Simon Darling
Australia
SDarling is a multiple award winning artist who makes paintings, drawings and mixed media artworks. His work examines the individual and universal interactions found in contemporary portraiture. Startling the audience with simplified and distorted forms. The perception of the detailed impulse, with its raw, immediate, and unflinching emotional depth delivering a confusing characteristic visualization. Layered, abstracted marks are added to each layer revealing visceral, emotional intensities and depth. By manipulating the viewer to create confusion, he tries to approach a wide scale of subjects in a multi-layered way, likes to involve the viewer in a way that is sometimes physical, emotional and believes in the idea of function following form in a work. With every new piece, the artist leaves us orphaned with a mix of conflicting feelings and thoughts. With a subtle pseudo-minimalistic approach, he often creates several practically identical works, upon which thoughts that have apparently just been developed are manifested: notes are made and then crossed out again, ‘mistakes’ are repeated. His practice provides a set of metaphoric tools for maneuvering with a pseudo-minimalist approach in the sphere of painting: these methodically planned works resound and resonate with visions culled from the deep and dark realm of imagination. “Through my paintings, I unite and express the unexplainable, indefinite and confusing emotions, from the obscure realm of imagination”
'from a void'
1. What’s your background?
Simon Darling is a Danish multiple award winning artist best known for his deep, obscure and expressive portraits. He is represented in private collections all over the world such as Europe, Australia, Japan and USA. He grew up being exposed to the creative nature of his mother, who was an emerging abstract artist. In a young age he quickly engaged himself in drawing and painting. I've always had a passion for creating, building and designing, turning my thoughts and ideas into visual and physical forms, at the age of 14 I quickly spun my Moms garage into a studio, where I found my solitude and a way of self-expression through painting while navigating the world of art. Besides being an art school dropout I’m holding a degree in Architectural technology and design, and have been studying adv. psychology and philosophy. I've held 8 solo exhibitions, and have had his work included in 13 group shows both domestic and internationally. Latest I've been awarded with the prestigious 'Artist of the Future Award' for the most outstanding and talented artists in the art world along with the 'Power of Creativity' award for creative excellence and recognition of outstanding achievements in innovation and creativity. Furthermore my works have been recognized in media and books such as CAE Book Volume IV “Contemporary Art of Excellence Book” 2021, 'We Contemporary 2021', and CAC Magazine USA 2020.
2. What does your work aim to say?
My paintings both communicate a psychological and philosophical aspect. The psychological aspect in my paintings is about self-development, it is looking at the bright blue sky, it doesn’t tell us anything, we have to go deeper, we have to dig into the black vastness of space away from what we know to find the “answer” same thing goes for ourselves, we have to dig into ourselves, find ourselves where we are ‘damaged’ the most and start loving ourselves from there, and from there by doing that we will grow to far beyond what we would if we weren’t aware or confronted these feelings we have hidden away. The philosophical aspect of my paintings relates to each and everyone’s individual life and story, how we each and every one is different and have to deal with our “demons” the same way, but on a different level. Trying to create an experience that the audience can relate to, as we all at some point have experienced new and unknown feelings, and it’s important when that happens that we try to understand and analyze the feelings to gain a better understanding of ourselves and grow as human beings. Creating mixed emotions and thoughts in the audience, allows them to gain and express themselves in their own way, my paintings are not dictating what to feel, what to think or what to experience, they are providing the ‘unknown’ which the audience can dive into and take away exactly what they want or need from it. I hope that my paintings will result in inspirational emotions and thoughts which each individual can generate to their own benefit.
3. How does your work comment on current social or political issues?
My artwork does not comment or relate to a certain political issue, but instead it relates to the individual social and public issues we’re facing in our modern society. Humanity is losing our ‘awareness’ not only with nature but also with ourselves. In an ever changing world and society like today, the impact on people from society and pressure from life, has made us lose ourselves to an extent where we flow through life without knowing what’s going on or appreciate what matters. Society is too caught up in the digital world trying to be something we’re not, trying to make everything look good without any depth or truth to it all. We live in a world where a half-naked picture of a male or female body is liked far more than a product of human creativity and curiousness which have so much more meaning to it, but worst of all we are afraid of ourselves, our dark side and what we don’t understand, we’re afraid of the unknown within ourselves. This is the social issue my work mainly relates to, the aspect of humanity losing their awareness of themselves, going through life not trying to understand the deepest and darkest corners of their messed up soul. My intention with the philosophical and psychological aspects in my work, is trying to shed light upon the fact that we need to grow from within to fulfil our true self and become truly aware, it’s not enough only understanding why we need to take a breath, we need to understand how many breaths we need to take.
4. Who are your biggest influences?
As I drag most of my inspiration from experiences, thoughts and ideas from situations, surroundings, words and music. I don’t think I can call out one thing that influences me the most, what influences me is bigger and more ‘out there’ than ‘one thing’ or the “biggest influence”. There are so many aspects to what I’m influenced by, and it changes all the time every second. I tend to dig really deep and always end up way too deep inside myself. My thoughts and experiences definitely impacts my artwork, as the main factor in my paintings, with a tendency to drag most inspiration from the deep, dark and obscure realm of imagination. My influence can be pulled from everywhere and people also, I have continual influence in my life from people I surround myself with, and even people there once were but aren’t anymore. If you were once a part of my life, I most likely was influenced by you, if you’re still a part of my life I’m continuously influenced by you. There are certain highlights in my career where you could relate certain people to having influenced me, such as my Mom for introducing me to the art world through her creativeness and her mindfulness to not change me by trying to re-program me or trying to re-direct me, but letting me be and become my own, also relating the unknown people who influenced me while creating my first award winning painting series, my friends and family who constantly feed me energy and inspiration to keep creating. People who were only there for a short time, people with emotional and intellectual depth, people that speak with passion from their inner twisted mind and even you.
5. How has your art evolved over the years?
I started in a young age, and I think if you were to look back at my old work and compare it to my new work, it is clear to see the massive change in style, statement and expression. Along with me changing and growing into what I’ve become it is only natural that my work would evolve along with my personal growth. I often get confronted by people saying my work has evolved into something more dark and obscure, and I tend to agree to a certain extent, but mainly my work has evolved into something deeper, and this just proves my point from previous question 3, because the awareness of something deep is not necessarily dark, but if we don’t understand the ‘depth’ we ignore the truth, interpreting it as unknown and dark to avoid going down the unknown path of understanding. Another major impact that has influenced my work and subconsciously promoted the change of style and expression in my work is my de-realization disorder which helps feeds my creativity along with my curiosity it feeds me everything I need, unfortunately too many thoughts and ideas than I have time. My personal growth, curiosity and de-realization disorder is the main impacts that have resulted in my work evolving over time, from a classic pop art style to a broader, more in depth and meaningful expressionistic work which is examining the individual and universal interactions found in contemporary portraiture my newer work has a tendency to startling the audience with simplified and distorted forms while the perception of the detailed impulse, with its raw, immediate, and unflinching emotional depth delivering a confusing characteristic visualization.
6. What does art mean to you?
Art is shifting opinions, introducing values and decoding experiences across given ‘dimensions’ space and time. Art to me is a way of self-expression through a chosen channel; art means I’m able to access a process of creating something from nothing. Art can be anything, but to me art means the process of creating, the emotional process someone goes through creating a something from an idea to a finished product is art to me. The process is the real art and what means the most to me, without the process there would be no meaning, the process is in everything, the process starts even before the idea or thought of a finished product. Art in any form is the definition of a person’s singular expression of thoughts, emotions or perceptions. Art can be a way of seeing the world from ones perspective, which is in many ways an expression of an artist’s character. Art is how we communicate what cannot be explained with words. Through art we explain the unexplainable, by creating a deeper meaning through another ‘dimension’ with the media we choose as a content explanation method. The definition of art is the way we express our imaginative conceptual thoughts and ideas, through each individual’s technical skills, we attempt to evoke a certain kind of emotion, a reflection or visualization to put our message across. The process is what defines the art in my opinion, the process is why I create and do what I do, from a thought or idea to a finished painting. A painting is a product; the creative process is the ‘art’.
7. What’s the most valuable piece of art to you?
My most valuable piece of art is not measured in currency but in what it has brought me and the process I went through to create it. It is first later that I’ve have come to realize how much it means to me. I’ve been asked the same question thousands of time along with “which piece of work is your favorite” and I’ve actually never really been able to answer the question truly as all of my paintings means something different to me in a different way. But the past years have opened my eyes to the uniqueness of this one painting, which I every time I look at it experience in a different way. A painting I also received a few awards for, in the beginning I don’t really think I ‘understood’ the painting fully, but observing it from a far after it got sold, helped me processing the whole process, progress and result and I realized that this is what I feel is maybe my best work to date. The painting is ‘presence within’. It just appeals to you on so many levels if you dare to confront it, and I encourage people to check it out, and engage with it, and take away whatever experience they might get.
8. What’s next for you in the future?
I have a few interesting things in the making, which I can’t talk too much about at the moment unfortunately, but it’s worth the wait. A few new solo exhibitions featuring new series and individual work, and in general keep working on my art impacting and becoming even more acknowledged internationally, which is definitely something I’m working towards alongside building a healthy network within the art industry. Planning to start tutoring and teaching again, trying to inspire the younger generation through my own experiences and practice. Growing and expanding my base with another overseas studio maybe with an exhibition room is also what I’m looking to achieve in the future. Development and growth for my art is what I want to keep doing, many artists never gets better than their first piece of work, they get stuck in the same loop, I want to keep evolving taking on new approaches and experimenting.
'presence within'
