Bromeliad 2009
| Artist Dave Gunson For well over thirty years I have worked as a freelance illustrator and designer in publishing, in New Zealand and in the US. Much of my commercial illustration work might loosely be described as 'the natural world,' with publications like New Zealand Geographic and while I enjoy recording aspects of wildlife in paintings and drawings, I also work in several other areas... My realist/figurative works are nearly always rather whimsical in nature - I always like to have a touch of the surreal - and possibly the subversive - creeping in somewhere. I suppose it's the juxtaposition of the commonplace with the unexpected that I enjoy. Sometimes it's simply a 'what if' situation that stirs the imagination... to take something commonplace and ordinary, and give it a twist. Juxtaposition is almost the whole point of my abstract geometric work - I'm intrigued by the happy and pleasing accidents that continue to arise in these paintings, as colours and shapes come together in unexpected ways. These works, if they were to be given a formal name, I guess it would have to be the broad label of 'juxtapositionalism.' Artists have long used the found object component in more abstract and modernist words - by introducing real objects into paintings by way of illustration (the objet trouve of the surrealists), and into collages, assemblages and constructions by using the objects themselves... and using them, more often than not, strictly as found, without amendment or alteration. Hence the term. I find that the artistic isolation from their natural environments and the archival, almost severe, nature of the paintings, all then become part of a fascinating formal documentation, and revealing, as one art writer aptly put it - 'fresh repertoires of form implicit in aspects of nature previously ignored.' About This Artwork "A pencil drawing executed while waiting for my wife. I sat on a bench in a small park, and glanced down to my side. A lovely bromeliad! I had my plein air stuff with me, so I set to and drew the whole thing, and finished just before my wife returned. A very rewarding way to pass the time!" Product Specifications Artwork Specifications Medium Graphite Sub-Medium pencil on paper Height 11.61 inches Width 12.20 inches Signature location front |