Devin Calhoun
Thank you so much for the chance to display my work. It is the first time I have shown most of these to anyone other than friends or family. Each work represents a time when I felt love for the subject, total absorption in the process, and delight in the outcome. I have no illusions about being an edgy artist or anything like that. I just enjoy myself. Painting is my response to the beauty and creativity I see around me. I am self-taught and have to admit that I struggle with the medium of oil paint and getting the composition just right. But that's ok; its all good!
If I could say anything important here it would be something like this: what matters is allowing what wants to come into the world through us to form, to take shape and come forth, much like giving birth. Maybe Joseph Campbell said it best: follow your bliss. I believe the passions and creative longings are worth listening to and obeying. Trust and Follow that desire and impulse, take a risk and put yourself out there to be creative. Creative expression is something we all have inside us, and art is not something only a select few can do, or something you collect. It is an action we all can take.
Most of these works are deeply personal and really only make sense in an idiosyncratic way. For instance, the horse in the field is how I felt upon seeing my arabian mare for the first time, how free and independent she seemed to me, so at home in her summer fields. The woman in the kimono and the Tokyo abstract hold many of my feelings for Japan, where my daughter lives. The pots and pueblos remind me of handmade things, and taking time to put an individual impression on the ordinary, durable stuff of our lives. "Dan " is from a long ago memory of a beloved Cal professor who struck me as having an extraordinarily kind face and inviting smile. The water lilies are simply a gushing appreciation for Monet....really just quick studies of his fascination.
Sometimes It seems the only way I know how I really feel about something I see or admire is when I create an echo of it, a reply of my own. These are my way of saying yes to life.
