OVERZEE

Royce Deans - Painter - Interview: Steve Brydges

Untitled

It was my pleasure to interview Beth Herzhaft a couple months ago for a piece in Copper Press #28. Now that issue is just hitting the streets it seemed a grand notion to check in with Ms. Herzhaft and see what was going on.

When we first met I was impressed that a photographer with a resume that contains as many heavy hitters as does hers still invests so much energy into her own personal photographic projects. Her unique fly on the wall view of the world is captivating. It helps us to see the absurdity as well as the beauty of the everyday situations that we all come face to face with in our ordinary existences. Most of us just don't pay that much attention. Thankfully someone is keeping an eye out.

Well, Frodo, you are about to embark upon a fantastic journey.  You're heading to Amsterdam.  For a Mormon, this is about like heading into Mordor.  What is taking you to Holland?
 I don't know much about Mordor, but I am having a show over there in Amsterdam. It's in conjunction with Mo(ve)ment's performances at the Fringe Festival. I will be showing with Tali Farchi of Holland at DeVeemvloer in Amsterdam.  The name of the show is Overzee (pronounced overzay)


How'd you get hooked up with the Mo(ve)ment folks?
I found Tali's page on Deviantart and instantly became fascinated what she was doing with her art as she was mixing it with music and dance. I contacted her and did an interview with her for The Daily Copper.



Cow Farm



Mellonie

 How many pieces will you be showing?
I created twelve pieces specifically for this show. But I should add that each painting is an assemblage of at least two paintings. And then I am taking a half dozen other paintings that I really like over there, too.

Will Mo(ve)ment be mixing music and dance with your paintings?
---Some of that is to be determined. There is going to be some other performances with Mo(ve)ment they are calling Mo(ve)ment meets Muscians, and the will be doing improvisational shows with the likes of Steve Cohn, Ernst Reijseger, Michael Moore and Marcos Baggiani. I know that I will be working on the paintings that Tali creates as part of the performance. That I am sure will be as interesting as it will be unpredictable.



Over Hill and Under Veil

Pears

What does it feel like to know you have a gallery showing in Europe?
It feels really great to be invited to participate in this sort of a forum. It is a great opportunity for some great exposure. Ever since I knew this show was for reals, I have been working on making as many other contacts over there as possible.

Who should be more concerned about your arrival, Manet or Monet?
Well, I don't know if either one of them should be concerned; they are probably not shaking in their boots, maybe turning over in their graves.  I would think that Van Gogh and Rembrandt ought be bracing themselves, however.


What is your earliest memory of painting?  When did you think you could become an artist?
My earliest memory of me painting was when I was in junior high and I had some assignment and I went out in the woods with my mother and some oil pastels and tried to do trees with the fall colors… it was painful.

I was never encouraged as a young kid with my art at all. I always loved art, and I studied it on my own. It wasn't till much later, when I was about twenty-two, I was still drawing, and a friend of the family that was in commercial art told me that is what I should do. I never even thought some one could have a job in art. So that is what I did.

Several years ago I looked back on some of my sketchbooks from high school and I could see very plainly why I never received any encouragement.

Chamesh

 

Ate My Shirt

Where'd you do your collegiate learnin' in the arts?  Any lessons from that time stick with you?  Overall, was the experience instructive or constrictive?
I went to the American Academy of Art in Chicago. I studied illustration and graphic design. Even then I wanted to be a painter, but at the time it seemed much more practical to learn some marketable skill that more than a handful of people considered desirable.

Of course there were some good teachers and some good lessons learned, but what I think the most important thing I did was to keep feeding the appetite.  I had to learn as much about this art thing that I loved so much. To take every opportunity there was to see what was out there and what was being done. I am still that way now.

The art school experience was both instructive and constrictive. The principles of color and good design are true no matter what type of art you do, so I could carry that with me anywhere. While I hated doing color charts in my fundamentals class, as a color-blind artist it was an invaluable bit of reference that I still have to think about even now when I am mixing colors. But it was constrictive to me in that it the program I was in was bent so much towards the commercial aspect of art that it felt a little insincere a lot of the time.


I can't help but notice you've been working on a lot of nudes the past year or two.  Cool, but I'm a little disappointed by the lack of live models.  Every time I come over, you're working from a photograph.  What gives?  How'd you find these people, anyway?
Well Steve, I work from photographs lately because it is just more practical. My studio schedule is all over the road as it can be, so it is just easier to work from photos. You might remember I tried to get your wife to agree to a little life modeling but she didn't think you would approve.

Oh is that how it went down?  Well, your mother and I were talking about art over breakfast one morning…
---and she wanted you to model for her and you didn't' because you knew your lovely wife would be insanely jealous?

But, as of late I have been using models I have found on deviantart. And some are just friends that have agreed to make these poses specifically for my paintings.

Hand of Support



Sonora

Tell me about your idea of drawing targets.  And the bullet holes - what's with those?
A bit over a year ago I started painting these targets… and they just reminded me a little too much of Jasper Johns' work. Oddly I didn't see the similarity till I had painted about twenty of them. I wanted to find some way to take them in a different or further direction than Johns did. So I loaded up the car with paintings, guns and ammo and headed out to a place in the woods where you can shoot stuff.

Drawing and painting with bullets is fun.

When I got back to my studio I was organizing these pieces on the floor and saw they looked really cool hooked together, and that they also looked even better connected to my figure paintings. So I put together a show of these pieces.  Somewhere along the line after fusing the targets with the nude figures, I quit shooting them and quit calling them targets. I began calling them "geometrics" because I was getting tired of having to explain that there was no subversive message about guns, for or against. I don't have some sick mistrust and hate of women that makes want to be targets of my aggression. All I wanted to do was make some art that worked.

All that has brought me to where I am now with this fusion of the figure with landscape, still life, or anything else that I think works.

Untitled #5

Anyway, back to your mother…
What? Do you really want her to draw you naked?

Turnip and Egg




Tears

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Check out more of Royce's work on his web page

Draunaturel

 

Click here to go back to the beginning.