Dana Hart-Stone

  • Overview
    ©️ the artist
    ©️ the artist

     

    Inspired by his childhood growing up in the badlands of eastern Montana, Dana Hart-Stone investigates themes such as friendship, community, and the passing of time, and invites the viewer to explore the developing American identity of earlier years. He builds compositions of tinted vernacular photos from his vast collection of vintage images spanning many years, from the mid-19th through 20th centuries. His paintings are comprised of digitally stitched collages that create fields of memory. They pay homage to the personal histories of "everyday people," while simultaneously recalling the collective history of the American West. The title painting Dear Friend Lola, a 6-foot round canvas, suggests a Busby Berkeley kaleidoscopic storytelling of a lovesick cowboy, that includes a mysterious African American cowboy on a purple horse and a smiling cowgirl guitar player. Other compositions display bands of repetitive imagery that create the feeling of a cinematic narrative while simultaneously dissolving into abstract patterns of saturated color.

     
  • “I am captivated by the narratives of people who settled the Western United States. As a child in Eastern Montana,...

    Dana Hart-Stone

    Dear Friend Lola, 2021

    UV cured acrylic on canvas

    75 x 75 in. (detail)

    “I am captivated by the narratives of people who settled the Western United States. As a child in Eastern Montana, I wandered the history-rich countryside looking for abandoned homesteads. At each site, I found fascinating evidence of difficult lives eked out on the Northern Plains. Today, this same curiosity motivates me as I mine for stories found in vintage, vernacular, photography and create paintings that make visible universal themes about unknown Americans. Friendship, community, pride, and home are some of the themes that reveal the vast topography of our shared human experience.

    These investigations inform the direction of my digital paintings. Each piece is constructed of appropriated images from the discarded photographs that I collect.  Color, imagery, and repetition work in unison to build a spirited pictorial dialogue. Depending on one’s proximity to a piece, the work can simultaneously function as abstraction (when far away) and realism (when near). Each work is printed onto raw canvas with UV cured acrylic ink and exists as a unique work of art.

    My intent is to create paintings that evoke a sense of place, document the passing of time, and invite the viewer to engage in a developing American identity.    ” 

     

    - Dana Hart-Stone

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