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Arts & Entertainment

Eric Dever Explores Paint with Limited Palette

Water Mill artist avoids color and compositional choices.

Eric Dever is a disciplined and often meticulous painter who will not rest until he has explored every avenue of an idea or concept.

For years the 49-year-old Water Mill artist explored painting with only white, and he had some stunning results. Dever recently added black to his palette, but he hasn’t used any other color for the last five years.

“It’s a question mark to decide what color to use next,” Dever said, explaining that returning to color would be quite a challenge after so many years of painting monochromatic work. “Color can suggest a lot of things,” he said.

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“This year I also picked up a brush,” he said, adding, “I’ve used the same knife for about five years.” The painter used a selection of three palette knives to make all his marks before adding the quarter-inch bristle brush to his repertoire in April. While his choices may appear limiting to some, Dever has worked very hard to make his art about the paint and the subtle variables that can be achieved through its application.

“I’m really painting in a deeper sense,” Dever said, explaining that his work with black and white has made him a better painter.

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Dever moved to New York from Los Angeles to earn a master’s degree in painting from New York University in 1989. He began visiting and showing on the East End in 1991 and he became a full time resident in 2003. Dever said leaving the city was the best thing he could have done. “This is where I found the fullest expression of my work,” he said.

Dever’s pieces feature concentric circles, squares, stripes and repeating tiles of black, white and gray — almost all applied in various layers with a palette knife. Some of the images are painted on white canvas, while others use coffee-colored linen and burlap, which adds color in the negative space without actually painting it. Dever explained that the background color becomes more important when working with white.

The artist’s simple compositions are also a well-considered choice. Dever said centered, straight and all-over compositions have allowed him to avoid having to really consider compositional choices and keep the work about the paint.

Recently Dever has started to work more with composition, which can be seen in his newer pieces featuring numerous circles in white or black, rather than a single concentric design in the center of the canvas. He said it was breakout work for him and now the size and placement of his lines are becoming more random and varied. “I feel good about my latest work and I’m going to redouble my efforts,” Dever said.

While the work is evolving through his study of white and black, Dever said it would always be about paint and mark making. “I keep it to the painting experience, not illustrating ideas or real things,” he said. The irony, however, is that the pieces begin to represent things from life anyway, Dever said.

He pointed out that the concentric circles could appear to be ripples in the water, an eye or sound waves. The all-over compositions created by individual palette knife strokes could easily be seen as scales, a reptilian hide, or some kind of tree bark. “It’s personal, all these things,” Dever said.

The in Water Mill represents Dever and he said they have had a “profitable, creative and professional relationship.” His exhibition Black as White at the end of the summer was the gallery’s only solo-show this year, and many of the pieces are still on display at the gallery.

To see more of Eric Dever’s work, visit www.EricDever.com or www.SaraNightingale.com.

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