I'd be hard pressed to ever remember a time talking with DP Warner when music didn't come up. The drummer/painter/art professor/installation artist seems to have a song running through his head 24/7. This week we're looking at pieces from his extended series of work based on his love and interest in sound.
"These show an evolution of mark making, opening up to new material, imagining what sound might look like and the notation of music," Warner wrote. Turning the Table, the image at the top of the page, was his first music related piece. It dates back to 1979, when he also drew Coltrane, shown directly above.
As he developed his idea of what music would look like, he began abstracting his record collection in 1980. The direction of sound began to really influence the shapes and marks on the canvas.
A year later, at the start of the Reagan years, DP abstracted sound further as he painted large acrylic canvases. Drifting Pedals is a 40" by 60" vertical abstract employing several reactions to sound with larger masses of paint, scrape marks and splatters.
In 1983, he was working on a "notation" series again mixing lots of media together as he was beginning to move more towards his sheet music series.
In 1984, while America was about to enter into a second term with Reagan and a 12-year run of Conservatism, DP went to another 40" x 60" painting influenced by smokey nighttime jazz. Night Riff employed the figure within the sea of abstraction and remnants of the notation series. By now DP was full bore into his sheet music series, which was again, abstractions influenced by reading music.
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To see last weeks entry which features some of DP's more recent work please visit: http://richardsayerphotojournalism.weebly.com/eight--322/featured-artist-of-the-july-dp-warner
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