Del Christensen Paintings
Exhibition: July 21 through August 27
Reception: July 23, 7 – 9p.m.
Del Christensen, currently of Lawrence/Lecompton, has lived and worked in a variety of places ranging from Berkeley, California and Bozeman, Montana, to Madison, Wisconsin and Santa Fe, New Mexico. As an artist, he has worked in painting and sculpture and had exhibitions in those and other places and taught art at the University of Montana, the University of Wisconsin and San Diego State University.
Christensen's paintings, which will be featured in his exhibition at the Lawrence Arts Center, are large in scale and executed in black and white alkyd enamel paints. They are inspired by landscapes and imaginary landscapes, but dwell on the edge of abstraction in that "place" the eye loves—fields of high contrast dream imagery with surfaces rich in texture.
Christensen was born in Western Kansas and was influenced early by, he says, "big night skies, dramatic weather," and "sitting on a tractor watching the land, grasses and erosion." He spent four years in the U.S. Navy as a photographer where he "fell in love with black and white images." Once out of the Navy he went to art school where he worked with earth/land based conceptual pieces, which he documented photographically, sculpture that explored landforms, watercourse paths and erosion and gallery installations on the same themes.
After earning MA and MFA degrees, Christensen took a teaching position in Bozeman, Montana where he was impressed with the rugged terrain and high mountain waterfalls, and where he witnessed and was deeply impressed by his first full solar eclipse—the image of which reoccurs in his current work.
At times during the 80's and 90's Christensen served as artist-in-residence in Roswell, New Mexico, and spent time in Oakland and Berleley, California, where he showed his work in warehouse art spaces. During the last decade, up until about 2 1/2 years ago, he spent his time working on house remodeling and building hot rod cars, a longstanding passion that he still engages in. Now living in Lecompton, he is painting again and has created a body of new work that reflects his experiences of the land over the years.