Marc VanDermeer

Marc VanDermeer has exhibited extensively throughout the United States and has been featured in solo exhibitions in Connecticut, Philadelphia, and Chelsea, New York City. He is a digital artist...

Marc VanDermeer has exhibited extensively throughout the United States and has been featured in solo exhibitions in Connecticut, Philadelphia, and Chelsea, New York City. He is a digital artist who delves into abstraction and distortions. 

The digital works often convey pastel colors with geometric shapes. Marc approaches the digital medium like a painter rather than a graphic artist, often using blocks of solid colors and sometimes employing scratchy strokes. Conveying retro new wave aesthetics, the prints may come off like an animation still from a 1980’s European music video. 

One piece in particular which draws attention, titled Artificial Light (top of article), contains a landscape broken to their basic forms. A yellow streak indicating light, two streaks of green and a neutral tan tone indicating land or reflection, and a final rectangle containing motion blur graphics to convey waves. The sun or moon in the sky encases a soft purple pastel tone. Explaining a concept does not need to be overly complicated, contemporary aesthetics allow the audience to relax their eyes on compositions which are pure and devoid of excesses. The image resonates with an audience looking for an altered perspective on representation. Full of cool pastel tones with just a hint of warm color laid out mostly in flatness with selective streaks indicating the form of land and water. Artificial Light comes off as a delicious painting in the tradition of Henri Matisse and Piet Mondrion but with elements of contemporary design and a neon color palette. 

Another interesting piece to note, Sedona (pictured above), gives off the impression of the Arizona landscape with just jagged shapes and tones. The abstracted piece displays blocked-in shapes of earthy, dry mountains with a reflection on a blue and green surface, perhaps indicating a body of water such as a lake. The print gives a new refreshing take on Southwestern landscape painting with nothing more than neon colors, earthy tones, jagged shapes, and subtle streaks of color. A thoroughly contemporary work which helps redefine the purpose of image-making in regards to landscapes with forms broken down to their basic components and diverting the eye towards color placement rather than representation. 

Although Marc also creates representational digital works and photography, his strength shows through with his abstract and abstracted series. Breaking down images to their basic compositional components gives Marc a chance to reinterpret the world through expressions of color and light. 

Marc VanDermeer offers a refreshing outlook towards contemporary image-making with the digital medium. He shows us ways in which we do not necessarily need flashy graphics or renderings to convey ideas and emotions. Using tools of flatness and motion blur, Marc extends the outreach of how we explore two dimensional surfaces.

Artist website: https://marcvandermeer.net

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/van-di