Catalogo Dan Reeves

simultaneous

perception

Dan Reeves

Dan Reeves, Artist’s Statement: Specializing in painting and photography, my work has been shown in numerous competitions and exhibitions and is found in many private and public collections.

For a number of years I have been exploring the aesthetic potential of the computer in art. Currently, I am working on my ColorStorm Series, which examines the relationship and the impact of the perception of colors as they relate to each other. The series uses dazzling color with sometimes-vivid brush strokes to imply forms to evoke mood, depth and space.

My Blue one, two, three and four series explores the perceptual concept known as simultaneous contrast.

These works explore this concept while reversing the well established artistic concept that “cool colors recede and warm colors advance”, I have consciously worked over the background in a manner that forces the cool colored “blue bar” to the foreground while the warm ground recedes. Because I found success with this challenge, I thought I would take it one step further with “Blue Two”; here the cool blue bar comes forward while the cool background behaves as it is supposed to; it recedes.

I sometimes work figuratively, and included two examples where the nude human form serves as a landscape metaphor. Although “Day” is recognizable as a nude form, it serves as a terrain where shadows are reversed using white. While “Night” is at first not seen as a female form, and this time the shadows are dark and obscure the human form.

The ColorForm Variation series was inspired both by Dale Chihuly's glass sculptures and Venetian glass forms. I find that the colors in glass forms are amazingly beautiful, and this is a series of photographs emulating colors, as they would be perceived if one were looking through glass.

My Red Black Variation series is a study of changing colors while the painted surface remains unchanged.

The idea here was to examine how color dramatically affects the perception of a stable form and its textures.

Dan Reeves is Professor of Art and Dean of the College of Fine Arts at Arkansas State University, USA.

Blue one

Blue two

Blue three

Blue four

Day

Night

ColorStorm with Heart

ColorStorm Triptych

Painted Color form variation

ColorStorm I

ColorStorm II

ColorStorm III

ColorStorm IV

Red Black Variation Series 2

Red Black Variation Series 1

Red Black Variation Series 4

Red Black Variation Series 3

ColorForm variation III

ColorForm variation IV

Calm before ColorStorm

ColorForm variation II

ColorForm variation V

ColorForm variation I

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FLORENCE UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS

Dan Reeves Bio Born in Western Pennsylvania, Dan Reeves has been involved with art and music all of his life. He holds a doctorate from Illinois State University where he studied visual perception and its relationship to art and aesthetics. He has taught at Illinois State University, Ball State University, Wright State University and Virginia Commonwealth University. At VCU, he held various posts as art department chair, music department chair, director of graduate studies, director of international studies and associate dean.

For the last 10 years, he has served as Dean of the College of Fine Arts at Arkansas State

University,

which

includes

the

Departments of Art, Music and Theatre as well as Fowler Center for performing arts, and Bradbury Gallery, the largest art gallery in Northeast Arkansas.

In addition to his administrative duties as dean, Reeves still finds time to explore his artistic vision.

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