Adrian Deckbar

I decided at the age of 9 that I wanted to be an artist, and I believe that growing up in New Orleans made that goal plausible, with unbounded creativity so prevalent. After studying and learning what I could there, I decided to move to San Francisco to study under Robert Bechtle, and began developing shows titled “B Movie” and “Kidnap!” My intention was to push the envelope of figurative painting, using staging with direct, intense lighting, posing the models for dramatic effect, then translating the photographed images into larger than life-sized paintings. I experimented with various sizes and mediums, hiring my friends or people I encountered as my models.

After about 30 years of working in this method, I moved outside with my camera, finding drama everywhere, continuing to work with strong, oblique daylight. Photographing some of the most primal areas that I had access to, the swamps of Southeast Louisiana, and the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas, I began to hunt for images that provoked a response in me. Back in the studio, I popped up the colors, and dramatized the already incredibly dramatic light as Nature opened up it’s primordial splendor. This work continues to explore what boundaries I can push as a photorealist, abstracting nature further still, focusing on water: transforming photographic source material into paintings that take on an electric-like effect, with shimmering light rays glancing off the reflected upside-forms, and into the depths of all the layers beneath.