Ian Carpenter

Biography: Born in Thailand in 1974, Ian grew up overseas experiencing multiple cultures and their visual arts. When recollecting primary art influences from his early years, Carpenter vividly remembers various colorful paintings from the Caribbean, Asia, South America, and Europe.

In 2005, Carpenter returned to painting with a new-found respect and passion. Throughout the years he grew to deeply appreciate modern painters like Paul Klee and Nicolas De Stael, art collectives like the Fauves and the Society of Six, and various outsider artists like Joseph Yoakum and Anna Zemankova. All of these influence what Carpenter does with paint and the waiting surface. His paintings, with their playful use of color, can be viewed as either lyrical abstractions or vague remembrances of dream world landscapes.

Statement: What I am trying to find in my paintings is a sublime perspective, either informed from the subconscious, in distant memories of visited or imagined places, or from the way nature and the human world engage each other and appear in light, shadow, steel, skin, concrete, glass, sky, sea and earth. Whether that comes out in fantastical, figurative, or abstract forms depends on the weather, the weather in one's mental coordinates at any given time and place, a fresh protean reverie caressing our collective existence.

Read more in an interview with Ian on the Artmuse blog.