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Josef Martin DeVoogd
Art, Photography, Graphic Design, Cartooning
Artist Statement
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Whether I’m painting, printing, or making a comic, I embrace the preposterous. My simplistic creative reasoning is my guide to exploring a transcendental realm of thought. I’m inspired in my painting to use color and let the process guide me to find a story and purpose. When painting in a surrealist style, with sufficient planning, my symbols are carefully chosen to jog the mind in a certain direction. In my piece Holey, I use bright colors and light to bring to the core of the painting. Once you are settled there, you will find the stories of broken lives and hidden complexity on the margins. Much of the imagery for my paintings or prints come from within. They are based on visions and emotions that surface in a dream or day dream or in a beauty setting in nature.
40,000 + years ago, a small tribe of our ancestors extracted dyes from plants. They went into caverns and with crude straws they created tracings of their own hands upon the walls. They also painted the beasts of the land and the ritual hunt. I often wonder about these fledgling bands of people with no physiological need for such paintings. Since What was necessary for these people basically was security, shelter, food, warmth; why then would they spend time painting steer and tracing their hands on a wall? I like to believe that they were conscious about their own mortality and wanted to send into the future, a statement: "WE WERE HERE, AND WE MATTERED." It is in the same spirit that I create my artwork. If you look closely you'll notice my trademark signature is in the shape of a hand as my connection to the past and a statement into the future. Life is short, art is not.
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