Bio.

Born in 1967 during a snowstorm in Toronto, it took 25 years for Derek von Essen to reach Vancouver’s temperate shore where he now lives and works. His artwork has been published in numerous magazines, catalogues and books while simultaneously working as a graphic designer with dance, theatre, music and publishing organizations. He has participated in solo and group exhibitions in Vancouver, Toronto, Portland and recently at the Today Art Museum in Beijing. He is currently working on a book with Anvil Press and Vancouver’s first Poet Laureate, George McWhirter due to be published in 2009. As the photographer, von Essen will portray over one hundred Vancouver neighbourhoods to accompany each corresponding poem. 

Artist Statement.  

Much of the work I create is borne from introspective thought-processes related to personal observations and over-saturated media and pop-culture influences. It centers largely around a creative, reactionary reflex to social issues and the juxtaposition of the natural world in contrast to our man-made, constructed environment.

Working through several means of artistic expression, such as photography, painting, mixed-media, video and design, I disseminate information while choosing the appropriate manner of communicating an idea. With photography I find I can say the most and with the clearest voice. Decades of technical experience has given me a new level of creative control with the camera. For me, photography transcends materialistic presentation and heads straight to the image — a shortcut to depiction which is often all I mean to achieve. A painting carries with it a brooding, contemplative battle of pigment strokes, scrapes, smudges, washes, mood swings and fluctuating temperaments with lengthy sessions of layering and selective removal to fulfill my ideal result. Both painting and photography are necessary means of expression which come from different places in me.

Time and place are recurring themes in my work. City-planning, utilitarian architecture and aesthetics are subjects under current exploration. I am interested in what we do with our living spaces, the items we accumulate, the affected environmental settings we choose to nurture and the changes which occur over time.