Dave Seeley Beautiful Bizarre Artist Directory member provides some fascinating insights into his practice and experience as figurative painter, as he responds to the questions below:
- Art is a visual language what are you hoping to communicate to the viewer through your work?
- What is the most challenging part about creating art for you?
- What role do you feel art and the artist have in today’s society?
- Do you think beauty in art is important?
Art is a visual language what are you hoping to communicate to the viewer through your work?
Wonder Connection Provocation Introspection Reflection. Shifting the paradigm can give us insightful perspective.
What is the most challenging part about creating art for you?
Choosing the subject of the next painting. Once I have that, my process is an exploration of how best to resolve the subject in the language of the painting, and refining the emotional coherence of the piece.
What role do you feel art and the artist have in today’s society?
There are so many! Artists need to find their voices based on what they find essential in engaging their audiences. Art can grab you and give you a perspective in order to consider something in a different context, and that can be enriching, euphoric, and/or distressing. For the viewer it can be life altering in a range from micro to macro. We’re currently in a tumultuous period where there is an abundance of injustice and conflict, but while I admire and follow lots of arts aimed directly at a dialogue around the immediate turmoil, it’s not what motivates me to make art personally. While my art isn’t about the specific turmoil in current events, it certainly is influenced by the current state of the world in terms of broad themes. Often I’m depicting a feeling of being out of control, off balance or unsettled. I choose to reflect hope, but doubt a utopian future and suspect that the more we learn the less we can know. Given that our lives are fleeting, it has to be okay that there will always be more questions than answers. I also feel that there are moments in life when the visual aligns in transcendent beauty, and some paintings are all about that ephemeral perfection.
I understand that making art the way I do requires stability in my life, and I know that that’s a luxury that most people don’t have. I’m grateful for my stability but also feel some “survivor’s guilt” about it, but I think that that awareness is an obligatory reminder.
Do you think beauty in art is important?
I think artists need to gauge that as a tool toward communication. For me personally visual beauty in art has been the foundation of my attention to it. I’m a figure painter because I’ve been obsessed with “our own image” as far back as I can remember. We are subconsciously trained to see complex emotions in body language and facial expressions so we come to see figure paintings with a fluency. I love dance and athleticism and tend toward idealization as indicators of strength and capability. I embrace that as a tenet of historic figurative art but also feel compelled to find a contemporary aesthetic rather than emulate depictions from other times. Certainly beauty is inherently evolving and always personal.
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