David O'Brien's Page

Website

http://www.davidobrienartwork.com

College / University

Virginia Tech

Program / Degree

Architecture

Graduation

May 31, 2000

Member type

Artist

If you're an artist, what kind of art do you make?

Drawing, Painting

I am...

exploding into a billion little pieces

About my artwork

I often simply begin with a technique and a basic idea of how to move forward. In this sense I un-apologetically imitate natural processes. I focus on the micro and let the macro develop on its own. It is in the execution of the work that a process of discovery takes place. What guides me however is a sort of armchair mysticism; the idea that everyone today is free to explain the universe in whatever way we see fit. We can invent our own ideas about whether or not anything supernatural exists, and if so how we might have access to it.

For me it is about the subtle differences between inanimate, chemical matter and living biology. How does this transformation take place? I think one of the great goals of humanity is to try to understand how to synthesize this transformation. What I want to accomplish is to try to visually decode and articulate the difference between geometry and biology in the context of art.

There are certain themes that I often return to; the idea of the rising mountain, the machine as landscape, rhizomatic plant-life, fluid motion, the explosion as archetypal form and astronomy realized in cartoon. I want to build drawings and diagrams that visually manifest the incredible power of what is unknown to us about our own nature.

Artists I like

philip guston, sol steinberg, marcel duchamp, marc chagall... antony gormley, bridget riley, tim hawkinson, tom friedman

Centre of the artworld:

New York, LA, Berlin, my studio, nowhere and everywhere