EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH MICHAEL KENNETH DEPUE - DESTIG TOP ARTIST FOR 2019.
Tell us about yourself and background.
I was born and raised outside Detroit Michigan. My father Ken, was a hard working blue-collar guy with a great sense of humor.
Both my father and mother Ann, inspired me. After his passing, I began including my middle name in his memory. Growing up in the Detroit area, I thought I would end up drawing hub-caps the rest of my life. I studied design and photography in Michigan.
With my design background, I was fortunate to get into the exhibitions business and eventually transfer to California where I studied music studio recording. I'm a jack-of-all-trades and my passion for music has always been therapy for me. I'm working on including the original music with my art. My goal is to give the music away for a donation and develop an Arts scholarship.
Tell us about your work.
My favorite quote is "Variety's the very spice of life"...(William Cowper - Poet 1785). My website is nearly half painting and half photography. I enjoy creating paintings from old photos and the hunt for the photograph is just as gratifying. I love the happy accidents that happen in art featured in my Double Exposure series with overlapping in-camera film exposures and my Artography series highlighting an alternative photographic process that involves painting photo chemistry on photo paper. So far, I've had the most success with the Then-and-Now series digitally manipulating my photographic collection.
Tell us about yourself and background.
I was born and raised outside Detroit Michigan. My father Ken, was a hard working blue-collar guy with a great sense of humor.
Both my father and mother Ann, inspired me. After his passing, I began including my middle name in his memory. Growing up in the Detroit area, I thought I would end up drawing hub-caps the rest of my life. I studied design and photography in Michigan.
With my design background, I was fortunate to get into the exhibitions business and eventually transfer to California where I studied music studio recording. I'm a jack-of-all-trades and my passion for music has always been therapy for me. I'm working on including the original music with my art. My goal is to give the music away for a donation and develop an Arts scholarship.
Tell us about your work.
My favorite quote is "Variety's the very spice of life"...(William Cowper - Poet 1785). My website is nearly half painting and half photography. I enjoy creating paintings from old photos and the hunt for the photograph is just as gratifying. I love the happy accidents that happen in art featured in my Double Exposure series with overlapping in-camera film exposures and my Artography series highlighting an alternative photographic process that involves painting photo chemistry on photo paper. So far, I've had the most success with the Then-and-Now series digitally manipulating my photographic collection.
"Both my father Ken and mother Ann, inspired me. After his passing, I began including my middle name in his memory."
What makes your work and approach unique?
The images that I collect are part of history, they are one-of-kind, to me they are priceless. By manipulating these images and combining them with my own, it makes my work unique. This exposure in DESTIG will increase my perceived value and I believe the "Then-and-Now" series would work very well in advertising - celebrating the past and showing the world just how far we have come. As in the case of most artists, they are worth more dead than alive. I have 20+ years of life expectancy and if I keep going on free-style mountain climbing trips with my son Alex, it could be sooner.
Tell us about some of your achievements.
My finest achievements are my daughter Amelia who is a talented teacher and musician and my son Alexander who is following in my footsteps including a few of his own, as a talented graphic/media designer and photographer. While he was studying at Cal Poly, I told him he needed to enter a museum exhibition in SLO and in his first exhibition he was awarded best in show and an honorable mention. I have already spent a lifetime in the exhibitions business that has allowed me to gather images from all over the world - some collected and many photographed with camera in tow. As far as the art world, my CV includes numerous juried exhibitions with three honorable mentions.
"I have already spent a lifetime in the exhibitions business that has allowed me to gather images from all over the world - some collected and many photographed with camera in tow."
Tell us the back-story of some of your projects.
The kitsch image titled "Fashion Accessories" is sentimentally charming and upon closer observation the high-heel boots the Ostrich is sporting becomes a pleasant surprise. The ostrich feather hat would be at the peak of popularity during the “feather fashion craze” of the early 20th century. I decided to embrace the exhibition's fashion theme utilizing my historic image and adding modern high-heel boots to the Ostrich from a photograph I had taken. It was the comic relief of the exhibition opening. Laughter is the best medicine. The image "New Guinea TV" is engaging and upon closer observation the inserted early television becomes a visual statement of how western civilization has had profound influence on primitive cultures. The historic image is from 1944 during a time in which Japan invaded the New Guinea and Australian territories in January of 1942. I love history and take pleasure in the fact that an old photograph can reveal a story and inspire a journey back in time.
Share your upcoming projects?
The "Western Art" series will feature images from my collection of cowboys, Indians and more coupled with my background photographs. Some pieces will include mixed media collage incorporating painting, maps and photography. The design comp image illustrates the first stage of my planning a mixed media painting. The "Figures in Nature" series features a combination of my landscape photographs of the Sierra back country combined with the figure images from the collection - some classic and some playful. The landscape itself is beautiful; However, the addition of the figure makes the image unique and adds an element of intrigue.
"In this digital world we owe it to ourselves to print out the images that have meaning to us and write on the back so, 100 years from now, that story can be discovered and enjoyed by someone in the future."
Tell us about where you are based.
My primary residence is in Oakhurst California, thirty minutes from Yosemite National Park and surrounded by the Sierra National Forest. I also spend time in the small town of Mountain Center, population 350, on Mount San Jacinto outside of Palm Springs and an hour from Joshua Tree National Park. I'm inspired by the beauty the high desert and the mountains have to offer especially the sounds and smells providing a great deal of forest therapy.
How do you feel about art and its role?
I love the fact that all forms of art are respected and that anything goes. Art can be as beautiful or ugly, as joyful or rude, as sentimental or political - all supported by the freedom of expression.
"I love history and take pleasure in the fact that an old photograph can reveal a story and inspire a journey back in time."
How do you want your art to affect viewers?
Even though photography has become such common place provided by every cell phone, I would emphasize that each viewer recognize photography is important and tells a story. In this digital world we owe it to ourselves to print out the images that have meaning to us and write on the back so, 100 years from now, that story can be discovered and enjoyed by someone in the future.
Website: michaeldepue.com
| PDF of the Interview in DESTIG Magazine |