Tyler Anthony Deem
 FINE ART AND PHOTOGRAPHY

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The Transcendent Artist 

Tyler Anthony Deem

2021

 

 

 

In a world of entropy and change, the only thing we can do is create more. In an attempt to capture the past, photographers and artists create images that represent moments and experiences before they no longer exist.

Tyler Deem is a multi-media artist specializing in non-traditional photography for eight years and currently works out of his home studio in Nashville, Tennessee.

 

 Tyler is an artist and photographer that uses traditional and contemporary art forms to create images that explore the empirical and metaphysical experiences of life through the use of light and form, perception and cultural references.

 

His art uses photographs as a tool that works beyond language to express beauty in a globalized society and world. To help people connect with each other and our environment, his works explore ideas and symbols that push our understanding of macrocosms, microcosms and the different spectrums of life we live in that are beyond our familiar perspective.

 

Growing up overseas and living in multiple countries, he is interested in many cultures and how those cultures can relate light and perception in worlds of art, science and faith to help better make sense of the world around us!

 

 

About the Artwork:

 

 

- Photographic Process

 

Van Dyke Brown is a traditional photographic process invented in the latter 19th century involving direct UV or sunlight to print out a photograph. Cyanotype has a distinct blue color in comparison with the earthy browns of the Vandyke, both of which use a light-sensitive liquid hand-coated on paper and dried. With a negative and sunlight, a photograph is painted with light.

 

 

- Collages

 

Some of his  artworks are collages made using a combination of paper, photographs, hand drawings, and pigments on Van dyke Brown prints. They are observations of the world around us, and comment on the way we might perceive our world using composition, line-work and layering. Spirituality, social changes, histories, religion and nature are just some themes of humanity explored in these artworks.

 

By using a combination of digital and traditional tools, these works become a response to the circumstances of our generation. The present is always changing and by layering textures and images with paper, these works are an attempt to translate the fleeting expression of the present before it passes.

 

 

Factors of Art

 

- Light is the foundation of knowledge and understanding. Whether in religion, science or art, light reveals truth. Light has the energy to create, and can be used in art to better understand life and our surroundings.

 

- Art should be viewed by the soul, not just the eyes. Art is subjective, can be emotional, exist beyond words, and is always open to interpretations.

 

- There are no opposites in art; everything has a quality of its ‘opposite’. Dichotomies work with words, but not in art. Art should create unity, not difference.

 

- Art should reveal or suggest the nature of all things.

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- Icons, symbols and words can be used to represent ideas in art, but are subject to social and cultural change. If a viewer has no personal value for the word or symbol, then it loses its value in art. Artwork should not depend on symbolism, iconography or rhetoric, but an artist can use these as a tool to connect viewers with the artist’s reality or truth.

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- Social and Cultural changes are always happening, and art does not need to comply with them. Art can be used to create these changes, or can just respond to them, but art should not encourage change just for the sake of change.

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- Art is a response to the artist’s circumstances; everything is an influence on the artist so long as they willingly open themselves to it. Each artist is a unique situation in time, and life provides an abundance of material… but this material is not unique to each artist and can affect anyone.

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- No favorites; there are many variations of everything, and to decide on a favorite style, subject matter or technique is to be limited. It is a way of accepting ignorance from other possibilities, and can harm the artist.

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- Art can be of any form, medium, technique or mode and can be sourced from anything and everything. Material is important as some of the art’s value comes directly from the material. It can be an object, an idea, an action, an emotion, an expression…but must involve decision-making and manipulation (at least of context ie. ready-mades) to be recognized as art.

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Artist Statement - Tyler A Deem