STATEMENT
For the past thirty years, my desire to draw has been underscored by my interest in observation. Because of the patience and time required to complete detailed, perceptual drawings, the still life genre is the ideal vehicle for the undertaking of uninterrupted, optical investigations. By carefully arranging and lighting objects on a tabletop surface, I am able to analyze, record and manipulate subtle transitions in shape, tone and edge in service of a heightened reality, a personal theater of sorts. By choosing inexpensive plastic and metal items as my subject matter I am asking the viewer to reexamine their definition of the mundane and to assess an object’s value on purely visual terms.
The process that I have chosen for these drawings is metal point, a painstakingly unforgiving antique process, commonly used by artists in the 13th and 14th centuries. When properly layered, this process possesses a luminosity and delicate tonal range otherwise unattainable with any other graphic medium. Additionally, the use of metal point further divorces the object from its usual function, in a sense elevating it, while providing an intriguing contrast between the present and the past. By employing copper, silver, gold and platinum, different patinas are achieved over time as the metals slowly oxidize in reaction to the air around them, promoting subtle change long after the actual drawing is completed.
Ultimately, I wish for my drawings to serve as quiet, tender and thoughtful records of acute optical experiences, embracing craftsmanship and formalism as fundamental criteria upon which standards of beauty can be evaluated and maintained.
BIOGRAPHY
Dennis Angel attended Parsons School of Design in New York and eventually received his BFA from the University of Oklahoma. He received his MFA from Indiana University in 1988. His work has been included in over 200 national and international exhibitions and is represented in numerous private and corporate collections. His metal point drawings were recently accepted into the Viewing Program at the Drawing Center in New York City. He is currently a professor of painting and drawing at the College of Southern Nevada and maintains an active studio schedule in Las Vegas.