C.S. Dailey – A Brief Autobiography
I began my art career as a child prodigy, against the backdrop of the busy Laguna Beach, CA. art scene. I began designing houses at the age of three, sketching floor plans, room layouts and elevations. By the age of seven I decided I would be a professional artist. By third grade I was painting regularly and had placed second in a nation-wide competition. In 1995, at age eleven, I held my first serious art show at the Terra’s Angels Gallery in San Juan Capistrano, CA. Since then my artistic path has evolved aided by a desire to continuously exceed my previous standard of excellence.
My work is technically driven, with a great emphasis given to quality and craftsmanship. I am a process oriented artist, and take great care in every stage of development of a piece to assure its longevity. I work in a layered process, building each painting up from a foundation of thick gesso, the finished image already imbedded in this early stage. From there I employ countless layers of pigment-rich paints, opaque to transparent, in a glaze technique adapted from the old master painters of the Italian Renaissance.
The style of my work has shifted broadly over the years and may be defined by several distinct periods. In the early beginning I produced figurative work, with abstract elements. Heavily influenced by early modern movements like Cubism, these paintings are characterized by reddish-browns and strong blues, broad brush strokes and religious themes. It was during the production of these Cubist influenced pieces that I developed a deep understanding of composition and color theory.
By age ten these painting began to give way to the Angel period. This work became softer in color and appearance, and featured illusions of depth and space as opposed to flatter abstract work. Soft, mid-tonal blues and greens were favored, as were muted magentas and earthy near-white. Brushstrokes were now smoothed out and blended into a seamless background while Angelic beings became the main subject. I estimate that over two thousand Angels were painted in this period ranging roughly from 1994 to 1996. These were the focus of a show which was very popular and, with a sold-out inventory, cemented for me the possibility of creating art as a full time occupation.
Enthusiasm from my early success added momentum to my productivity and soon a new style began to emerge. My craftsmanship was improving and my subject matter changing. I began flirting with Da-Da-ism, and working in sculpture. I abandoned religious imagery in favor of the human body, and for the first time, landscape. These were transitional pieces and varied widely in exuberant experimentation. Between 1996 and 2000, I was painting crowds of people, exotic plants, reflective surfaces and objects in a typically representational, post-modern abstract style; using a direct painting technique.
As a child I painted almost every day. I would rush through whatever homework I had and then spend a few hours painting. All the while I was developing another talent which I considered separate but equal to my fine art. I was also an architect. By the year 2000 I had designed hundreds and hundreds of buildings. Everything from houses to hotels, sea ports to schools; I would sit and draft for hours. It was not just the floor plans, but the plumbing schematics, framing and roof systems, complex diagrams and models, even down to the finish materials and layout and design of furnishings. It occurred to me one day that since the age of four, I had mentally redesigned every space I had been in; however, the strong verticality and heavy ornament present in my structure design was absent from the Southern California environment to which I had been almost exclusively exposed.
From where did this design tendency originate? Looking back it is easy to see that my designs are a revival of styles from the nineteenth century, styles so far removed from my environment that I did not experience them in person until my teenage years. Somewhere resonating from my subconscious is a Nineteenth Century proportion or a roofline which I picked up in a developmental stage. This obscure unidentified element influenced my architectural work, replaying itself over and over in countless designs from age four to present.
Nobody taught me how to design a building, or how to draw it out, I just knew instinctively. It was the same with composition and color in painting, though as a self taught artist technique was something learned early on by trial and error. It was my ability to learn, unlearn, and relearn and my adaptive use of that information which fueled my production. By the time we moved from Southern Orange County to Atlanta, GA in 2000, I was ready for the large scale projects that would soon follow.
It was in Atlanta that I rediscovered sculpture and redefined the scale and scope of my work. I began working more in clay and segued into ceramic glaze. While learning new techniques for ceramic glaze I also completed my largest work to that point, a fourteen by twenty foot mural for the George Walton Building. This piece typified my style at the time, it was still strongly influenced by Cubism by had distinctively Surrealist qualities and imagery; it was allegorical in subject. This mural was also monochromatic and mid-tonal, a quality which lasted in my work for years to come.
At this time I began painting places that existed around me, not just the places I created in my head. Coupled with an expanding vocabulary of technique and medium I was poised to create paintings in Realism, and spent the next several years making paintings in both abstract expressionism, and also Surrealism. I also began making linocuts and etchings, mostly of an architectural theme. Moving several times caused my work to become sporadic, but by my senior year of High School I was again working in large scale murals, this time completing works for an LA based design firm for such notables as Scarlett Johansson. Surrealism gave way to Photo Realism and Abstract Expressionism gave way to minimal landscape; though I was still working in multiple disciplines.
I attended Southeast Missouri University my freshman year and attempted to be a Historic Preservation major. Despite my high grades, my teachers encouraged me to pursue Art, and for my second year I transferred to The Cyprus College of Art. While living in Limassol in the Republic of Cyprus, I studied classical training. I adopted a 17th century technique for oil painting in transparent glaze layers, and I ran with it. I began combining landscape with Art Nouveau forms and style, and produced allegorical still life paintings. As I probed the inner workings of my mind my work became increasingly unique and emotionally driven. Confident with a new body of work produced in Cyprus, I took part in several art shows all across Southern Europe and the Greek speaking world. It was then that I had my second ever sell-out show, and my first permanent Museum acquisition.
After finishing my work in Cyprus I returned to the United States and created several pieces while traveling along the Mississippi River. Just as the architecture and art of Cyprus influenced my work of that time, so the abandoned buildings of St. Louis and the river culture of Paducah, Cape Girardeau, Memphis and others influenced my paintings. My primary obsession at this time was experiencing the architecture of forgotten places like Cairo, Ill. These places combined in my mind with the exotic ancient citadels of Cyprus and fueled wild architectural fantasies.
I eventually settled in Memphis, TN and attended the Memphis College of Art (MCA). I continued to have successful shows while both attending school and working as a museum designer and architect. All the while I was flying out to California every few months to paint large murals. My shows became increasingly more complex and dynamic, including physically taxing performance pieces which garnered overwhelming public support. It was during the peak of preparations for an art show, however, that I decided to finally give up my studies at MCA in favor of my busy gallery life and momentum.
It was not long after this decision that a gallery owner in Palm Desert, CA invited me to take over her gallery and use it as my own. After three months of negotiations, I quit my job and prepared to move back to Southern California. Immediately upon arrival I began a new and ambitious series of desert landscapes. These were minimalist in nature and had subtle monochromatic color schemes. Suddenly I was caught up in a string of high profile mural commissions. I continued to produce works for such people as Douglas and Elizabeth Manchester, and Lowe Enterprises; without a whole lot of time to create the increasingly large scale projects I envisioned.
Finally, in 2007 I was given a new gallery space in which to create my largest painting on canvas, “Overcoming the Valley”. I spent the better part of seven months creating the eight foot square landscape. It is a beautifully surreal image of the California desert as seen from a mountain top. Completion of this piece marked the transition into the highly detailed landscape work for which I am now known. It is a culmination of the exacting detail of my architectural work applied to the sweeping landscape form of my previous series. The success of this large piece spurned the creation of a genera of Desertscape all its own, typified by hyper natural color and vast sweeping negative space contrasted with bands of focused high detail.
On my twenty-fourth birthday (November 2008), I held an important show of entirely new work called “The Writing is on the Wall”. This solo exhibition held at the Continuum Gallery featured two types of new work; those closely related to my previous landscape and surrealism, and others combining elements of pop art and deconstructionism. What was important though was not the style but the unique humanitarian message of each piece. Finely painted seams of words snaked through some images, challenging the viewer to reevaluate multiple facets of their individual lives. Other paintings boldly declared statements like “Tax Pot, Fund Schools”; or depicted powerful images of housing built upon garbage, made of past technologies. This show examined the modern human condition in a bold and unapologetic way, yet with surprising optimism.
After the show closed, I only had enough time to complete six paintings before disaster struck. I remember rock climbing in south La Quinta, CA. I woke weeks later in the hospital. It was heart failure; a viral infection had enlarged my heart. I blacked out at home and remained in a chair for days until a friend found me and took me to the hospital. The doctors told me I had an 8% chance of survival, and I would be in the hospital for at least a month. My initial reaction was calm and collected; I thought “OK, what can I do to show the doctors I am ready to go home?” I recovered beyond anyone’s expectations, and was home within seven days.
I continued to recover at a slow and steady pace, at first it was difficult for me to hold a fork, or walk across a room. Gradually I could hold a plate, and stand up on my own. After six months it was clear I would not need a heart transplant as I had been told. By eight months I was able to begin painting again. I completed a commission, and then created a series of highly personal paintings. Perhaps it was a lesson of patience learned through my recovery, but my paintings became increasingly more detailed. The time involved with each piece began to lengthen, and the layers of paint application became much more complex. By a year and a half after my health crisis, I received a clean bill of health from my Cardiologist and had re-mastered painting.
With my health essentially restored I began to paint large again, applying a new standard of complex detail. Vivid colors match powerful themes, such as transition from life to death, or how individual perception is inherently erroneous. My paintings became subtly confrontational, and subversive in a way that is in the viewer’s best interest. The images often feature reflections, optical illusions, and psychological devises. The main outward objective seems to be a celebration of beauty or perhaps a celebration of nature or creation. The real objective is causing the viewer to think critically, about what they want out of life, and how their actions reflect those desires; and also about how an individual’s actions impact themselves, society, and the natural world.
I am presently completing the first series of work to be released publicly in a solo exhibition since 2008. These images, true to my goal of continual improvement, are my best yet. In this new series of large oil and acrylic paintings I will take you on a “Rocket Ride to Old Earth” and to the year “3355”. I’ll explore the idea of desolation and “Abandonment” and recreate one of the most visually stunning environments with my subseries of cave paintings based on the Salton Sea. Innovative new works like “Old West Train” parody the consumption of Chinese goods by the ‘new’ American West. Still other paintings take a poignant look at the fragility and resilience of life. These surreal and serene paintings shall be made available by summer 2012.
Already, as I finish the last of these new paintings, my mind is on the next big project. Even as I lovingly brush the final details on works which took months and years to complete, I am planning a total break away. The next sixty paintings are already in my head, and on the sketch board. I am hand coloring a series of sixty never-before seen photographs of the devastation of Nagasaki Japan in 1945. These powerful, explicit new paintings will employ an oil or acrylic glaze technique on canvas and board, and depict the photographic images of devastation in various coloration; creating realistic and surrealistic as well as abstract interpretations. With the 70th anniversary of the controversial bombing just around the corner in 2015, I am already looking ahead to shows in Japan and across the United States and the world. I hope that these images will help to foster world piece by reminding us of our past lessons.
C. S. Dailey 7/2012
I began my art career as a child prodigy, against the backdrop of the busy Laguna Beach, CA. art scene. I began designing houses at the age of three, sketching floor plans, room layouts and elevations. By the age of seven I decided I would be a professional artist. By third grade I was painting regularly and had placed second in a nation-wide competition. In 1995, at age eleven, I held my first serious art show at the Terra’s Angels Gallery in San Juan Capistrano, CA. Since then my artistic path has evolved aided by a desire to continuously exceed my previous standard of excellence.
My work is technically driven, with a great emphasis given to quality and craftsmanship. I am a process oriented artist, and take great care in every stage of development of a piece to assure its longevity. I work in a layered process, building each painting up from a foundation of thick gesso, the finished image already imbedded in this early stage. From there I employ countless layers of pigment-rich paints, opaque to transparent, in a glaze technique adapted from the old master painters of the Italian Renaissance.
The style of my work has shifted broadly over the years and may be defined by several distinct periods. In the early beginning I produced figurative work, with abstract elements. Heavily influenced by early modern movements like Cubism, these paintings are characterized by reddish-browns and strong blues, broad brush strokes and religious themes. It was during the production of these Cubist influenced pieces that I developed a deep understanding of composition and color theory.
By age ten these painting began to give way to the Angel period. This work became softer in color and appearance, and featured illusions of depth and space as opposed to flatter abstract work. Soft, mid-tonal blues and greens were favored, as were muted magentas and earthy near-white. Brushstrokes were now smoothed out and blended into a seamless background while Angelic beings became the main subject. I estimate that over two thousand Angels were painted in this period ranging roughly from 1994 to 1996. These were the focus of a show which was very popular and, with a sold-out inventory, cemented for me the possibility of creating art as a full time occupation.
Enthusiasm from my early success added momentum to my productivity and soon a new style began to emerge. My craftsmanship was improving and my subject matter changing. I began flirting with Da-Da-ism, and working in sculpture. I abandoned religious imagery in favor of the human body, and for the first time, landscape. These were transitional pieces and varied widely in exuberant experimentation. Between 1996 and 2000, I was painting crowds of people, exotic plants, reflective surfaces and objects in a typically representational, post-modern abstract style; using a direct painting technique.
As a child I painted almost every day. I would rush through whatever homework I had and then spend a few hours painting. All the while I was developing another talent which I considered separate but equal to my fine art. I was also an architect. By the year 2000 I had designed hundreds and hundreds of buildings. Everything from houses to hotels, sea ports to schools; I would sit and draft for hours. It was not just the floor plans, but the plumbing schematics, framing and roof systems, complex diagrams and models, even down to the finish materials and layout and design of furnishings. It occurred to me one day that since the age of four, I had mentally redesigned every space I had been in; however, the strong verticality and heavy ornament present in my structure design was absent from the Southern California environment to which I had been almost exclusively exposed.
From where did this design tendency originate? Looking back it is easy to see that my designs are a revival of styles from the nineteenth century, styles so far removed from my environment that I did not experience them in person until my teenage years. Somewhere resonating from my subconscious is a Nineteenth Century proportion or a roofline which I picked up in a developmental stage. This obscure unidentified element influenced my architectural work, replaying itself over and over in countless designs from age four to present.
Nobody taught me how to design a building, or how to draw it out, I just knew instinctively. It was the same with composition and color in painting, though as a self taught artist technique was something learned early on by trial and error. It was my ability to learn, unlearn, and relearn and my adaptive use of that information which fueled my production. By the time we moved from Southern Orange County to Atlanta, GA in 2000, I was ready for the large scale projects that would soon follow.
It was in Atlanta that I rediscovered sculpture and redefined the scale and scope of my work. I began working more in clay and segued into ceramic glaze. While learning new techniques for ceramic glaze I also completed my largest work to that point, a fourteen by twenty foot mural for the George Walton Building. This piece typified my style at the time, it was still strongly influenced by Cubism by had distinctively Surrealist qualities and imagery; it was allegorical in subject. This mural was also monochromatic and mid-tonal, a quality which lasted in my work for years to come.
At this time I began painting places that existed around me, not just the places I created in my head. Coupled with an expanding vocabulary of technique and medium I was poised to create paintings in Realism, and spent the next several years making paintings in both abstract expressionism, and also Surrealism. I also began making linocuts and etchings, mostly of an architectural theme. Moving several times caused my work to become sporadic, but by my senior year of High School I was again working in large scale murals, this time completing works for an LA based design firm for such notables as Scarlett Johansson. Surrealism gave way to Photo Realism and Abstract Expressionism gave way to minimal landscape; though I was still working in multiple disciplines.
I attended Southeast Missouri University my freshman year and attempted to be a Historic Preservation major. Despite my high grades, my teachers encouraged me to pursue Art, and for my second year I transferred to The Cyprus College of Art. While living in Limassol in the Republic of Cyprus, I studied classical training. I adopted a 17th century technique for oil painting in transparent glaze layers, and I ran with it. I began combining landscape with Art Nouveau forms and style, and produced allegorical still life paintings. As I probed the inner workings of my mind my work became increasingly unique and emotionally driven. Confident with a new body of work produced in Cyprus, I took part in several art shows all across Southern Europe and the Greek speaking world. It was then that I had my second ever sell-out show, and my first permanent Museum acquisition.
After finishing my work in Cyprus I returned to the United States and created several pieces while traveling along the Mississippi River. Just as the architecture and art of Cyprus influenced my work of that time, so the abandoned buildings of St. Louis and the river culture of Paducah, Cape Girardeau, Memphis and others influenced my paintings. My primary obsession at this time was experiencing the architecture of forgotten places like Cairo, Ill. These places combined in my mind with the exotic ancient citadels of Cyprus and fueled wild architectural fantasies.
I eventually settled in Memphis, TN and attended the Memphis College of Art (MCA). I continued to have successful shows while both attending school and working as a museum designer and architect. All the while I was flying out to California every few months to paint large murals. My shows became increasingly more complex and dynamic, including physically taxing performance pieces which garnered overwhelming public support. It was during the peak of preparations for an art show, however, that I decided to finally give up my studies at MCA in favor of my busy gallery life and momentum.
It was not long after this decision that a gallery owner in Palm Desert, CA invited me to take over her gallery and use it as my own. After three months of negotiations, I quit my job and prepared to move back to Southern California. Immediately upon arrival I began a new and ambitious series of desert landscapes. These were minimalist in nature and had subtle monochromatic color schemes. Suddenly I was caught up in a string of high profile mural commissions. I continued to produce works for such people as Douglas and Elizabeth Manchester, and Lowe Enterprises; without a whole lot of time to create the increasingly large scale projects I envisioned.
Finally, in 2007 I was given a new gallery space in which to create my largest painting on canvas, “Overcoming the Valley”. I spent the better part of seven months creating the eight foot square landscape. It is a beautifully surreal image of the California desert as seen from a mountain top. Completion of this piece marked the transition into the highly detailed landscape work for which I am now known. It is a culmination of the exacting detail of my architectural work applied to the sweeping landscape form of my previous series. The success of this large piece spurned the creation of a genera of Desertscape all its own, typified by hyper natural color and vast sweeping negative space contrasted with bands of focused high detail.
On my twenty-fourth birthday (November 2008), I held an important show of entirely new work called “The Writing is on the Wall”. This solo exhibition held at the Continuum Gallery featured two types of new work; those closely related to my previous landscape and surrealism, and others combining elements of pop art and deconstructionism. What was important though was not the style but the unique humanitarian message of each piece. Finely painted seams of words snaked through some images, challenging the viewer to reevaluate multiple facets of their individual lives. Other paintings boldly declared statements like “Tax Pot, Fund Schools”; or depicted powerful images of housing built upon garbage, made of past technologies. This show examined the modern human condition in a bold and unapologetic way, yet with surprising optimism.
After the show closed, I only had enough time to complete six paintings before disaster struck. I remember rock climbing in south La Quinta, CA. I woke weeks later in the hospital. It was heart failure; a viral infection had enlarged my heart. I blacked out at home and remained in a chair for days until a friend found me and took me to the hospital. The doctors told me I had an 8% chance of survival, and I would be in the hospital for at least a month. My initial reaction was calm and collected; I thought “OK, what can I do to show the doctors I am ready to go home?” I recovered beyond anyone’s expectations, and was home within seven days.
I continued to recover at a slow and steady pace, at first it was difficult for me to hold a fork, or walk across a room. Gradually I could hold a plate, and stand up on my own. After six months it was clear I would not need a heart transplant as I had been told. By eight months I was able to begin painting again. I completed a commission, and then created a series of highly personal paintings. Perhaps it was a lesson of patience learned through my recovery, but my paintings became increasingly more detailed. The time involved with each piece began to lengthen, and the layers of paint application became much more complex. By a year and a half after my health crisis, I received a clean bill of health from my Cardiologist and had re-mastered painting.
With my health essentially restored I began to paint large again, applying a new standard of complex detail. Vivid colors match powerful themes, such as transition from life to death, or how individual perception is inherently erroneous. My paintings became subtly confrontational, and subversive in a way that is in the viewer’s best interest. The images often feature reflections, optical illusions, and psychological devises. The main outward objective seems to be a celebration of beauty or perhaps a celebration of nature or creation. The real objective is causing the viewer to think critically, about what they want out of life, and how their actions reflect those desires; and also about how an individual’s actions impact themselves, society, and the natural world.
I am presently completing the first series of work to be released publicly in a solo exhibition since 2008. These images, true to my goal of continual improvement, are my best yet. In this new series of large oil and acrylic paintings I will take you on a “Rocket Ride to Old Earth” and to the year “3355”. I’ll explore the idea of desolation and “Abandonment” and recreate one of the most visually stunning environments with my subseries of cave paintings based on the Salton Sea. Innovative new works like “Old West Train” parody the consumption of Chinese goods by the ‘new’ American West. Still other paintings take a poignant look at the fragility and resilience of life. These surreal and serene paintings shall be made available by summer 2012.
Already, as I finish the last of these new paintings, my mind is on the next big project. Even as I lovingly brush the final details on works which took months and years to complete, I am planning a total break away. The next sixty paintings are already in my head, and on the sketch board. I am hand coloring a series of sixty never-before seen photographs of the devastation of Nagasaki Japan in 1945. These powerful, explicit new paintings will employ an oil or acrylic glaze technique on canvas and board, and depict the photographic images of devastation in various coloration; creating realistic and surrealistic as well as abstract interpretations. With the 70th anniversary of the controversial bombing just around the corner in 2015, I am already looking ahead to shows in Japan and across the United States and the world. I hope that these images will help to foster world piece by reminding us of our past lessons.
C. S. Dailey 7/2012