Artist Interview

by King Molapo

K.M: How does your work expose and reflect on the nuanced condition of contemporary life?

D.B: It features an enormous number of elements that encompasses the present and future, but most especially, the past. I’m always fixated by my foibles, interests, personal proclivities and disappointments. The present is a split second, the future an unknown, thus I believe that the past constitutes the overwhelming percentage of our personal histories. I’m attached to objects and concepts that dredge up these past sensibilities. My work is, in effect, a series of personal dreamscapes. I still want to believe that life has a mystery, and I try to create works that resonate with this feeling.

Guinness Block Of World Records 2010
4"w x 4"d x 2/12"h

K.M: Do you believe that your pieces tease out the beauty in the complex, convoluted troubles that plague our lives, while simultaneously reminding us of the variety of rich pleasures that life offers?

D.B: My work comes out of my own personal history and fantasies. Life has often constituted its share of ongoing personal disappointments– with the notable exception of my children—so I’ve been tempted to enhance both its possibilities and promise. Unfortunately, I’m often a pessimist, and skeptical of this bounty of possibilities.

Susan Hayward Altarpiece 2010
16"w x63/4"d x 8"h

K.M: What are your thoughts on fame and stardom?

D.B: I want recognition and yet the words fame and stardom seem somewhat superficial to me. I would greatly enjoy the admiration and respect of the literate and cognoscenti. I’m neither a Norman Rockwell or a Peter Max, thus their sort of fame and popularity is closed to me.

Movie Boyz Of 1951 2002
20" x 16"

K.M: How does your art encourage people from quick takes on issues, or to think about social matters in both greater depth, and more systematically?

D.B: I consider myself to be very political, and socially acute and aware. I believe that if people concentrate and allow the concepts in my pieces to soak in, the work may contain a propensity to make them stretch their thought processes, and consider the less-than-obvious. I’m an enemy of commercialization and cliché.

Around The World In 80 Daze 1999

17" x 22"

K .M: How does your experience as an educator come into play?

D.B: My teaching experience gradually and grudgingly attuned me to the needs of children and the special and more direct way they think. Children are often brutally straightforward, unfettered and refreshingly innocent. Then again, they can also be primitive, withholding and obtuse. I often try to second-guess them, but that frequently doesn’t work if you are not genuinely in sync with their individual needs.

Robert Taylor Quo Vadis 2005/2009
13"x 14"

K.M: Art has been a vital part of our collective social conscience since the earliest beginnings of human history – how does your art encourage thoughtful civil discourse?

D.B: Amidst the jumbled detritus of what passes as human civilization today, I’m trying to distill and decipher and edit its many elements. I’m attempting to make some sense out of this often perplexing world. If I can intrigue and open up the minds of even a small fraction of observers viewing my work, I would consider it a success. The impremitur of a major museum, gallery, curator, or media source is unavoidably, undeniably and immeasurably significant towards this end.

She Loves You, Yeah Yeah Yeah 2002
12 1/2" x 10"

K.M: In addition to being a working artist, you facilitate and plan current events discussion sessions with seniors citizens at five different venues each week. Are your socio-political dialogues an attempt at this civil discourse? Do your journals take note of these events?

D.B: On the whole, older people are inclined--and frequently have more free time--to ruminate on and discuss important issues. Often their contributions extend and might even revise my own political and social thinking. My journals are of considerable value in helping me to reflect and refine on the daily experiences that might otherwise pass by too rapidly and confusingly for initial examination and analysis. Also, by extensively quoting books and periodicals I’m reading, I can fold in the thought processes and viewpoints of many brilliant and original minds in addition to my own.

Imperial Cheddar Club Cheese 2010
4"w x4"d x 2"h

K.M: Describe to me the intensity of your thoughts while creating your work. Where do you draw your inspiration?

D.B: I happen to be a person who is intrigued by many, many things. I have a lot of intellectual interests and esoteric curiosity. These include history, photography, film and theater and very much everything political. I’m interested in people and what makes them tick. The thing about my work is that it fuses my inthusiasms and personality: my literary side and my visual side. The journals, that most truly reflect this fusion, are the spine of my life. There is also that part of me that is trying to make sense of a world that can seem hostile, random and doesn’t make sense. In my visual art, I attempt to compose with a broad range of materials and textures to create a new whole and reorder and organize the confusing little parts that constitute our veritable existence. Ninety-nine percent of this world confuses and puzzles me and I’m trying to gain a foothold over it.

New Sistine Chapel 2010
34" x 27"

K.M: What do you want your work to present the viewer with?

D.B: I want the viewer to think. I want to extend the boundaries of their conceptual world. I want members of this audience to escape the little box so many of us are confined in. I’m not a classically-trained traditional artist or a conventional illustrator, and yet I have numerous representational ambitions. My thought processes possibly lie about exactly mid-way between representational and abstract oeuvres. I’m trying to convey original ideas and feelings, but at the same time I want to infuse color, composition and sensibilities that might grab the viewer by the neck and shake them up a little. I want my audience to be more comfortable with unconventionality, and go a little further out on a limb as I have.

Braun Clock 2008
7" x 7"

K.M: How do you explain your visual vocabulary?

D.B: It is largely an amalgamation of my thought processes. I’m also determined to rescue and utilize little, largely unrecognizable objects that--when put together--are far more than the sum of their parts. Unfortunately, sometimes my versatility and wide net can diffuse focus--my thinking can tend to be a tangential nuisance. I may expect too much of my viewers, especially in light of the fact that even some of the brightest and most successful people are somewhat limited and intimidated by art; lacking the conviction and courage of their own judgment. My work may be a little too intense and diverse for their comfort zone. It is also undeniable that for the overwhelming majority of viewers, fine art must carry that all-important imprimatur of some heavy-hitting institution like a museum, a major established commercial gallery, or a media powerhouse like The New York Times. Unfortunately for me, I’ve never gained this magnitude of recognition and thus must labor under a substantial degree of obscurity and minimal appreciation.

Working Clock 2008
6/34" x 6/34"