David Utiger

I should start by saying that I don’t much care to discuss the technical aspect of my art. I feel it takes away from the conceptual and spiritual side of it. At the same time, I’ve resigned myself to describing the technical details. I guess I should be pleased that people are curious about it . . . I would also like to say that I never planned to do my artwork this way, even though I always, from a young age, knew I was going to be an artist.

The imagery and the technique of my work evolved very slowly. Many paints, inks and other materials were tried before I came up with this “method”. Indeed, the method has also changed over time.

All of these pieces are wholly imaginary, and are not representations of any specific place. I start off by composing the image in line with a pencil. Then I spend quite a bit of time applying watercolor with a brush. Finally, I make small marks with a quill pen dipped in colored ink to slowly achieve the desired color and contrast. Since I use pencil, paint, colored ink, and sometimes white opaque ink for highlights, I think the term “mixed media” is an appropriate one.

My work arises out of the northern New England landscape. It is where I choose to live, for the primary reason that it is the only place I feel comfortable. Some people find rural places very threatening, especially a northern area like this, which often has an inhospitable climate. Another reason why my art is connected to the area I live is that I have a hereditary attachment to it. It is a feeling that is hard to avoid when your relatives have lived in the same town for about two hundred years. Because of our increasingly transient society most Americans don’t have or have forgotten their roots.

This is a part of the world that has the four distinct seasons. In fact, the more north you travel, the more distinct the seasons become. The Quebec-Vermont border is exactly 45 degrees N, precisely half way between the equator and the North Pole. The amount of daylight and the angle of the sun change as the year progresses. I like to depict scenes that reflect the kind of light at that time of year. I like to think of my art as a humble attempt to fight back against an increasingly mass-marketed, mass-produced and banal world. My way of fighting back is to create precious, personal and sensitive one-of-a-kind works of art.