Darin Latimer
Darin Latimer was born in Detroit, MI and has long been obsessed with the city. He started drawing as a very small child, long before he talked, according to his mother, and he never stopped. Drawing was often the antidote to boredom or obligations. He would draw constantly through 10 hour cashier shifts at his dad’s store on long Vistavision shaped ‘Cigarette Cards’ from cartons broken down for scrap paper. His mother would drop him off for extracurricular drawing and pastel classes but they always drew some other artist’s picture of something. Darin used to skip school, returning to the city to spend whole days spelunking, book-hunting, salvage-picking, concert and club-going, but mostly just driving around with a camera. When his wife, Lina, attended the University of Detroit, his obsession became a part time profession as he would spend whole days taking photographs all over the city.
The photos were often details of architectural and natural distress patterns, jumbled topographies of sheared off brick from an adjacent demolition, fire scars on the sides of semi-collapsed buildings, scrub trees so choked with snagged plastic trash they appeared to be breathing in the wind.
These images informed a drawing practice that grew out of manic and compulsive adolescent doodling, joined a growing immersion in the history of art and film and lead to his own unique visual lexicon; or, more succinctly as Latimer states, "I started making my own Distress."
The resulting images, whether Paintings, Collage, Plush Mask-like Heads or, more recently, Pandemic-Inspired cardboard sculptures, almost entirely resolve into pictures of faces or figures, sometimes compressed in multitudes (or cityscapes), but almost never complete abstraction.
"I think the many Eyes in my work are all seeing something. I think the abundant sets of clenched Teeth are either about to speak or never speak again. The smallest gesture towards a face in the corner of a painting has an individual expression...that makes me pretty happy."
The photos were often details of architectural and natural distress patterns, jumbled topographies of sheared off brick from an adjacent demolition, fire scars on the sides of semi-collapsed buildings, scrub trees so choked with snagged plastic trash they appeared to be breathing in the wind.
These images informed a drawing practice that grew out of manic and compulsive adolescent doodling, joined a growing immersion in the history of art and film and lead to his own unique visual lexicon; or, more succinctly as Latimer states, "I started making my own Distress."
The resulting images, whether Paintings, Collage, Plush Mask-like Heads or, more recently, Pandemic-Inspired cardboard sculptures, almost entirely resolve into pictures of faces or figures, sometimes compressed in multitudes (or cityscapes), but almost never complete abstraction.
"I think the many Eyes in my work are all seeing something. I think the abundant sets of clenched Teeth are either about to speak or never speak again. The smallest gesture towards a face in the corner of a painting has an individual expression...that makes me pretty happy."
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2021
"Insect Ritual (Untouchable)" krink ink blot drawings on heavy stonehenge paper
"Gods of the Plague"
acrylic and krink ink on boxes
2020 - 2021
acrylic and krink ink on boxes
2020 - 2021
Paintings 2018 - 2021
