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David Derr's Daring Detours Down Unexpected Paths
Derr is an almost dauntingly versatile artist. Entering his website (www.d2studios.com) one hardly knows where to begin, given the sheer number of paintings, mixed media works, and digital drawings displayed therein. A successful graphic designer as well as a fine artist, Derr explores a variety of mediums and styles. Yet each work is stamped indelibly by his singular sensibility, calling to mind modernist predecessors such as Paul Klee: and Contem poraries like Lucas Samaras who eschew the limitations of a so-called "signature style" in order to make each new phase of their creativity a fresh adventure.
"For me drawing and painting is about creating a space where both the creator's and the viewer's creative thoughts are set free to explore unexpected paths," Derr states and to navigate through the pathways of his prolific output is indeed to encounter the unexpected at every turn.
In Derr's series "Ice," translucent hues, as fluorescent and vibrant as those in Warhol's portraits, are superimposed over frozen sur faces further enlivened by swirling lines (possibly made by skate blades), creating a sinuous abstract dance. Thus one is hardly prepared for the witty juxtapositions of found objects in Derr's dadaistic assem blages such as "Allegory," in which a gold plated baby doll, winged and bound with string, is transformed into a glitzy Rococo S&M cherub, or "Time Flies," in which an antique A-frame clock, fitted with ornate white wings instead of hands and topped by an actual toupee that functions as a thatched roof, appears to comment on the indignities of age and the inevitability of decay.
Then, just as one is beginning to think of him as a Neo-Duchampian conceptualist, Derr reveals himself to be an accomplished figurative artist as well, with a distinctive gift for strong yet harmonious color and expres sive distortions in mixed media paintings such as "A Classic Case," with its witty semi-abstract take on Baroque architecture and statuary ala Hockney. And the further one progresses into the site, moving on to Derr's recently completed digital works, the more complex his compositions become.
In "Concerto for Dingo and Tiki God," zanily anthropomorphic versions of the Australian canine and the Polynesian deity cavort in a jazz combo, amid a colorful riot of fractured cubist planes; while "Spin," another work demonstrating Derr's gift for creating intriguing anatomical anomalies, depicts a demonic red. fleshed "dream spinner" set against a deep blue cosmos, akin to the brash brilliance of Chicago's "Hairy Who" school.
By contrast, "Resurrection of the Magi" is a lyrical vision of a simplified figure in a mystical landscape worthy of the aforemen tioned Paul Klee, its poetic synthesis of the spiritual and whimsical revealing yet another side of the multidimensional David Derr.
-J. Sanders Eaton
Gallery & Studio
Sept./Oct. 2006
SANTA FE ART WORLD
It is a true artist who expresses beauty, tells a story of it and leaves it lingering in the heart. Sometimes the artist tells other stories, of what man saw instead of true beauty. David Derr expresses beauty in many ways, the vibration or energy of it, the soul, perhaps even deeper than that. The essence, the spirit, the things we look beyond and don't see, because or media filled lives doesn't tell us to look for them. Or maybe the mechanical world we live in has become who we are and how we respond to things around us. What a tragedy though, living around so much beauty and never experiencing it. All these elements are present in your work. The joys, the sorrows, all the way to the bovine whose lives parallel our own. Yet you, somehow retain the essence of beauty therein while overtly pushing an abstract statement in the viewer's face. Many of your works are very thought provoking. Well done.
-Denise Ticer
Santa Fe Art World
January, 2007
ARTS COUNCIL OF THE MORRIS AREA
With works that could be described as a cross between surrealism and fantasy, spiced with a hefty does of allegory thrown in "for good measure," David Derr's art stands out as truly unique. One is tempted to see influences of Dadaism or the Blaue Reiter school of Expressionism in Derr's free use of color and form, but his oils, mixed media, and digital works are distinctive and highly original. Intriguing and challenging viewers through an astonishingly rich vocabulary of symbols and allusions, they bear carefully crafted, often humorous titles which tantalize the mind and evoke connections to music, philosophy, literature/poetry, theater and, of course, to visual arts.
Dr. Lynn Siebert, Arts Council of the Morris Area
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