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Contemporary Realism Commissioned Portraits |
Donald Demers “Painting is a poignant balancing act between inner vision, virtuosity and mystery.” –Don Demers (as quote in Plein Air Magazine, March 2005, page 61. The landscape paintings of such nineteenth century American “greats” as Martin Johnson Heade and John F. Kensett have found heirs to their cause today in three contemporary New England artists: Don Demers, Joseph McGurl and William Davis. While loosely associated for many years, these three men formed their more formal triumvirate in 1998 when they exhibited together at the Tree’s Place Gallery of Orleans, Massachusetts, as the “New American Luminists.” Well versed in art history and traditional techniques, Demers, McGurl and Davis create landscapes inspired by their nearly spiritual connection to nature and their reverence for the sublime natural world. Born in Lunenburg, Massachusetts, Don Demers largely considers himself to be a self-taught artist, though he has studied at the School of the Worcester Art Museum and the Massachusetts College of Art. Feeling his academic instruction to be inadequate, Demers left the Museum School to sail as a crewmember on schooners and square-rigged ships. His love for the sea continues on to the present day and likely stemmed from his early summers spent on the shoreline near Boothbay Harbor. In 1984, Demers settled in Maine, and his close affiliation with the ocean has remained an ever-present theme in his works, as evident in his views of sailing ships to rock-strewn coastlines. Nationally recognized for his oil paintings, Demers has been featured in American Artist Magazine, Yachting Magazine, Nautical Quarterly, Nautical World, Offshore Magazine and Maine Boats and Harbor, as well as in the 1991 Watson-Guptill publication Marine Painting, Techniques of Modern Masters. In addition to the many private collectors which own Demers’ work, his clients include American Airlines and the National Park Service, and he has exhibited at the Contemporary American Marine Art exhibition at the Frye Art Museum of Seattle (1997), the Cummer Museum Jacksonville, Florida (1997-98), and at galleries in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and San Francisco. Demers has also gained vast recognition as a fine arts educator and reaches countless students through his workshops and lectures. His memberships include the American Society of Marine Artists and the Guild of Boston Artists. Whether studying the sea from his 35 foot sloop or gathering information on small-scale oil and casein studies from the shoreline and woodlands, Demers prefers to work from nature, rather than from photo reference. His polished studio oils demonstrate his adherence to the philosophy of the New American Luminists: “In short, McGurl, Davis, and Demers aspire toward the production of paintings in which all “true” acts of perception are simultaneously products of both the observer and the thing observed, and are visions of the divine.”* His works embody the freshness of the natural world and the discerning eyes of an artist. *The New American Luminists: Landscapes as Sacred Space. Tree’s Place Gallery, Sept. 2-16, 2000. p 8.
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