Explore Derek Stenning's 186 photos on Flickr!
Derek Stenning
Book Synopsis Derek Stenning's last few years have been challenging, particularly from a personal work point of view, and a lot of this time seemed lost to him.A terminal illness in the family put him in the position of a primary caregiver. This, along with too much professional work, injury, and family duties left him burnt out, with little time for his own art.During these busy times he often turned back to his Entartete Kunst series to distract him from the craziness going on in his life. This art project had rejuvenated him once before with his book Born in Concrete; maybe it could do it again. A sketch here or there, or a painting, started to get him through a difficult spot. Few of these pieces were finished; many were begun and left, as he had no time or energy to complete them.Thankfully, he has had more breathing room recently, and he circled back to finish those pieces. EK2: The Lost Years is a collection of model kit design work and production paintings, personal commissions, and a selection of material from a resin statue project.He hopes, by completing this work, it will allow him--from an artistic point of view--to reclaim these lost years.
Derek Stenning
Explore Derek Stenning's 186 photos on Flickr!
Derek Stenning
Explore Derek Stenning's 186 photos on Flickr!
Derek Stenning
Here is one that I picked away at over the holidays. As with other pieces in this series, this one was inspired by one of the deriding slogans painted on the walls at the Entartete Kunst exhibit in 1938. Room One of the exhibit was reserved for works of a religious nature, featuring works by Max Beckman, Wilhelm Heckrott, Karl Schimidt-Rottluff, along with a large selection of work by Emil Nolde. The title, "Insolent Mockery of the Divine Under Centrist Rule" was scrawled on the wall featuring Nolde's massive nine panel alter piece "Das Leben Christi" (1911/12). This slogan, invoking the nazi concept of Judeo-Bolshevism, is a simultaneous indictment of the art and the church. Ever since I read those words, and from the beginning of this project I've wanted to tackle this image, but I was a little hesitant given the religious content. I'm somewhat of a spiritual person, but not a religious one. That being said, when it comes to religion, I'm sensitive to, and respectful of other peoples beliefs. I tried to represent the Christ-like figure, with all that that entails, without turning it into a caricature or parody. How successful I was will be for others to judge..... Although most of the titles of the images in this series are displayed in German, I felt this particular title was more powerful in English. The German phrase "Unter Der Herrschaft Des Zentrums Frecher Verhohnung Des Gotterlebens" seemed to be lacking the impact of "Insolent Mockery of the Divine Under Centrist Rule" (probably solely due to the fact that I am English speaking....). Plus that title in German is so long I had a hard time fitting it on the image! Enjoy! Higher rez. and a few more details on my Flickr.
Explore Derek Stenning's 186 photos on Flickr!
Derek Stenning
Here is one I finished a while back, but due to a mixture of business and laziness, I'm just getting around to posting now. I picked away at this one while I was bouncing back and forth between Victoria and Vancouver before I finally settled here on the island. It features one of our cosmonaut characters that has apparently switched his allegiance, trading in his orbs for geometric structures. This treachery is further symbolized by the hexagram on his helmet that has been scratched away to form a square and the hexagonal geometry in the background that has been faceted to form cubes. While I guess there were a couple things that could have led me to feel the need to create a piece using this subject matter, I won't labor over them here. Largely the concept just came out of the idea and the visual of swapping out the orbs for cubes. Higher res. and additional details at my Flickr. Enjoy.
Andreas Rocha, a Portuguese artist based in Lisbon, has been painting digitally for over 20 years. After his college degree in architecture, he slowly
Derek Stenning's last few years have been challenging, particularly from a personal work point of view, and a lot of this time seemed lost to him. A terminal illness in the family put him in the position of a primary caregiver. This, along with too much professional work, injury, and family duties left him burnt out, with little time for his own art. During these busy times he often turned back to his Entartete Kunst series to distract him from the craziness going on in his life. This art project had rejuvenated him once before with his book Born in Concrete; maybe it could do it again. A sketch here or there, or a painting, started to get him through a difficult spot. Few of these pieces were finished; many were begun and left, as he had no time or energy to complete them. Thankfully, he has had more breathing room recently, and he circled back to finish those pieces. EK2: The Lost Years is a collection of model kit design work and production paintings, personal commissions, and a selection of material from a resin statue project. He hopes, by completing this work, it will allow him--from an artistic point of view--to reclaim these lost years. | Author: Derek Stenning | Publisher: Design Studio Press | Publication Date: Oct 25, 2022 | Number of Pages: 96 pages | Language: English | Binding: Hardcover/Art | ISBN-10: 1624650708 | ISBN-13: 9781624650703
Innovative conceptual space design
Entartete Kunst is a personal project by Derek Stenning who has spent the last decade working as a production artist in the game design field and is currently
Here is one I finished a while back, but due to a mixture of business and laziness, I'm just getting around to posting now. I picked away at this one while I was bouncing back and forth between Victoria and Vancouver before I finally settled here on the island. It features one of our cosmonaut characters that has apparently switched his allegiance, trading in his orbs for geometric structures. This treachery is further symbolized by the hexagram on his helmet that has been scratched away to form a square and the hexagonal geometry in the background that has been faceted to form cubes. While I guess there were a couple things that could have led me to feel the need to create a piece using this subject matter, I won't labor over them here. Largely the concept just came out of the idea and the visual of swapping out the orbs for cubes. Higher res. and additional details at my Flickr. Enjoy.
Here is another new Entartete Kunst image. This one wasn't part of the original vision for the series but popped into my head after coming across the title while researching the concept of Entartete Kunst in the excellent book "Degenerate Art: The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany"(Stephanie Barron ed. 1991). The title, "The Cultural Bolsheviks' Order of Battle", like the previous post, comes from one of the slogans painted on the wall of the exhibit, deriding the art on display. I took the idea of "the order of battle" pretty literally, representing it through the collage of Soviet-era military vehicles, the Mars symbolism, the left palm print representing the left hand path, the sharp shape language and the use of the colour red. The intravenous therapy suggests that this false world view is something that is not self-sustaining and generally unhealthy. Again I've included a few detail shots.....mainly because Blogger sucks for viewing images. I'll be putting together a Flickr page in the near future for better viewing!