What does the universe of Devon DeJardin look like right now? Could you paint a picture for me?
I'd say the past year has been focused on getting ready for this solo exhibition in New York. It was about a year and a half of work to develop these 10 paintings and two sculptures and it's been kind of all over-consuming. There was this kind of excitement, working towards this exhibition that I wanted to focus on, I wanted to put something out there that was gonna make a statement. So I kind of hunkered down for the past year and a half and kept a very rigid work schedule, Monday through Friday, about 10 hours of painting a day. I went through about 20 to 25 different works to come up with these final pieces. I wish I could say that my life has been this fun, super exciting traveling journey for the past year, but it's been focused on trying to make this show something that I'm proud of personally, but then also something that captivates the audience that comes in and sees it.
You’re a self-taught multimedia artist, which is incredible seeing as your work is quite remarkable. Could you recall your earliest memory of when you were propelled into the world of art? What made it stick with you?
I remember visiting my grandma, she’s a watercolorist, she never did much other than small group shows selling works for no more than a couple of hundred dollars. Though growing up as a kid, I remember going to spend time with her in Marblehead, Massachusetts. She had this unique print studio in the basement of her house, where she did all sorts of collage styles, works with watercolor, and mixed materials that she would find on the beach. It was just really kind of like opening the wardrobe and going into this different world down there.
I remember I was at the MFA in Boston, I went there when I was about 10 years old with my grandma. We were walking around and I remember seeing some gruesome, horrific paintings of these early medieval times like horses, pulling the limbs off of people. I was like whoa, I'm feeling something from this and it's grotesque and it's dark and it's not something that I wanna have my work portray. However, it was captivating to me because it showed me that through simple marks on a paper and simple gestures with paint you can evoke so much emotion through a canvas. So when I started to self-teach myself over the past couple of years, that idea of really trying to pour in energy and focus to create a piece of work that can emulate that feeling that I had as a child, I think is always on the forefront of my mind.