Dan Colcer is Featured Lobby Artist
We're featuring a new artist in the lobby during The Long Christmas Ride Home - Romanian Dan Colcer. His work is startlingly original, with bold use of color and amazing detail. You can see more at his website, http://dancolcer.ro. Here are excerpts from his artist statement:
I express my art with several methods but being sensitive to the classic graphic arts, ink was - and still is necessary in my works to enhance the vivid colors of my paintings. I use colors to create a strong contrast and movement in my works. The bright colors are surrounded by neutral tones of black, white, or gray which result in an anti-harmony and creating visual electricity. As a teenager I came up with the concept of "GRAVITY CREATES". I combined color boards with flowing ink. When the board was moved around, the ink drops began to take-on a unique and humanlike shape through gravity. Over the years, I continued to study gravity. I have had a very close relationship with nature since childhood. The ideas in my work are influenced by outdoor experiences but are also a visual documentary of the places that I visited.
My art is a tribute to the human body. I am trying to see beyond the simple shape of a rock or a cloud or folds in fabric. In every variation of natural formation, you can discover humanistic forms. Since childhood, rock climbing has been a hobby of mine. One of the main symbols in my art is "The Climber". He can also be interpreted as one who is reaching goals.
As I grew, I developed a passion for surrealism. I began to attempt the expression of dreams through colors and complex shapes. During my studies in Egypt, it came to me… "There is a shape in everything". The astonishing landscape of the Sinai Mountains and desert rock formation, the dune shapes that were carved out by wind carried across the Sahara...These shapes began to inspire me in a new way. This was the moment when I began using the human body as a stone formation, creating a surreal landscape of shapes and forms.
The human bodies appearing in my works are not always proportionate as they are in real life. They tend to be distorted and molded to a form. My audience may spend hours discovering new shapes.
I am also influenced by Greek mythology and philosophy and the mother planet concept. Forms and events are explained in mythology through personification of natural occurrences. For example, the earth is personified by the goddess Gaia, born together from chaos along with Uranus, the sky, which represents together the basic elements of the Earth.
In conclusion, we are the basic elements of this planet. The street scenes I am depicting, show how the human has adapted the world around it and now instead of earthly forms, we have surrounded ourselves with concrete and tall man-made structures.
Human body theme influences: Salvador Dali, Hieronymus Bosch, M. C. Escher, H. G. Giger, Justin Bua, Arcimboldo, Constantin Brancusi, Giorgio De Chirico.
Color influences: Juan Miro, Wassily Kandinsky.
