsive feeling of excitement back into life. Remember when we were kids? Or when we fell in love? There was freedom, there was delight, there was something to look forward to, and it was real. This en-ergy, excitement, this hopeful state of mind, this alive way of being that we can again allow ourselves…the art is directed towards that end.
VL: Well, it’s pretty clear you put a lot of thought into your work. What were your influences?
Demian: There were many. But what is being reflected in my work now is the influence of the early Sur-realists, Automatism, and Carl Jung. I’m really endeavoring to bypass the conscious mind to access what is deeper, to truly or authentically act as a conduit, to allow the pieces to presence themselves and get myself out of the way. Every artist knows this experience, and I have some techniques I use to do away with the obstructing part of the mind. I’m at my best when I’m not there (laughs).
VL: Yes, but you have written narratives for your pieces that bring them to life in an entirely different world. Is this writing an intellectual process that differs from your artistic process?
Demian: The words are just another way to access that vital essence…Henri Bergson called it élan vi-tale, a kind of vital force which is beyond words and also beyond a canvass, paper, sculpture, a sunset, the eye of an animal…all of these point to something, they intimate at something, and they open a road or a channel to the intangible, to the very thing that makes us feel alive, that changes our lives when we allow it, or when we witness it fully and absorb it. The differences in expression, or the form itself, in the end don’t really matter- they are all just gateways.
“It’s the little things that count.”
http://www.demianart.net/ http://www.demianart.net/
http://www.demianart.net/ http://www.demianart.net/
VL
Leviathan
http://www.demianart.net/ http://www.demianart.net/
Intimate with Demian Dressler
Kosmogonia
“It’s the little things that count.”
http://www.demianart.net/ http://www.demianart.net/
Kosmogonia The Chalice of Discreation
VL Intimate with Demian Dressler
Prismatica
“It’s the little things that count.”
http://www.demianart.net/ http://www.demianart.net/
http://www.demianart.net/ http://www.demianart.net/
“Well, you’ve heard the saying, “It’s the little things that count”? Sometimes it can be a moment in time, when sud-denly everything stops and this fantastic and wonderful image separates itself from its surroundings and presents itself to us.”
“It’s the little things that count.”
VL Intimate with Demian Dressler“It’s the little things that count.”
Tempering
http://www.demianart.net/ http://www.demianart.net/
Tempering
Sear of Interlude
http://www.demianart.net/ http://www.demianart.net/
PHOTO ‘ Memories’ Acrylic on masonite. (20 X 16 inches)
demianart.net
