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DEEP SEEING
FRACTAL SHALLOWS, INFINITE DEPTHS
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FRACTAL SHALLOWS, INFINITE DEPTHS
1. Ithuriel #9 48x48"
graphite on canvas
© Daniel C Dempster
IMAGINE YOU'RE IN A TIDE POOL. Salt on your lips, the sun heating your shoulders, you peer into the warm water rippling about your ankles. Hermit crabs trundle slowly across the sand while tiny fish play hide-and-seek under outcroppings ornamented with baby red anemones, spiny sea urchins and armor-plated trilobites. You gradually become aware of a net of light rippling and bouncing around the bottom of the pool. You discover a pattern within this play of continual change. It entrances and pleases you in some deep way. Looking at the nearby tide pools you realize that each one has its own net of light, similar to yours, but unique. Something shifts in your brain, unlocking an appreciation of something beyond beauty and awe. You’ll never be the same again.
"...it works perfectly - the graphite shimmers on the canvas in light relief recreating perfectly the intricate interface of water. light and rock... the effects he has produced are a marvel which say more about the calm induced by Bermuda coast than a thousand representationalist reproductions of John Smith's Bay... the sense of depth created by walking across the front of one of his works deceives the eye so I felt I could plunge my hands into the water."
Raymond Hainey, The Royal Gazette, Bermuda.
"His series of 20 "Ithuriel" paintings - several of which are on exhibit here - emulates the movement of shallow water and light through the use of industrial-grade graphite tinted with chalk. The chaotic patterns that flutter across each canvas recall the arrangement of ice crystals on a window-pane or the dappling of light across wave-tossed water. Yet within all that apparent randomness lies the presence of some irresistible governing order."
Mark St John Erickson, The Daily Press, Newport News, Virginia.
"The canvases in Dempster's masterful Ithuriel series, named for a passage in Milton's Paradise Lost, suggest the glitter of light across water, lichens on a rock, crumpled tissue, or creased, gossamer-thin fabric. Each abstract image is intricately worked using delicate gray graphite, achieving an illusion of texture that is dispelled only upon viewing the canvas nearly from the side."
Catherine Dorsey, PortFolio Weekly, Virginia Beach.
Fractal patterns of water and light (caustics) in a weathered limestone tide pool, Bermuda.
"Ithuriel: Fractal Shallows, Infinite Depths" just closed at The Pagosa Springs Center for the Arts. The twelve-week show was installed to accompany the February 16th opening of "Tiny, Beautiful Things." This exhibition of twelve 4x4' graphite and oil paintings by Dan Dempster explores the healing power of water through recognizing the spectacular detail in the play of water and light and in all that surrounds us.
At first glance, the installation of twelve minimalist canvases, based on 48x48” squares, is a pleasing run of repetition enlivened by subtle variation in size, texture and tone, monochromatically musical to the eye.
Individually, these painting delight through creative association. Within each painting, our mind seeks recognizable forms which float to the surface, waver and dissolve as other forms catch our eye, images fluidly morphing into other images.
Eventually our mind settles to notice the painting’s physical qualities. As our gaze roams across the surface, the eyes play the variations of color, tone and texture like silent music.
Focusing more closely, we see with astonishment detail-within-detail nested and unfolding within even the smallest detail. We become aware of something beyond beauty, a quality of clarity and vastness.
Holding that focus, we realize with even greater astonishment the same vastness and clarity in everything around us. Far from boring, this “one taste” unveils a world of exquisite subtlety in which the boundaries between the artist, subject, object and viewer collapse, leaving only great peace of mind.
These paintings are teachers, helping us to see the magic of our surroundings as children do: a world filled with wonder, possibility and delight. In this age of information overload, the ability of art to offer peace of mind through freedom from self is its greatest worth, and its highest purpose.
Paintings from this series have been shown at the Bermuda National Gallery, the Peninsula Fine Arts Center (Newport News, VA), The District of Columbia Arts Center (Washington, D.C.), Emory University (Atlanta, GA), the Palos Verdes Art Center (CA), and the Art Directors Guild Gallery 800 (N Hollywood, CA) among other places. They have been acquired by HSBC Bermuda, Swiss Re and other private collections.
"When we look deep into detail, subject and scale become irrelevant. Contemplating this paradox creates a crack in our façade of certainty about identity and meaning. Opened, it is possible to catch a glimpse of things as they are, rather than as we think. We are compelled to pay attention, to unknot our minds and wake up.
Seeing past concept and category, the mind opens to clarity and vastness. The boundaries between artist, subject, artwork and viewer dissolve. Through the window of such work, the viewer is drawn to share that selfless freedom. That is the art of seeing." - Dan Dempster, CA
In this age of information overload, Dan Dempster curates that rarest and most elusive commodity: peace of mind. In the ongoing crisis of identity and meaning, finding oneself through deep seeing brings great satisfaction, relief and freedom.
"Isamu Noguchi said, “It is selection and placement that will make anything a sculpture, even and old shoe.” Rodin, describing his partial figures as finished works, said, "Beauty is like God; a fragment of beauty is complete!" Agnes Martin wrote, "When your eyes are open, you see beauty in everything... Blake's right about there's no difference between the whole thing and the one thing." Through the movement of water and light and the weathering of materials I point out the spectacular in the mundane, the quality of infinite detail within everything. Where Martin sought the expression of perfection as an ideal, I seek the expression of perfection in things as they are.
These paintings were inspired by the fractal patterns of movement of water and light (caustics) in weathered limestone tide pools on the south shore of Bermuda, where I grew up. It has informed my work for 35 years. Now living in the Colorado mountain town of Pagosa Springs, I see and cultivate the same close observation of fractal detail in the mountains and rivers. It's in the purling light of the river’s edge, in the patterns of frost on a windowpane, in satellite images of snowy mountains. It's in the patterns of bark and in the way the trees grow. Indeed, once you see it in one thing, you can see it in everything.
When you look deep into detail, subject and scale become irrelevant. Contemplating this paradox creates a crack in your façade of certainty about identity and meaning. In deep seeing, your mind opens beyond thought and word to clarity and vastness. Seeing clarity and vastness you may notice that your mind is also clear and vast, the same. Moving from observer to participant, any feeling of insignificance when contemplating vastness dissolves into the deep satisfaction of unity within the infinite play of interdependence. This is the art of seeing."
- Dan Dempster, CA
Dan Dempster is a nonconceptual artist. As a longtime artist, writer and authorized teacher, he practices at the intersection of art, meditation and life. He plays with the liminal, using the edges of association to see beyond concept, meaning and identity. His particular interest is the fractal movement of water and light in shallows and the vast detail of weathered materials. Pointing out the spectacular in the mundane, he teaches how to see.
Dan is a Copley Artist and graduate of the University of Waterloo and Sheridan College. Born in Montreal to parents from Belfast and raised from the age of one in Bermuda, he now resides in the U.S. He has lived and worked in Bermuda, Canada, Ireland, and in New York, Miami, Boston and Los Angeles. He lives in the small Colorado mountain town of Pagosa Springs, renowned for its healing waters.
His weathered sculpture was shown in SoHo, New York from 1994-2002 by Fulcrum Gallery. His work was selected for eight biennials at the Bermuda National Gallery, and for the "Art for Humanity" Red Cross art auction in London. His paintings are in the collections of HSBC Bermuda and Swiss Re. He has had installations commissioned by Government House and by the Bermuda Department of Tourism.
Ariel Sands, 25x19" charcoal and Conté on Fabriano Ingres.
Publications & Recent Articles
EXCERPTS FROM ARTICLES & REVIEWS
"With work that depicts coastal beauty from ocean tides to tide pools and the magic of the horizon, he creates a wonderful quality of light and motion... His work offers a rich, contemplative view of nature that shimmers, glows and shifts. There is a strong Zen-like quality to his images; and his palette evokes all the colors of sea and sky and water imaginable. Both with his paintings and drawings, there is a vast, spacious beauty that is compelling to viewers."
Genie Davis "Dan Dempster: Exploring the beauty of the Pacific Coast," Palos Verdes Peninsula News, CA.
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"Eight of Bermuda's leading artists are now to be seen at the Desmond Fountain Gallery in the Emporium Building on Front Street. For the most part they are either at the top of their form or have broken new personal ground.
Most notable in the latter category is Daniel Dempster. In one sense he has gone back to his undoubted talent for interpreting shallow water, its dynamics and its plays of light. Where he used to work in chalk he has now taken to oils and the result is little short of dramatic. His start turn is "Wet Sands, Grape Bay: where he catches the evening light in reflection over an expanse of rising tide spread smoothly over almost flat sand. His perception of light and colour is as faultless as his well-known technique and sense of composition.
Almost in the same league is "Sunbeam, South Shore." Here the artist catches a glimmer of afternoon sun in water that is for the most part shaded by summer clouds. The warm glow imparts surprising warmth to an otherwise cool painting. One of the more exciting works is "Portents, South Shore" where Mr. Dempster, long known for his mastery of ripples of calm water, tackles with complete confidence and success tangled water breaking at the edge of a roiled sea."
Andrew Trimingham, "Fountain Gallery show is the best of the year" The Royal Gazette.
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"Each piece is wonderfully detailed and delicate, resulting in a startling degree of realism. At first glance you see each piece for what it is, paper and pencil on a flat plane. But the more you look the more you become drawn into the space and marvel at the clever way in which Dempster has captured such ethereal qualities... Whatever Dempster makes you think, there's no getting away from the fact that they are beautiful works of art."
Gareth Finnegan "A show with a difference" The Mid-Ocean News.
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"These exquisitely detailed drawings are not only a visual delight but, moreover, from the technical aspect the artist has taken the medium of coloured pencils to its zenith. There is nothing overdone, he uses each line or shaded area to render his subject in fine detail; nothing more and nothing less."
Emma Mitchell "The Nature of Things", The Mid-Ocean News.
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"Time has been built into the work, hard wired into the concepts, change is natural and intended and inherent in concept. Instead of decaying with the years these works are intended to change with the years, evolve, carry into the future not only the physicality of change but also the resonance of past states."
Dr. J. Bowyer Bell "Dan Dempster at Fulcrum" Gallery Guide, NY.
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"The artist's inspiration was absolutely clear and the success he achieved with his painstaking techinique quite plain... immensely successful..."
Andrew Trimingham, The Mid-Ocean News.
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"...it works perfectly - the graphite shimmers on the canvas in light relief recreating perfectly the intricate interface of water. light and rock... the effects he has produced are a marvel which say more about the calm induced by Bermuda coast than a thousand representationalist reproductions of John Smith's Bay... the sense of depth created by walking across the front of one of his works deceives the eye so I felt I could plunge my hands into the water."
Raymond Hainey, The Royal Gazette.
---
"... The canvases in Dempster's masterful Ithuriel series, named for a passage in Milton's Paradise Lost, suggest the glitter of light across water, lichens on a rock, crumpled tissue, or creased, gossamer-thin fabric. Each abstract image is intricately worked using delicate gray graphite, achieving an illusion of texture that is dispelled only upon viewing the canvas nearly from the side."
Catherine Dorsey. PortFolio Weekly, Virginia Beach, VA.
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"... Mr. Dempster best encompasses this philosophy of the "spectacular in the mundane" in his collection of sandwiched stainless steel wall plates, gorgeously "hydro-optic" installations whose colourfully rusting surfaces suggest a new-age topography that change with time and the elements."
Danny Sinopoli, The Royal Gazette.
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"... these steel plates were indeed enthralling. Their essential steeliness served as a counterbalance to the abstractionist impression created by the oxidation, frequently almost ethereal in quality, not unlike astronomers' photographs of the Magellanic clouds. In others, where one plate had lain flat against another, there were defining lines of varied oxidation that gave a random definition to the random oxidation... I was very pleasantly surprised and found the general impression to be both restful and energising, a curious combination of reactions. I know the artist has a fine and individual eye and this show attests to that again."
Andrew Trimingham, The Mid-Ocean News.
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"The outstanding exception... abstract works by Daniel Dempster taken around the shores of Bantry Bay in Ireland. They observe in detail the interaction of clear water over or on textured rock or sand in much the same way as do the best of his painted and drawn works... Admirably presented in well chosen frames, these photographs display a carefully thought out colour scheme, a balance of texture and line hardly to be seen anywhere else in the show... these photographs to me were outstandingly the best in the show."
Andrew Trimingham, The Mid-Ocean News.
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"It is the best thing in the show and tells us a great deal about the artist, who has given us exquisitely understated drawings and paintings of close-up water and rock details that have been absolutely first-rate... This video is much the same water and rock scenes as are the best of his work... What his eyes see is quite remarkably uncommon..."
Andrew Trimingham, The Mid-Ocean News.
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"...exquisite pencil studies of sea water shallows that look real enough to trail a hand through..."
Patricia Calnan, The Royal Gazette.
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"... soft, gentle pastel drawings with which Mr. Dempster has already distinguished himself. The play of light through the water is this artist's chosen instrument and on it he plays with talent and versatility... another skein of light shimmering through the water washing through the interstices of flat, cracked rocks, demonstrates the artist at the height of his talent. The skill with which he blends the fluid with the firm and renders patterns of light as counterpoint to the formations and fissures in the rock is modestly downplayed by the gentlest of eyes and a nearly monochromatic colour scheme. It is the balance of Yin and Yang forces resulting in a natural peace remarkably satisfying to both life and spirit."
Andrew Trimingham, The Mid-Ocean News.
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"Mr. Dempster has a unique eye and the technical facility to make the very most of it... extremely individual, spare, delicate, almost fragile perception of the unencumbered Bermuda that was here before man messed with it... brilliance of his water scenes... dramatic intensity... remarkably simple and startlingly successful..."
"Simplicity is the stuff of genius. Mr. Dempster deals with simplicity with no little success."
Andrew Trimingham, The Mid-Ocean News.
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"The work in the show, however, that really brings you to a halt on your first quick turn around the gallery is that of Daniel Dempster. The work consists almost entirely of the pattern of light on the gentle ripples of water over a sandy bottom and rendered with the most exacting precision. This is emphasized and set off by a small area of dark rocks, loosely rendered for contrast. That is all there is. It is both powerful and restful at the same time and the sandy greys of the almost monochrome colour scheme are at once warm and cool. The result is almost hypnotic and I was by no means the only viewer at the crowded opening evening to return to it again and again."
Andrew Trimingham, The Mid-Ocean News.
Water dazzles in sea scenes of area artist.
"...The drawings, paintings and sculptures that result may make you look at this neglected miracle of light, color and movement as if you had never seen it before..."Waterline" reproduces a shallow rivulet of tidal water with a startling degree of realism. It's almost as if you were standing barefoot near the shoreline, watching the water and light undulate in patterns across the sand under your toes... Dempster is the artist as seer, in fact... finding the mystery in the commonplace - then stepping out of the way as his audience looks on in wonder. In his drawings he accomplishes that aim through the persuasive argument of spectacularly keen-eyed detail..."
- Mark St. John Erickson, The Daily Press, Newport News, VA.
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