Dominic Brown
Dominic Brown, born 1983, is a contemporary artist from The Netherlands.
He is known for his pioneering and groundbreaking use of digital techniques to create his unique artistic creations. He produces paintings, murals and fabric designs, which can be divided in three main categories: portraits, landscapes and abstractions. His densely layered compositions are recognizable at a glance and are the result of several juxtapositions in color, form and techniques. They are dynamic and spontaneous yet are balanced and well thought out in equal measure.
Dominic finds his inspiration mostly in ancient civilizations, for example Egyptian or Greek, but also Mayan, Incan and African influences can be found. He focuses his attention on murals, hieroglyphs, symbols, mythology and architecture from the sites he visits, e.g. like just recently in Mexico. Dominic mixes these diverse sources of inspiration into his very own and unique visual language. That is largely due to his unique creative process and the way he combines the use of the many different techniques and materials he masters. It may be surprising for people to discover that, for an artist who has been influenced by computer-technology for most of his creative career, every new artwork from Dominic takes birth from drawings in a sketchbook with a pencil.
Only after he has completed his drawings, they are scanned and the digital phase begins as he reworks and perfects his drawings into a colorful composition.
When the digital file is ready, according to his level of exigence, Dominic prints it on canvas, Aluminium composite panel Dibond® or wood in the highest quality, and usually in a limited edition. However, this does not end here and for the artist manual labor resumes at that point and each work is finalized in its own unique way with different materials such as texture gel, colored markers, paint, glitters and/or small leaves of gold.
Never was the term ‘mixed media’ so appropriate. The whole process stems from Dominic conviction that art shall be innovative and shall go beyond the traditional art practice. This definitively shows that the boundaries between different media are indeed fading and that artists like him are at the forefront for guiding others so to fulfill the promise of this new artistic tradition.
In the early days, and before his artistic life starts, Dominic got inspired by Turkish culture so full of wealth and sensuality, by Greek mythology so rich in artistic reference in several domains and by ancient Egypt treasures. When he got older, he also developed a fascination for the Mayan mysteries and Incan civilizations.
Dominic sees the traditional tribal masks from Africa as a way for communicating with the past. He believes that the emotion or message that the artist has expressed many hundreds or thousands of years ago could not have been transferred more vividly if through a painting, drawing or a symbol. The lines and colors used by the artist elicit a certain emotion from the audience. With the use of his own lines and colors, Dominic, too, seeks to communicate with people throughout the world e.g. with a generic and ideal wordless language. According to him, something that does not have a time or language barrier will never perish.
Text: Jurgen Vermaire (Lets talk about art)
