Monday, May 4, 2009

David Derr


David Derr
New Jersey artist David Derr is the May 2009 Digital Color Artist of the Month. David has been drawing since he was a small child. He attended the Art Students League in the 1970s and studied life drawing. His passion for life drawing continued as a primary focus for nearly 10 years while he made a living as an artists' model and freelance commercial artist. Derr heads up his own design agency, D2 Studios Inc. Commercial success has never dimmed, in fact, has brought into sharper focus, his love for fine arts, and his expression of deep personal imagery.

His images explore what it is to be an imaginative thinking human being. The visual arts, music, dance, literature, myths, mysticism, spirituality and the sciences as well as everyday life all contribute in the creation of his images. He creates paintings that not only reflect his thoughts but engage the viewer to look deeper into their own thoughts and find the depths to each piece that are not initially apparent. To David, painting is not about technical expertise, but about creating a space where both the creator and the viewers' creative thoughts are set free to explore unexpected paths. His works are created in oil, mixed media and digital forms.

New Contemporary Artists and Galleries
The following artists registered in the last month. To view the work of an artist enter the artist's name at http://DigitalConsciousness.com To see these most recent artists go to http://DigitalConsciousness.com/new/

1. Kevin Rogerson. Rich, bold colors, texture and the effects of light and shadow.
2. Kim Leutwyler. Large scale figure paintings.
3. Jury Novikov. Realistic oils from the Ukraine.
4. Teddy Bozhinov. Pet and animal portraits from Bulgaria.
5. Hassan Hamroush. Cubist drawing.
6. Suman Kabiraj. Surrealistic narrative paintings from India.
7. Anny Cheong. Advertising design.
8. A Santos. Digital art, portraiture and image manipulation.
9. Shefqete Avdush Emini. Figurative abstract expressionism from Holland.

Joseph DiSipio, Judy Puckett, Eugene Becker, Kevin Barr and Calico have added new artwork to their galleries. http://DigitalConsciousness.com/gallerylist.phtml Joseph's new work uses infrared film, lith prints, tri-x film, frosted glass and selenium tones.

Dark Skies
Dark Skies is an annual Fire Art and burn festival held during the spring new moon near the Grand Canyon. Nightmare Nevada, Gurrwolf and Junior created the Harvesters to burn at the festival. They are three Icons each about twice the size of a man: the Creeper, the Reaper and the Collector. They were positioned in the Burn Bowl in front of the Pagoda Arch. The Creeper had fangs and triangle and square teeth, and an elongated arm stretched out way in front of him all the way to the ground. The Reaper held a scythe on a long pole that extended far above his head. The Collector held a sickle and had pumpkin like head with a green stem growing out of it. The papier-mache in the work was glazed in places so that parts of the sculptures looked to be metal. The Harvesters were dressed in black corduroy shirts and green burlap scarves and hoods. They had elbows and knees and even joints in their fingers and toes all bent in a balanced way.

The Harvesters burned before midnight Saturday. The paper and paint flashed and the cloth went up in flame leaving burning wood skeletons. Their skeletons were wood, built bone by bone. This made their skeletons more in common with humans than their outsides, and they did look more human after burning for a while, but still monstrous. The Reaper's scythe collapsed in the inferno, landing on the Creeper and bringing it down. The Collector's rib cage and mask glowed orange. His head fell off and rolled in front of us. Gurrwolf reached for the head, picked it up by a stick sticking out of it and held it aloft triumphantly as it continued to burn.

The disassembled Pagoda Arch burned pre-dawn Sunday. It was built by Pallet Man. It was 16 feet high and 20 feet wide. It was 65 pallets in the making. It looked like Stonehenge. It made seven piles of pallets stacked 1-3 high with lots of extra wood to keep the bonfires going. People rode a bicycle around the bonfires while they were burning.

Artistic Interaction
The Santa Fe Art Colony held its 20th annual Open Studio event on the first weekend in May. That weekend has been designated as the permanent Open Studio date, when residents of the colony open their private studios to the public. Upcoming Southern California Art Walks, Open Studio Tours & Art Festivals can be found on the Digital Consciousness Art Calendar. http://DigitalConsciousness.net/directory/artcalendar.php

Ad-free Galleries With No Commission
Artists with Digital Consciousness Gallery Service can create and edit on-line galleries from a control panel. These galleries contain no ads and are among the most prominent pages on Digital Consciousness. Artists may sell artwork from their galleries free of commission. Gallery Service requires registration and $30 a year. Registration is free and registered artists may create an Artist Page without purchasing Gallery Service. Registered Artists can use the Edit link at the bottom of their Artist Page to edit their Artist Page or to upgrade to Gallery Service.

1 comment:

dolls like us said...

I like your use of color .