I have been painting professionally for over ten years now, longer if you take into account all the small exhibits and classes stretching back into my adolescence.  Although I received by BFA (from CU, Boulder) in 1997, my deeper relationship and love of art began with my mother's creativity and support of the Arts.  Painting, and the Arts in general, has long been a love of mine.

My wife, Rebecca Raven, is also a figurative painter.  We both paint at home, in a bedroom-turned-studio.  It is a good thing that neither of us are creating huge works right now.  Every week on Wednesday evening a number of artists/friends come to our house and create and talk art with us.  Sometimes these gatherings are creativity conflagrations, sometimes they are nearly Dionysian in terms of wine consumption, and yet sometimes they are calm and contemplative.  We call it "Art Night" for lack of a better, and more creative, term - I never have been an aficionado of titles.

Much of my work in the past ten years has come out of a filtering of thought and textual information - I am a voracious reader, tending to read more "non-fiction" than "fiction" (although it seems to me that everything has an element of both). Typically my works begin with an idea that I have read (or heard), often spun in my mind for weeks before reaching a point of execution.  I rarely sketch out ideas for paintings: I more frequently write them down.  The crafting of the images is done first digitally - I use the computer as my 'sketchbook', modifying and combining things until I can see what I want to paint.

Of all of the subject matter available to me to paint, people are the most interesting.  Culture, Politics, Sociology - all aspects of human life are intriguing to me.  As far back as I can recall all the work I have done has directly involved or commented upon people, their interactions, and the complexity of human thought and emotion.  I enjoy making paintings that (hopefully) can be found to be beautiful while being simultaneously challenging.

My most recent body of work, "Monsters", was 'completed' earlier this summer, and I have been spending the past two months painting less and planning the next body of work more.  In the meantime, I also made a switch in day-job.  As with many artists - all of my friends inclusive - painting is not my primary source of income.  Although successful, by my terms at least, my art practice requires that I maintain a day-job.  I do artwork that I enjoy and think is provocative, and hope others enjoy it as well, but know that unusual art is difficult to sell.  During the last month I made a transition from my former job as a coordinator of operations at a Fine Art Services company to a new second career as a Software/Firmware Engineer (I have a second Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science).  I see it as a significant change, but one for the better - it will provide me with additional freedom and resources to do the artwork I want to do.

Regarding the piece that I submitted to the Portrait Competition: it is entitled "Monster v.4" and is from the recent series of the same name.  It is oil on panel, and measures roughly two feet in height and width.  The model in this painting is me sans glasses, with my fist in an unusual (and momentarily uncomfortable) location, as you can see.  I somehow managed to take the picture I modeled this painting from with my free hand, which I still find remarkable given the conditions.  This series, which is comprised of 12 portraits of different people (6 men, 6 women), comes from time spent thinking about a number of contradictions: adolescence and maturity, repression and expression, ugliness and beauty, etc.  I have been thinking frequently about the human propensity for violence in contrast to the fragility and malleability of the human body.  This body of work is also an exercise in breaking down the composure of the models painted, of offering a slight challenge to formal portraiture, and an attempt to make unattractive portraits of not-unattractive people that look beautiful.  (I still hope that I look better in person, without hand-in-mouth.)

My forthcoming series is a mystery to be described later - perhaps I will offer a "sneak-peek" in the weeks to come.

Wesite http://demiart.com if you are so inclined...

Image 1: Monster v. 4 ©Demi Raven
Image 2: Studio