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Arthur Durkee
World Citizen & Global Nomad
currently based in Wisconsin
Artist's Statement 2008
My artwork has been described as shamanic, visionary, archetypal, transformative, and mythopoetic. It has won national, regional, and local awards, appeared in galleries and exhibitions, and has been published nationwide. I work in photography, multimedia cinema, collage, landscape art sculpture, original music, and poetry and essay. I often make art from what I find lying at hand. I appreciate archaic technologies and processes that resonate across time and space; simultaneously, I work on the leading edge of digital new media technologies.
Artist's Statement 2006
My artwork has been described as shamanic, visionary, archetypal, transformative, spiritual, and mythopoetic. I work with photography, digital art, typography, landscape and site-specific art, hand-made paper and books, printmaking, poetry, music, musical instrument building and design, junkmusic (homemade and found sound), and web-based new media. I have also worked with acrylic paints, fabric (including quilting), found assemblages, pottery, natural materials, jewelry, woodwork, stonework, metal, chandlery, and other media, singly or in combination. I am attracted to archaic technologies and processes that resonate across time; the works I make with them exist both in the past and the future. I can locate as influences, in terms of approach and craft if not content: Robert Rauschenberg, Jerry Uelsmann, Andy Goldsworthy, Susan Seddon Boulet. I have a restless imagination, and often make art of what I find lying at hand. Bits and pieces gathered here often end up incorporated over there. I prefer to develop flexibility, diversity, open-minded exploration and adaptability, over strict dedication to any single medium.
Artist's Statement 2005
My artwork has been described as shamanic, visionary, archetypal, transformative, spiritual, and mythopoetic. I work with photography, digital art, typography, landscape and site-specific art, hand-made paper and books, printmaking, poetry, music, musical instrument building and design, junkmusic (homemade and found sound), and web-based new media. I have also worked with acrylic paints, fabric (including quilting), found assemblages, pottery, natural materials, jewelry, woodwork, stonework, metal, chandlery, and other media, singly or in combination. I am attracted to archaic technologies and processes that resonate across time; the works I make with them exist both in the past and the future. I can locate as influences, in terms of approach and craft if not content: Robert Rauschenberg, Jerry Uelsmann, Andy Goldsworthy, Susan Seddon Boulet. I have a restless imagination, and often make art of what I find lying at hand. Bits and pieces gathered here often end up incorporated over there. I prefer to develop flexibility, diversity, open-minded exploration and adaptability, over strict dedication to any single medium.
I have a broad-ranging and well-read background in design, visual art, art history, typography, the history of technology and engineering, poetry, music (performance, musicology, ethnomusicology, history), and cultural studies such as folklore and anthropology. I have experience in teaching, training, tutoring, and in research and consulting, for all of the above.
2004 Artist's Statement
Arthur Durkee is an experienced book designer, illustrator, photographer,
graphic designer, typographer, font designer and digital artist.
He is also an award-winning composer, an accomplished musician
with several recordings available, a published poet and essayist,
interviewer, and community radio host.
Most of the artwork samples on this portfolio website date from
1998 to the present, although the Fine Art section contains work ranging from 1994 to the present day. New
artwork is added as completed, and the site is updated regularly.
Fresh Thoughts, 2004
I have become aware, as I gather images for the ongoing matrix-collage series, how much an important role chance plays in my creatrive work.
I was always drawn to aleatoric music, in which some elements
of performance and composition are chance-derived, but I see that
I also rely on chance in my artwork. The fortuitous accident.
The techniques and styles discovered through play. The random
gathering of digital photos by shooting without looking through
the viewfinder, in all times and places. (Even easier now with
the advent of small digital cameras.) The selection process based
on the random choices of images made, during the collage assembly
process. The experimental approach. Let's what happens if we do
this.
Spirit lies at the center of the practice. It is about trust,
but it's also about risk and trusting those pre-concious elements
of self to step forward and be heard. The art of improvisation
in life and in art requires one to let go of the illusion that
one ever has complete control.
I find this statement by C.G. Jung, the founder of depth psychology
and the coiner of words such as archetype and synchronicity—words which have now entered the collective consciousness—to be personally resonant and prophetic: Really—I don't know what the meaning or purpose of life is. But it looks exactly as if something were meant by it. —C.G. Jung
2002 Artist's Statement
My digital fine art, which is based on the foundation of my original
photography, takes elements from natural and human-created worlds
and combines them in new and unexpected ways. Objects, creatures
and landscapes are layered, merged, blended and contrasted to
entice the viewer into seeing the world with fresh eyes. This
artwork has been described as visionary, transcendant, archetypal,
and mythopoetic.
I strive to locate spirit or soul in the landscape, both in the
sense of genius loci (the soul-of-a-place) and in humankind's
relationship to the natural/human-made world. Humanity is not
separate from nature, but neither can nature reach its full potential
without the partnership of consciousness to transcend its pure
physicality, and become Spirit. (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's
noosphere, and Jose Arguelle's activated global psi-bank are both
formulations of this idea.) Spirit is both immanent and transcendant,
rooted in the fibre of the Universe and yet mysteriously transforming
it. I often become fascinated with the geography, history and
geology of specific places towards which I feel drawn. These include
the Wisconsin and northern Minnesota landscapes; the shores of the Great Lakes; the Rocky Mountain
states of New Mexico, Wyoming, Idaho, and eastern Oregon; the Basin & Range of Utah
and Nevada; the cities and royal courts of central Java, Indonesia;
and the agricultural landscape of rural Holland.
The working method I have developed for creating digital art involves
making both color and black & white film photographs, then scanning
them into the computer where they are manipulated at high resolution.
I also work directly with digital photography. Objects are also
placed directly upon the scanner, and used as elements in pieces.
Planned sessions are undertaken, where a piece is developed to
express a specific meaning, but I also leave room for fortuitous
accidents that occur while improvising with the camera and later
at the computer.
As artistic touchstones, I am able to cite photographers Jerry
Uelsmann, Duane Michals, Ralph Eugene Meatyard and Siegfried Halus;
artists Piet Mondrian, M.C. Escher, Robert Rauschenberg, Henri
Matisse and Mark Rothko; and classical Japanese printmakers such
as Hokusai and Hiroshige.
Recent work includes a series of nude portraits in rivers and waterfalls, a series of posters and broadsheets
combining images and typography, and an ongoing series exploring
The Western Lands as both representative and expressionistic landscape. I am also
pursuing work that will eventually be published as an illustrated
deck of oracle cards, entitled Spiral Dance.
Arthur Durkee Resumés & Sample Sheets
Current resumés and sample sheets in downloadable and printable
PDF format:
Artist's Biography
Artist's Statement
Graphic Arts & Design Resumé
Music Performance Resumé
Teaching Experience
Community Radiobroadcast Experience
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Teaching Class Proposals
Logo & Illustration Sample Sheets
A Photoshop Lesson (sample teaching materials)
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