Brian Despain works with imaginary yet recognizable modern landscapes, but populates his world with seemingly self aware and melancholy robots. His work blends the natural world with technology with a slightly morbid slant. Skulls, machinery, and birds provide the forefront for a seemingly arcane number system the artist employs in all his work. His rich and somber color palettes of post apocalyptic ochres, deep blues, and steel greys belie and hidden warmth and dark humor within his work. Brian will be exhibiting at Roq La Rue in November 2009. Please contact us regarding commissions, waiting lists, secondary market availability, and available prints.
Brian's artist statement:
" I love art. I love looking at it, I love talking about it and I certainly love making it, so it’s really no surprise that art would be my chosen profession.
From early on there really wasn’t any doubt that a career in art was the direction I was headed. I was hardly interested in anything else and a lion’s share of my childhood was spent with my head in the clouds, doodling a veritable army of dinosaurs, space ships, demons and imps. Even much of my later schooling was spent failing other useful but mundane subjects like chemistry, math and english while art was the one area that I excelled at. College was hardly different, I spent six years finding myself and taking a lot of classes before graduating with a BFA. Documented and dedicated to my chosen profession I set out to make my veritable mark on the world.
Since then I’ve held all sorts of jobs, from graphic designer to 3D modeler, photo-retoucher to illustrator. I’ve studied, learned, grown and spent a lot of time as a professional artist making a decent living doing art, but in all that time and through all those jobs I’ve learned one all important thing. It was the time I spent, like the kid at the kitchen table, creating art for no other reason than sheer wonder of it all, that I was happiest. No matter the piece or the end result it’s the art that we do for ourselves that wholly reflects us as people. It is that art which is purest, it is that art which holds the most magic, it is that art which connects on the deepest level and it is that art that this site is all about.
So, on that note, take a look around, see what I have to offer and hopefully something in here pops, something connects you to that little boy, drawing spaceships and dinosaurs, and leaves you with a sense of wonder all your own."
