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About Bob Diercksmeier

 

Background

I’m a Phoenix, Arizona native, and I’ve lived here most of my life. My family moved to Connecticut when I was in grade school, I moved back to Arizona after college and have lived here ever since.

I’ve created art for the majority of my life, starting in elementary school where I doodled incessantly in the margins of my notebooks. I took every art class my high school offered, and I did pen and ink house portraits to make extra money for college. In 1988 I graduated from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia with a BFA in Illustration.

After graduation I started a career in graphic design, moving back to Arizona in 1992 to work for a design firm in Phoenix. I went on to become a freelance illustrator in 1994, illustrating for a variety of local and national clients (rjd-illustration.com). In 2001, I started my own design company RJD Creative (rjdcreative.com) which has served design clients large and small for the last 20 years.

While still in Connecticut, I developed a love of landscape painting, and from time to time would work on my own drawings, pastels and paintings. My passion for drawing and painting the landscape reignited in 2016, and as a result I created a body of contemporary representational landscape paintings and drawings that can be seen on rjdfineart.com. From that body of work I began experimenting with a more abstract representation of the landscape, including abstract interpretations of various types of cacti. This is the new body of work that you see here on my website.

Below you can read the philosophy behind this new body of work, as well as a list of art movements that have influenced it. I hope you like the work you see here on my website — please feel free to let me know what you think, or ask questions about my work by using my contact form.

 

Artist’s Statement

As an Arizona native, I’ve always had a love for the landscape here. The Sonoran desert has a vibrant energy that can be felt in the waves of heat and the buzz of the insects on a hot summer day. It also has a quiet mystery that can be felt at night, or on a cool winter morning.

Themes I try to portray in my work include balance and continuity. The desert strikes a constant balance between movement and stillness, noise and silence, mystery and reality — I use color and shape in my attempts to communicate these qualities. The continuity of life in the desert, especially the enduring varieties of desert cacti and succulents, has always amazed me. Through the use of a continuous line in some of my pieces (my one-line cactus drawings and paintings), I try to convey the ongoing spirit of life in spite of the harsh extremes of the desert climate.

Color is a central visual element in my work, and the palette I use ranges from subtle earth tones to vibrant, saturated fields of color. Shape is another component I utilize — I use abstracted shapes to represent natural elements including Earth, Sky, Water, Sun and Moon. Color, shape, and line (including the aforementioned continuous line) are the main visual elements I use in my work.

The rhythm and harmony of the desert, and the perseverance of life in its extreme environment are the primary inspirations behind my work, and I strive to give a sense of the vitality and magic of the desert southwest in every piece I create.

 

Influences

Minimalism
Abstract Expressionism
Color Field Painting
Post-painterly Abstraction
Hard Edge Painting
Street Art
Outsider Art
Tribal Art
Contemporary Southwest Landscape Painting

 

Exhibitions

8.21 | Portland on the Park “Arts In Residence” Show, Phoenix, AZ
7.21 | FOUND:RE Contemporary “XSCAPES” Show, Phoenix, AZ
7.21 | Five15 Arts Gallery “Plus One” Group Show, Phoenix, AZ
3.21 | Mayo Clinic Loaned Art Program Show, Mayo Clinic, Phoenix, AZ
2.21 | Artlink Phoenix “Salon Forty Eight” Show, Mood Room Gallery, Phoenix, AZ
2.21 | “Vacation” show, Herberger Theater, Phoenix, AZ
12.19 | Five 3 Gallery Online Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA
11.18 | Fearless Art Works Core Artists Popup Show, Scottsdale, AZ
10.18 | Arizona State Fair Fine Arts Exhibition, Phoenix, AZ
10.17 | Fearless Art Works Core Artists Group Show, Carefree, AZ
10.17 | Arizona State Fair Fine Arts Exhibition, Phoenix, AZ
9.17 | “Arizona: From the Outside”, Shemer Art Center, Phoenix, AZ |
8.17 | Fearless Popup show, Dog Eared Pages book store, Phoenix, AZ
7.17 | “WATER: The Solvent for Life” show, Fearless Art Works, Carefree, AZ