Dennis Navrat

THE BLACK HILLS SERIES (1987 – Present) 

Statement by the Artist

            My Black Hills Series, begun in 1987 and continuing today, symbolically explores the often tenuous relationships, past and present, among people, animals, and a Sacred Place.

            In these works my thoughts center on conflicts between human activities and Nature.  They are about life within our environment.  By the process of creating these handmade paper paintings (similar to geologic layering), and the resulting symbolic imagery, I explore interrelationships between the natural environment and technological development, between rural and urban life, and between the past and the present.  In the works, as in real life, the interrelationships are often contradictory and incongruous.  I consider polemical issues (social, technological, political, and perceptual) quite worthy of visual exploration, since few things in life, as in art, are explicitly good or bad, right or wrong.

            Schooled in the nuances of abstract expressionism in the early 1960s, numbed by the Vietnam War and abrupt social change, (inundated by the complexities of marriage and fatherhood in the 1970s), I’m now amused by the absurdities of the 1980s and 1990s.  My work, tempered by a sense of humor, continues to mirror the ambiguity, multiplicity, and fragmentation of life at this moment.

            This body of work is about transition and contradiction, and is an intuitive search for that which does not exist and has never been seen.  I am interested in prairie metaphysics and the idiosyncrasies of human beings.  Innovation and an eccentric form of originality are important to me.  I am not bound by institutional or commercial concepts of what is proper concerning form, technique, and a common sense of beauty.  Obviously, I like to challenge sensibilities and stagnant thoughts about the concepts of beauty and ugliness.

            The Black Hills Series are symbolic images of a Sacred Place containing beauty and ugliness – a spirit vortex where attention is funneled toward an unknown space encompassing inner space, religious space, and outrageous space.

            Since 1987, over a hundred works comprise this series which continues to evolve.  Future works will surely portray imminent conflicts of Indians, pig farmers, animals, Christianity, and B1 bombers – contradictions set amidst the timeless, mountainous pyramids of South Dakota.

Dennis Navrat
September 4, 1991

Black Hills Series LXVI

mixed media handmade paper
36"H x 110"W x 1"D

1988-2004

BLACK HILLS SERIES: TROUT

relief print on handmade paper
11"H x 15"W

1994

BLACK HILLS SERIES: TROUT

relief print on handmade paper
11"H x 15"W

1994

BLACK HILLS SERIES LXVIII

mixed media handmade paper
36"H x 78"W  x 1/2"D 

BLACK HILLS SERIES: TERRORISTS AT MOUNT RUSHMORE

watercolor on handmade paper assemblage
52"H x 39"W x 1/2"D

1994

Black Hills Series: Epitaph: He Was Always Getting Ready

painted handmade paper
Triptych: 53"H x 110"W x 1/2"D

1994

Black Hills Series mixed media handmade paper 19" x 24" 1999

Black Hills Series mixed media handmade paper 19" x 24" 1999

Black Hills Series

mixed media handmade paper

19" x 24"

1999

To view more Original Art, click here: 1-10 11-20  21-30  31-40  

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