"The Man" (36" x 48")
Wrought with a very amorphous type of energy, “The Man” is simply put number one in my catalogue of work. This is where my career as a painter began. My first canvas. My first episode with oil paint. This primitive assembly of only a few fundamental colors, expressed through wriggling splotches, plodded smudges and ephemerally guided strokes is where I got the notion that I had new talent that needed all of my attention. From here, my approach became characteristically off-hinged in ways further and further outside of the box compared to any traditionally implemented techniques, utilizing found objects such as scrap metal as tools to wield my pigments in new ways, and thus creating imagery that evoked genuinely different kinds of reactions from viewers. Like many artists before me, I was initially fueled by the obsession of self-revelation, always perpetuated in a volatile state of mind, existing between senses of contentment and restlessness. I needed to keep making newer pieces.. Suddenly, I was transfixed in a eccentrically “art-centric” world of my own making, in which my entire day was dedicated to painting. I wasn’t obsessed. I was possessed. And to anyone that knows the difference between the two, they understand that one is a merely a hyper-intensified feeling and the other an unremitting state-of-mind.
Prior to moving into Center City, I had saved $10,000 landscaping in the suburbs that I grew up in just outside of Philadelphia. My rough plan was to live off of that money for as long as humanly possible in an effort to ignore the outside world and concentrate on writing a book. Whenever the time came that I had to bite the bullet and get a job again, I was perfectly willing to do so but, as a recent college graduate having majored in journalism, I felt it was “that time” in my life where I was destined to write the most compelling book of my generation. Well, “the book” went south rather quickly.. And my inspiration was beginning to implode.. Seeking encouragement elsewhere, I spent an afternoon at The Franklin Institute’s IMAX Omniverse theatre (a gargantuan dome screen theatre that turns ANYONE into a wonder-struck, five year old) where I saw a documentary on the life of Vincent Van Gogh. The movie thenceforth motivated me to walk directly to an art store on South Street, where I purchased this canvas you now see before you along with five or so tubes of oil paint that I liked. Long story short, thereafter, each day, I bought yet another canvas, more paint, more supplies and simply made an all day/every day schedule out of making something out of nothing on canvas. The $10,000 originally intended for rent/living expenses was spent entirely on this new pursuit in a matter on several months.. Each day functioned entirely around getting supplies back to my apartment to keep myself occupied until I collapsed. I would often be working until 5 a.m. Again, it was an unremitting state-of-mind, not just an obsession. I had no control over the urge, yet somehow remained in a permanent state of clarity and execution. The accomplishments of just one day in my new world felt like a weeks worth of work in my former life. Hand writing my own business cards, designing my own glossy flyer, pounding the pavement for locations to hang my work, buying materials all over town, developing a website, networking. I was firing on all cylinders, suddenly employing every ounce of knowledge, common sense & training I’d received, only craving more. More work. More locations. More exposure. More reach. More clients. More reason to keep moving forward.. Eventually, I began describing my new passion as “my drug habit” – because, “I spent all my money on it, and I did it alone in my apartment..”
Notwithstanding, revitalized esteem aside, I had always firmly grasped what I was doing as a business venture. I “went for broke” on purpose, one, because I’m the kind of person that reacts positively to stress, so I wanted to invest everything I had in this new venture almost to pronounce the need to succeed, and two, because I’m also a very confident person, knowing little else aside from myself and my path. I’ve once been described as, “the kind of person who jumps out of the airplane first, and makes a parachute on the way down..” My name is Liam Dean and I am 27 years young. I jumped out of the airplane in March of 2009 when I first began creating my own brand of abstract artwork. The end has not yet been determined for this phase of my life, but irrespective of life’s unforeseen changes I am able to say now that “the man rowing the boat doesn’t have time to rock it..”
THANK YOU
"The Man" (36" x 48")
