Damian Schwartz - The Bunker Podcast 35 - Oct 2008

Biography of Damian Schwartz

About the Artist

Damian Schwartz is a 1974 model human. He is a 2001 graduate of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, with a degree in Art Studio. He is a proud member of a lovely family, and even has the pictures to prove it.

* favorite food: Greek rice
* favorite drink: green tea
* favorite book: War and Peace
* favorite movie: Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring
* favorite color: red
* favorite animal: horse and monkey (tie)
* favorite artist: Cy Twombly
* favorite art movement: Constructivism

Artist Statement

This is where I will explain, or at least attempt to explain, my preferred method of digital art. If you would like to skip the artist statement mumbo jumbo that is about to spew forth from my keyboard, then I will simply leave you with this little gem: I am fascinated by random images, lines, and the color red. Booyah.

For the others who perhaps have some sick psychological need to know more about me and/or my art, well, I can't say that I relate to you. I hate artist statements. Maybe it's because I know so many artists who write pages and pages of crap about why they make their crappy art- as if a reason other than the desire to make money is driving them. Captain Obvious told me that we live in a capitalist economy. I admit that my art is just as crappy as any other crappy artist's art. In my opinion, it is probably worse because I am a very boring person and hardly anomalous enough to be a great artist. Why? Because I am a hack. There is very little about me that would make me an unparalleled artist. I am too sane. You cannot do something that someone else did not try to do first unless you are insane. Almost all artists are hacks. I learned this from extensively studying art history. Do not try that at home! I definitely do not recommend it. Modern art history has some valuable insight into humanity, but as a whole, it is predominantly a collection of BS written by people who found a way to make money writing BS about hack artists. Oh yeah, and most of that BS is in French. OK. I should probably start another paragraph here.

I like to make art with my computer. I like to take a picture and lay it over another picture and then blend it in. Then, I find interesting shapes and try to spice them up with decoration. Sometimes, I will just make bunches and bunches of lines. Why would I do this? Well, when I was a kid in 5th grade, I doodled lines. Eventually, the doodles became big collections of lines that formed a sort of grid system. They came to occupy entire sheets of paper and my classmates would gather around and look at me with strange faces. In my mind, this grid represented the world from space. Some people like lines, but others hate them. I don't care what those line haters think- I love lines. They keep me rooted to the very first art that I tried to create.

My subject matter is totally meaningless. Everything I choose is 100% random. I will find a random image and then I will embellish it. After I embellish it, I will try to destroy that and layer over it too. My goal is to make it something similar but also totally new over and over until it looks the way I think it was meant to look. I judge each work on criteria that were semi-instilled in me by a dedicated and well compensated group of hackish art professionals. I am forever indebted to them (literally). You know I love you all! Each picture is totally unique each time I sit down to create it. There is no plan to any of my works. I choose historical images sometimes. Other times, i choose tasteful images of nude women. Sometimes, I choose dozens of images with no connection to each other at all. My art is a reflection of my thought process during it's creation. Some of them work, while others do not. I trash much more of my art than I keep. My mind is totally empty while I work, aside from some influence of the music that I am listening to. I do not try and imbue some deep meaning into my work either, because I am a hack. What you see is exactly the result of the process I have defined above. I would describe it as a type of automatic drawing combined with a collage of random imagery. If you find my art interesting, maybe you find me interesting? If that is the case, I can recommend a list of artists who were not so hackish and even more bizarre.

I think my art is very honest. It is a reflection of my mind on the particular day it was created. I try not to offend anyone with my art, but I always get some whacko who is sure that I intended something just to set him off- I really didn't. If you are digging for even deeper meanings in it, perhaps you and I should form a team. I will provide the art, and you can provide the BS meanings. Working together, there is at least a chance we could scam a little money out of the whole ordeal. I could use that money- this art doesn't make me much. What a poor excuse for a hack I am.