Dave Wyatt
Print Making, Painting and New Media Arts
Art is Vision; an Artist’s Statement
“My artwork comes from an idea that sacred geometry can by-pass language and talk to the Soul & the Energy Body. As the mind stills, the heart opens. Art has a fundamental imperative to break through the known patterns and to enable the audience a deeper perspective.
For instance, since we first painted on the Cave Walls, Art and Vision have been intricately entwined with Altered States and our Symbiotic Relationships. That is to say, art has the power to craft and open the imagination.
As an Independent Artist, I am seeking to touch and inspire a deeper, more awake part of ourselves. A place where we are not separate. I’m looking at how this translates to the collective.
In addition, I’m fascinated by how colours and textures change in different light much like our changing moods alter our perception. We achieve this with mask-layers, translucency and the shadow. It’s like when you look at the river. There are reflections in some parts, and the shadow in other places.
And there you too can see the rocks under the water. Our inner worlds are reflected in our outer expression; the two are intertextual as well as intertextural. Our Shadow selves reveal different layers within our own Process.
Similarly, everything around us echoes in this play of light and shade. In a sense the Inner is akin to the Outer. On the surface and underneath; certainly, our Inner World is equally coloured. A lot of my work is about the “mirror” that the external world presents to us. Likewise, I’m looking for the “parts” within ourselves that have to transfer “Reaction” into “Response”. In so doing we can find Inner Peace, Balance, and step beyond our Sense of Separation …
My art covers a wide range of media. From the traditional pen & ink, acrylics and oils to the New Media Art afforded through Digital Art technology.
Over the years I’ve experimented with mono-printing, digital photo-etching, video animation installations.
I’m currently working on hand made silk screen printing and am really excited to be taking my work in a relatively new direction.
I am also really happy to have been featured in 123Art Magazine earlier this month ( you can see the article here) talking about my work and inspirations. I am enjoying full emersion in my work, and really appreciate that the times where my work has not been in the forefront of my life have allowed for incubation and maturing of ideas. In short, I am stepping into my life-work, and am loving every minute of it.”
Biography
Art as an extension of the fields of the imagination
Dave Wyatt was born in 1970 in Ilford, England, and raised in Glasgow, Scotland, with a formative period in Ibadan, Nigeria; currently he resides in the French Pyrenees.
He is a multidisciplinary artist specialising in digital media, printmaking, painting, pen and ink, and animation. His work encompasses rhythmic pattern designs and contemporary abstract pieces, exploring the juxtaposition of cultural identity, the intersection of primitive impressions and modern technology.
Wyatt’s artistic concept delves into the compilation and recompilation of codes, metaphorically likened to the evolution of biological code and emotional patterns. He also examines cultural trends, and memory, likening them to inherited “memes” that are often unquestioningly perpetuated through generations. Additionally, and in this vain, Wyatt explores the concept of sampling, and recursive resampling; translating the idea of creating loops with sound into a visual context, where recognisable patterns transition into increasingly abstract spaces through zooming in on images and snippets thereof.
He hold a Masters in Social Anthropology and Archaeology (MA Hons) from Edinburgh University, focused on Cultural Identity and Ritual Practice, and Post-graduate Certification in Multimedia Design from Napier University, Edinburgh.
About the studio
It’s a bit of a juggle, really, as my studio here in the Grange is really quite small. Indeed, for one thing to have space, everything else seems to need to be reorganised and suffled around.
To say “there’s not enough room to swing a cat” is an understatement. Still, i work with what IS, while ruminating on the hows, whys, and when of creating a bigger, more suitable space.
On the one hand it’s small. But on the other, there’s a level of solitude and general peace and quiet that is hard to rival.
The building itself is a stone-built Maison Ancienne in a small hamlet, built sometime in the 18th Century as far as I have found out, though potentially older. It’s perched on the south-facing side of a lost valley at about 800m in the French Pyrenees about 12km (as the crow flies) north of the Spanish border.
The views are over the valley to the nearest peaks and the forest-covered slopes; to the west the valley falls away over about 6km, and opens out to the nearest village with a population of around 800 people year round.
The Artist’s Path
Dave S Wyatt - Artist & Digital Print Maker - New Media Artist
I’ve been to places in my life where the sheer beauty takes the breath away, and the naked soul is stripped of words. The further one steps from the well-trodden road, and leaves on a wee forest trail, the closer one gets to a realm where harmonious interplay is the natural currency. My practice has led me down one of these paths, and where the words have failed, the shifting patterns have prevailed. My work is a visual description of such a journey down a path with heart.
I’ve always found a certain peace in making drawings and paintings.. There’s a deeply centred place that comes to me, sited somewhere on the edge of trance where I watch a piece develope and become alive. I find it a very meditative process, and find myself called to be producing the work. Ideas and images come in dreams and visions in the night, or are brought through from ceremony.
I make art because it touches and soothes my soul. It facilitates part of my deeper healing and recognition of who I am, and what I came here to do on this earthwalk. Maybe it touches others too.
I want my art to communicate the “unspeakable” in a way that others can also experience the divineness of this multi-verse, and the interconnectedness of all things.
Along the Way
My personal journey began 37yrs ago, taking acid for the first time in Glasgow. I realised that I had come home to my birth-right – to forge a relationship with, and go as deeply as possible into “other” and download what was there in the bewildering dimension … it’s been a long and transformative ( and very interesting) journey.
The communities which hold these medicines ( Ayahuesca, Huchuma, Mushrooms “the flesh of the Gods”) do need us to support them also, because the gift that they have to share needs to be supported. I believe though, that the vision needs to be broader, as the entirety of the “work” requires (within the model of capital) a financial contribution .. we are, after all, a long way from a world where those with “calling” can apply for a government grant for hallucinogenic research..
As Mckenna said (paraphrase) the role of the artists and shamans is to go into the [hallucinogen] experience, and bring back the jewels left at the end of time.
I work in varying techniques, from pen & ink, to acrylic, and have experimented with various forms of print-making and mixed media over the years. Through my work with video, digital graphics and new media art, I find myself drawn to a process within which I take my hand-drawn illustrations and re-mix, as it were, through various integrated softwares technologies to create multi-layer, trans-dimensional images for print.
Motivation
I suppose I’m drawn to the interchange and subtle layering, where shadow and light transform the underlying pattern; much like the play of dappled light through the forest on a flowing mountain stream.
My work with patterns and design is based in my studies of the rhythms of nature. My inspiration comes from the forests, the wild mountain streams, the movement of the stars and the changing wheel of seasons.
The garden and the trees grow and change as the year turns; twisting and winding their tendrils into the intricate web we call life. The stars and planets weave their paths in even greater and longer patterns, marking the months, the years and the eons with an ever evolving pattern which holds us in the perpetual now.
Our present is conjured through the patterns of our past; our future is born within our conscious responses within the present.
The questions are yours to uncover, your answers are within your patterns and reflection; your growth is the weaving of these understandings and re:memberings, as your journey unfolds like a sapling growing on the mountainside. Being aware of the seeds you plant, the nurture you give, and the patterns’ unfolding is the journey towards the beautiful and bountiful garden of your soul’s nature.
Prints and Originals
Prints of my artwork will shortly be available. This will include original screenprints, limited edition giclée prints, and reproductions of older work …. thanks for your patience
Contact
contact@davewyattarts.comGet the Latest News & Updates
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