With so many travel restrictions in place due to Covid-19, most of us have forgotten the luxury of getting out on the open road once again. Illustrator turned fine artist, Dennis Ziemienski, has painted people reminiscing of happier times of travel and leisure with his upcoming show Grand Canyon State. Mark Sublette Medicine Man Gallery will be hosting Ziemienski’s unique series of oil paintings inspired by travel poster art, old travel decals, matchbook covers and trading post shops, all of them featuring the state of Arizona.
Arizona Velvet, oil on canvas, 60 x 48”
Ziemienski’s new work introduces text into his paintings, strongly reflecting his earlier career as an illustrator. “I’ve done things like a Kentucky Derby poster and a Super Bowl poster,” he explains. “I did a lot of graphic design and I thought, let’s bring some of that back in.”
Even Ziemienski’s early paintings took on a graphic look, however, the new series of work is also inspired by some of his favorite artists that were graphic designers and illustrators of the 1920s through the 1940s, who then turned to fine art. This includes Maynard Dixon, Tom Purvis and Edward Hopper.
The Grand Canyon National Park Decal, oil on canvas, 36 x 24"
“The influences that I had are still with me,” he adds. “I wanted to have a style that is all mine but that’s hard to do without influences. You take all those artists and you basically take from what you see and apply it to your own work.” What Ziemienski also likes to do “is reorganize nature a little bit,” he says. “I suppose one of my colleagues, Ed Mell, does this as well—taking shapes and re-forming them.”
The combination of all these influences and experience has resulted in work such as Arizona Velvet, with a Native American woman on horseback with billowing clouds and desert landscape in the background. The word “Arizona” is boldly placed above the figures’ head. The composition of the piece is reminiscent of a poster from the 1940s, inspired by the many travel books that Ziemienski collects, containing the many artists he admires.
Arizona Spirit, oil on canvas, 48 x 36”
Viewers will also see work such as Grand Canyon National Park Decal, based off old travel decals that one would buy when traveling around the United States. “It was a thing from the ’40s through the ’60s,” Ziemienski explains, “and people would stick them on their car, showing all the places they’d been.”
Critics often shun the commercial part of art or illustration, but now Ziemienski finds that with his travel poster pieces “people want to see something that gives them hope or something that they remember having a good time doing and hope to do again—especially with the pandemic happening. What appeals to people and to me, is having something in your room that cheers you up.”
Ziemienski’s Arizona-themed new show will run from March 20 to April 17 at Mark Sublette Medicine Man Gallery in Tucson, Arizona.
Upcoming Show
Up to 12 works
March 20-April 17, 2021
Mark Sublette
Medicine Man Gallery
6872 E. Sunrise Drive, Suite 130
Tucson, AZ 85750
(520) 722-7798
www.medicinemangallery.com
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