Creating a new reality through art

BY CYNTHIA MAZARIEGOS Staff Writer

Daniel Dove is a professor of drawing and painting at Long Beach State who has overcome self-doubt and continues to perfect his craft while sharing his knowledge with students.

Dove’s art has been displayed in the University of California, Santa Barbara and the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art.

He has received the Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellowship in Painting and the Vermont Studio Center’s Full Fellowship.

He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in studio art from the University of Texas and a Masters of Fine Arts in painting from Yale University School of Art.

Dove was a chemistry undergraduate at the University of Texas, but after a year he realized he preferred art and he changed his major. His middle class family had no artistic background which often made him feel out of place among his peers.

“I was not cultured at all, there was no chair for beauty or ideas in my family,” Dove said.

He was afraid that he wouldn’t progress as other artists and he feared others would discovered he felt outcasted.

“I would be left behind, while all the beautiful, sophisticated, rich culture people would go off,” Dove said.

During grade school he never thought of pursuing art. He started drawing to flesh out an imaginative world and was initially inspired by the art of Star Wars.

“I like sad music, sad movies, I’m not a perpetually sad person. It is just a thing about creativity in a space where human lives are not confronting limitations or failure,” Dove said. “Just the inherent melancholy of existence, which I believe there really is, it’s all over things.”

His art consists of themes of fictional, once-grand environments and objects fallen into disrepair. Dove’s art also displays surreal paradoxes of modern life, often using geometric shapes to create paintings that look like architecture.

Part of Dove’s inspiration also came from his first job as a professor in Cleveland, Ohio. Cleveland used to be a rich city due to the steel industry, but due to globalization and economics, the city declined.

Dove witnessed, “a specific street in Cleveland, that is just mansions that were previously owned by people behind the steel industry, or manufacturing industries, and those things are abandoned. And they are just falling apart.”

To him, it was beautiful because the houses had trees growing and there was a collusion of something that was beautiful and optimistic along with the aftermath.

Dove draws places and things that have never existed. He hopes people can see his art and get a sense of reality and melancholy.

As an instructor, Dove thinks students should understand that instructors critique will help them grow as artists. But he also believes that instructors should be open to the idea that students have their own artistic style.

“Don’t let where you come from, the people that you’re around, define who you think you are, or what you want. Recognize that all of the easy things have already been done,” Dove said. “So if you want to make something that’s really good, you have to make difficulty, your friend.

“Because it’s the difficult things that people haven’t done. And because you make difficulty your friend, you have to be ready to fail.”

Dove encourages students to find a balance, to forgive themselves when they fail but to stay ambitious.

Mirabel Wigon, a professor at California State University, Stanislaus who received her Masters in Fine Arts at CSULB, said Dove has helped many graduates and undergraduates with their career, “An artist teaches and leads by example, and he is one of many fabulous artists working right now at CSU Long Beach.”

Katie Marshall, former student and current employee of Dove said, “His great knowledge of painting and art history make him a tough and sometimes intimidating but always insightful critic, as well as someone who challenged me to really dig deeper into my own artistic questions.”

Dove does not impose any rules to creativity, giving complete artistic freedom.

In relation, Marshall said, “This artistic freedom as well as critical rigor pushed me far, and I carry many of Daniel’s insights with me now that I have my own studio and painting practice.”

Jordan Sabolick, another former student, said with discussion and readings Dove “had this unique ability to curate a class environment that welcomed a diversity of opinions and critical thought.”

Sabolick liked the way Dove taught.

“I remember thinking, ‘This is what higher education should be about,’ creating safe spaces for dialogue where differing opinions are thoughtfully expressed,” Sabolick said.

Daniel Dove began higher education studying chemistry but later realized he wanted to be an artist. Now, he teaches drawing and painting at Long Beach State.