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Steven Donnini
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After art school in Miami, Florida (1968), I pursued an active film career to support my fine artist passion for oil painting. Assignments took me to many different places in the world were I experienced a vast array of art about cultures, mythology, and religions. I capture in images the rainforest environments, people, cultures, and mythologies. Mythology has emerged as a major theme in my art. Indio Woman in the rainforest, White Rhino and Hindu Rhada are a few examples. Everywhere I look I see the world altering in cultural ways. The painting titled “The Venus of Guadalupe” is an composite of iconic images of The Birth of Venus by Botticelli and the Virgin of The Guadalupe. Here the cultural iconic sensibilities of the Renaissance in Europe meet the Central Catholic icon of The Virgin of Guadalupe to create an expression of the clash of culture which I experienced when filming a film for the Vatican in Dallas, Texas. My painting “The Venus of Guadalupe” expresses the unfolding conflict of clashing cultures in the American Southwest. Cultural and religious sensibilities collide to create a new cultural energy.
I have always focused on my fine art as a pure expression of my experiences and the film assignments paid the bills. In this way I have avoided the pressure of making art to please a mass market. Many of my oil paintings have short stories with the same titles like my oil painting on canvas titled “Humpback Creeper” is about life on a carnival a American traveling show. The image is a clown hiding behind a midway tent. My grandfather owned a traveling show from the 1940 until his death in 1961.
As a youngster, I would travel with him during the summer where I learned about what happens on the midway and how the games are set up as "Flat Stores" to flat take your money.
The paintings deal mostly with mortality, rituals, culture, religions, sex, mythology and extinction. These subjects reflect the conflict of values and aspirations that shape our worldly experience. The near extinction of these small town traveling shows is a great loss to our culture which has been replaced by video games and other more readily available entertainment.
In 1955, I was a small boy playing in my father’s studio, I loved all the astonishing things he had to work with. The brushes of sable and camel hair were my favorites, because they felt so good to the touch. It took many years to discover the real value of those brushes. Fifty years later, I have some of his tubes of oil paint that have long ago turned dense. His fingerprints are still visible on the tubes. He demonstrated, that to be a successful artist, one needed to be technically masterful, live an interesting life, work harder than most and be willing to promote the art. I keep a few of his oil paintings and drawings in my studio as a reminder.
My paintings tell a story about the subject that is in my unconscious that combines with my way of perceiving the world. You may find them disturbing, playful or even comforting. My intention is to release the viewer to a new consciousness, a different reality. Much of what happens in painting is the joy of working with oil paint that involves my reverence for light, shape and color. Each painting may take as long as 4 months to accomplish. This happens as a result of the time it takes for study drawings, under painting and for layers of oil paint to dry.
I rarely use anything but primary colors. Every mixed color has a small percent of every other color in it. This brings a harmonious conglomeration that becomes it’s own reality.
One important aspect of my art is the relationship to the art collector. I believe I must promote the value and quality of my art, so that collectors will see it as a good investment. In the art marketplace, art is worth whatever the potential future value may be, not always what it is valued at, at the moment.
That’s why I spend time to cultivate the growing value of my art for the collectors and a vision of life that is unique through the art.
In the end its all about ones experience with the art.
Life emerges from art, art emerges from life.
Steven Donnini
2601 Penny Lane
Austin TX 78757 US
Phone: 407-645-4705
Profile Link:
http://www.PsychedelicArtists.org/StevenDonnini
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