David Dornan
Detritus
June 15, 2018
David Dornan Detritus June 15- July 5, 2018 Solo Exhibition
On the Cover: Garret
oil 52x60
Meyer Gallery 225 Canyon Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico 505.983.1434 www.meyergalleries.com
David Dornan resides in Utah and has spent the past nine winters painting in the desert. Recently he resigned a 17-year university faculty position to pursue his painting career full time. David has produced a sizable body of work, focusing most recently on a series of still life motif paintings. His work is in numerous public and private collections throughout the United States. Throughout his career he has received purchase awards, prizes, best of show awards, and/or high placement in nearly every exhibition he has entered. David has also won many academic and professional awards, and he has been exhibiting nationally for nearly 20 years. Remarkable things happen to commonplace objects in David's paintings. A can or jar, a flower, a paint brush- a palette as a sole subject or as elements in a complex composition take on a monumental quality through scale changes and central placement. The objects painted assume a commanding presence through his assertive paint application. Immediacy and spontaneity are achieved not only with a brush, but also through the smear of a thumb, the wipe of a rag, and the "weight and speed" of a drip. "At a distance my paintings are depictions of familiar objects - cups and bottles, studio objects on a palette and, more recently, flowers- but the up-close view exposes the abstract juxtaposition and layering of paint, not the three-dimensional imagery. You can see the splotches, handprints, scratches - evidence of the way I put paint on canvas. There is interaction between the two-dimensional and three-dimensional aspects of my paintings. When there are objects within the abstraction I have a parameter against which to measure my technique. "When I am painting a visual dialogue develops between the medium's inherent qualities (i.e. value, color, texture, fluidity, etc.) and the form I am trying to depict. My paintings are a record of this visual dialogue. I do not begin a painting with a fixed idea of what the painting will look like. The methods and techniques, which I employ during the process of painting, determine the final results. Sometimes I dominate this process with concepts and techniques, which are too familiar to me, and the result is always lifeless. When this happens I will destroy or alter the image by employing haphazard, naive, or accidental paint applications. This will open the painting up, forcing me to react rather than to dictate. Painting is almost always more interesting to me when the process is pulling me as much as I am pushing it.
Paintings...
David Dornan's representational paintings stem from an abstract process, one where paint is slapped and spilled and subjects are fabricated from appealing lines, shapes and colors rather than replicated from life. His haphazard studio snapshots are "products of destruction" that reveal the "residue of the painting process."
Celebrity
oil 60x52
Grinder
oil 52x60
Audition
oil 40x32
Dornan’s paintings however, do not depict actual scenes from his studio; they are reflective instead of the artist’s internal creative process, which is actualized through imagery of toppled jars, strewn brushes and splattered paint. “It’s a fabricated scene,” says Dornan of his chaotic studio paintings. “I’m more interested in its abstract nature. The subject isn’t as important to me as the pretense; the objects I paint are just excuses for people to get into the world I’m seeing, which is extremely abstract.”
State of Mind
oil 45x50
Standards
oil 22x20
Denzien I
oil 10x8
In order to further draw the viewer into this realm, David Dornan inserts familiar objects into his disheveled studio scenes. Honey bear jars, Tabasco bottles and Campbell’s Soup cans are splatted and filled with paint, disguised among the other overturned paint cans and spewed pigment. According to Dornan, this is a nod to the “blue-collar artist” who repurposes idle objects as painterly tools. These nostalgic objects are also open-ended symbols meant to inspire a stream of consciousness response from the viewer as associated memories resurface, cultivating stronger connections with the work. For the artist, the Campbell’s Soup can is an ironic art historical reference to Andy Warhol who in opposition to Dornan, de-emphasized the artist’s presence within the creative process. We can imagine that Andy Warhol’s Factory was a far cry from the studios represented in Dornan’s paintings.
Worker
oil 36x32
Quartered
oil 10x12
David Dornan’s solo show “Detritus” opens on Friday, June 15th. The artist interprets his show title in multiple ways. In one sense, detritus is “the product of destruction” - what’s leftover when a painting is complete. This is represented literally through Dornan’s typical macro views of studio wreckage and in paintings like “Session,” where a wider perspective of the artist’s studio reveals a completed still life surrounded by the chaos of its creation.
Session
oil 52x60
Denzien II
oil 10x8
Fusion
oil 45x40
Marble
oil 6.5x5.5
Puffer
oil 32x36
Denzien III
oil 10x8
Detritus is also interpreted in a less literal way as it refers to the remnants of a memory or era in our lives. David Dornan’s paintings inspire viewers to sift through the detritus of their minds to recall a specific connection or story related to the nostalgic objects obscured within his work.
“If I can touch their world in that tiny way, I feel as if I’ve succeeded.” -David Dornan
Souped Up
oil 45x50
Denzien IV
oil 10x8
Denzien V
oil 10x8
Quartz
oil 6.5x5.5
Residual
oil 32x36
Modern Western
oil 60x52
Steel Sculptures...
Lurker I
oil and steel 18x6x8
Lurker IV
oil and steel 18x6x8
Lurker II
oil and steel 18x6x8
Lurker III
oil and steel 18x6x8
Lean-to
oil and steel 18x16x8
David Dornan Audition Celebrity Denzien I Denzien II Denzien III Denzien IV Denzien V Fusion Garret Lean-to Lurker I Lurker II Lurker III Lurker IV Marble Modern Western Puffer Quartered Quartz Residual Session Souped Up Standards State of Mind Twins Worker
Detritus
40x32 60x52 10x8 10x8 10x8 10x8 10x8 45x40 52x60 18x16x18 18x6x8 18x6x8 18x6x8 18x6x8 6.5x5.5 60x52 32x36 10x12 6.5x5.5 32x36 52x60 45x50 22x20 45x50 36x32 36x32
$8,200 $17,000 $800 $800 $800 $800 $800 $10,200 $20,000 $1,600 $900 $900 $900 $900 $500 $20,000 $7,800 $1,100 $500 $7,800 $20,000 $10,200 $1,800 $10,200 $7,800 $7,800
David Dornan
Resume
Education 1982 MFA, School of Art, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 1976 BFA, Dept. of Art, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah Solo Exhibitions 1988 David Dornan: Paintings, Drawings, Monotypes and Sculptures, Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City 1982 M.F.A. Thesis Exhibition, Harry Wood Art Gallery, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ Group Exhibitions 1998 “Blue”, Salt Lake Art Center, Salt Lake City, Utah 1996-97 “Tempe Suite” Group Print Portfolio 1996 "The Reality of Abstraction", Nora Eccles Harrison Museum 1995-96 Summer Show, Allan Stone Gallery, New York 1995 Bountiful Art Center, Bountiful, Utah 1984 "Out of Print", Brigham Young University 1984 "Miniatures" Olga Dollar Gallery, San Francisco 1990, 92 "Group Show", Marqulies Taplin Gallery, Bay Harbor Islands, Fla. 1990 "Contemporary Works on Paper" Utah Arts Festival, Salt Lake City 1989, 90 "Art Department Faculty Exhibition", Gittins Gallery, University of Utah, SLC, UT 1989, 90 "A View of Four", 1988 89 Visual Arts Fellowship Winners, Salt Lake Art Center, SLC, UT 1989 "Exhibition 1989: Contemporary Utah Painting", Utah Arts Festival, UT 1989-91 "14th Annual National Invitational Drawing Exhibition" Emporia State Univ., Emporia KS 1986, 89 "Art on Campus", Amerika Haus Hamburg, Hamburg, West Germany 1988 "Dornan/Wangsgard", Two person Exhibition, Gayle Weyher Gallery, UT 1987 "Interiors" Bountiful Art Center, Bountiful, UT 1987 "The Cliff Lodge Inaugural Exhibition at Snowbird, Snowbird, UT 1986 "2020 Vision Utah Arts Festival", Salt Lake City, UT 1986 "A New View Nine Utah Artists" Traveling Exhibition, State of Utah, through 1988 1986 "Utah '86 Painting/Sculpture", Utah Museum of Fine Arts, SLC, UT 1985, 86 "University of Utah Art Department Faculty Show", Harris Fine Arts Center, Provo, UT 1985 "Abstract and Non Objective Art: A Utah Perspective", Salt Lake City Awards 1989 Purchase Award, National Drawing Invitational, Emporia State University, Emporia, Kansas 1987 Utah Arts Council Visual Artist Fellowship 1987 Utah Arts Festival "Impact" Project Grant 1987 Purchase Award, Cliff Lodge Inaugural Painting Exhibition, Snowbird, Utah 1984 Purchase Awards and Cash Award, "Utah '84" Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City, Utah 1984 Second Place, Cash Award, Bountiful Art Center, Bountiful, Utah 1981 First Place, National Society of Arts and Letters Drawing Competition, St. Louis, Missouri 1981 Best of Show, First Honorable Mention, Arizona State University Student Art Exhibition, Arizona 1978 Purchase Award, Cash Award, Honorable Mention, "Utah '78" Utah Museum of Fine Arts
1978 Purchase Award, Cash Award, Honorable Mention, "Utah '78" Utah Museum of Fine Arts 1977 Merit Award for Drawing, Merit Award for Painting, "Utah, '77" Utah Museum of Fine Arts 1976 Second Place, "Davis County Open" Bountiful Art Center, Bountiful, Utah 1976 Best of Show, Best in Painting, "Bicentennial Student Art Competition" University of Utah 1975 Third Place, "Statewide Competition" Bertha Eccles Art Center, Ogden, Utah Honors 1988 Keynote Speaker, Utah Arts Council Annual Conference 1985 Painting Commission, Department of Health Building, Utah State Fine Art Collection, SLC 1982 Abraham & Bessie Lehrer Memorial Award, School of Art, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 1980-81 Graduate Students Academic Fellowship Arizona State University 1976 Beehive Honor Society, University of Utah Publications 2017 “Show Preview”, Southwest Art, June 2017, Laura Rintala 1996 “New American Paintings”, April ’96 #VI, pp42-43, Open Studio Press 1991 Utah Art, Vern Swanson, Robert Olpin and William Seifrit 1990 "A View of Four" Exhibition Catalogue, Text by Will South, Salt Lake Art Center 1986 A Drawing Handbook, Nathan Goldstein Teaching Experience 1991–Pres Summer Solstice/Fall Equinox Painting Workshops 1996-98 Assistant professor U of Utah, Salt Lake City 1988-96 Adjunct Assistant Professor, University of Utah, Salt Lake City 1983-87 Associate Instructor, University of Utah, Salt Lake City 1982-83 Visiting Assistant Professor, University of Utah, Salt Lake City 1981-82 Graduate Teaching Assistant, School of Art, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 1979 Assistant Instructor, University of Utah Summer Arts Institute, Salt Lake City, Utah 1978 Associate Instructor, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah 1977-78 Assistant Instructor, University of Utah, Snowbird Summer Arts Institute, Utah 1977 Instructor Granite School District Adult Education, Salt Lake City, Utah Visiting Lectures 1995 College of Eastern Utah, Price, UT 1995 Ricks College, Rexburg, Id 1990 Brigham Young University, Provo, UT 1989 Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ
DAVID DORNAN
Detritus
Twins
June 15- July 5, 2018
oil 36x32
Opening Reception Friday, June 15, 5-7 PM 225 Canyon Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico 505.983.1434 www.meyergalleries.com