RYAN DEMPSEY
ryandempseyart.com@ryandempseyart
Born and raised in the suburbs of Phoenix, at the desert’s edge, I grew up with the backdrop of a warm, vibrant western light that inevitably shaped how I would see. Surrounded by painters of this phenomenon and heavily influenced from youth by various art movements out of Los Angeles that considered light specifically, color became a major concern in my painting early on. Today, my work explores the idea that digital addiction and exposure rate to blue light (avg 7 hours/day worldwide) is fundamentally altering human’s perception of real world color, and thus altering color itself.
Using both paint and forms of printmaking (often joining the two), I explore color relationships between “real” or observable colors and colors that appear digitally through blue light. The bulk of my process consists of physically extracting color from both these realms through various techniques and replicating them with intense specificity. These colors are broken down to their truest chroma and juxtaposed in various ways to understand how their properties can be severely altered.
While the goal of this study is very abstract, the work carries a sense of urgency and necessity in an area that has virtually no existing research yet is increasingly prevalent. Joseph Albers said, “In an age in which increased human sensibility has become such an obvious need in all areas of human involvement, color sensitivity and awareness can constitute a major weapon against forces of insensitivity and brutalization.” Is this not more true today than ever before? In an increasingly digital world where artificiality seems to be the common avenue for advancement, could demonstrating something as simple and all-encompassing as humanity’s changing perception of color make a statement indicative of shifting reality?
in.