Dan McDermott’s Speeding Oils

She leans forward laughing, and her hair streams behind her head like the tail of a shooting star. Dan McDermott’s paintings put the scene in fast forward, including present and almost-present scenes together in a way that makes the action look like it’s happening at light speed.

In the stiller scenes, the paint casts the image through a 1950s television screen  – almost clear but with slightly distorted colors and fuzzy details. McDermott’s paintings shows the past as we would remember it if we’d lived through it ourselves – fleeting happy memories and faces frozen in time.

Good Times I, 2010 Oil on canvas

Good Times I, 2010
Oil on canvas

 

McDermott is represented by the Mark Jason Gallery in London, which writes,

“His extensive body of work is derived from an ever expanding archive of images that for him have an emotional resonance, frozen frames from film and television that are trapped within the decades from which they were born.

The final choice of image will have gone through several layers of processed visual media which McDermott is somehow able to capture in the fast and energetic application of paint.”

 

Red Dress, 2007 Oil On Canvas

Red Dress, 2007
Oil On Canvas

Model, 2008 Oil on canvas

Model, 2008
Oil on canvas

For more of Dan McDermott’s work, see his website.