Artist Henryk Ptasiewicz once said, “If you can paint the real world, then you have a chance to illustrate another one.” Photo realism and the abstract operate on opposite extremes, with artists selecting where their style sits on the spectrum. No answer is the correct answer for this, an artist follows their heart and we the public follow their work and are offered a wide selection of new visions.
Today’s artist has pondered this balance and arrived at his own unique style. Dan Bergren creates evocative images straight from our subconscious memory. They are bathed in a soft glow and a color palette that frames and informs the subject. The connection you feel is real, because he’s working from a similar connection. His portraits invite you to see a familiar character in a new light, but still in the wheelhouse of what made you love them to begin with. The product is sublime.
Dan began his professional art career in the mid ‘90s, when a friend commissioned him to draw a photorealistic family portrait in charcoal. For more than ten years after that, he focused mainly on nature and sea-life-themed art.
Dan’s first officially licensed art project came in 2008, with Topps taking him on to create sketch art cards for their Indiana Jones Masterpieces trading card set. That was followed by many other card sets, for a wide array of properties like Star Wars, Star Trek, Game of Thrones, Mars Attacks, The Walking Dead, Stranger Things, The Hobbit, Major League Baseball, WWE, DC Comics, Doctor Who and even Bettie Page.
In 2019 Dan was tapped to create one hundred “oversized” 5×7 inch art cards for Topps’ Star Wars Stellar release, their most high-end Star Wars set. He’s also had the honor of having his artwork reproduced as patches and coins for R2-KT and Rancho Obi-Wan.
Being a life-long Star Wars fan, the chance to create officially licensed Star Wars art was too good to pass up.
“When I begin a piece I try to see the composition in a new way, not exactly like something I’ve seen before. The position and arrangement of the character or characters is just as important as the likenesses, so a lot of planning goes into it. I will sketch it out in pencil, sometimes adding a bit of texture that will show through the multiple layers of paint when it’s completed. I like to give a hand drawn and colored look to my art, so that it’s easily recognizable as that, as opposed to a digital rendering or a photographic composite. “
“Most of my favorite art is work that leans more toward a visually interesting style, rather than photographic realism. So I try to always create art that looks interesting to me, personally.”
Dan’s work can be found on Instagram at danbergrenart
https://www.instagram.com/danbergrenart/
https://www.facebook.com/Dan.Bergren.Artist/
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