John Dan Key, Digital Artist
John-Dan Key is a digital artist, specializing in abstract art, who shows and sells his work at Gold Mountains Gallery and Kauffman Street Studios in Republic, Washington, and online at www.artbyjohndan.com.He develops his designs using Corel Draw v.12. His limited edition prints are owned by private corporations and individual collectors across the United States. His showing, entitled “Bugs,” begins May 18 and continues through June 13, 2005 at Gold Mountains Gallery.
Intriguing, abstract, often humorous, and always unique, John-Dan Key's digital imagery evokes curiosity, chuckles, and a more mature awareness of the world around us. With a computer screen serving as his canvas, and key board and mouse as his brush, Key transforms and distills complex ideas and patterns into deceptively simple, abstract shapes and forms that allow us to see a world of relationships through his eyes.
When asked what inspires his designs, Key says, “I have tried to create objective, realistic forms but ultimately – whether I create objective or non-objective works – I end up relating line to line, shape to shape, and form to form.” He repeats the phrase again, both for emphasis and as though ordering his thoughts around a personal mantra. He sees relationship in everything. “I look at lines of buildings and relate them to the mountains behind,” he says. He even admits to finding himself applying the same reasoning to discussions with his children about their teachers and friends, and the parents of their friends. He’s always looking for patterns. He shrugs and smiles. “It drives my kids crazy.”
Key leads me to his laptop and swivels it around so that I can see the screen. He pulls up an image of a cat safely sitting on a high pedestal above a surging horde of dogs. “My daughter had this orange cat that she identified with highly. One afternoon, the cat was sitting by a window. I was trying to figure out what to do with this cat – how to work it into a design. About that time, my daughter came to me and said [her brothers] were being mean to her.” He adds parenthetically, “She was a small child and was timid. Her brothers would tease her and she’d come to Dad.” He points back at the image of the contented cat displayed on the screen of his laptop. “[My daughter’s] cat was sitting by a vase of flowers and suddenly I had it: a cat on a pedestal.” He smiles and points to the menacing red eyes far below, “and Demon Dogs.” I smile at how neatly he’s pulled two parallel story lines to an intersecting point.
I ask Key if he has been influenced by any particular art movement. He says no, but that he especially likes Art Deco and Art Nouveau. “I prefer abstracts. People like the bright colors, but some people have a hard time with it.” He’s found that the business world has a greater appreciation for non-representational art, and he currently works full-time as an artist focused primarily on corporate art. He considers this a mixed blessing.
“Successful artists must spend time promoting their work. When I find myself spending too much time on selling, I say, ‘I need to paint,’” adding that his business coach says he’s shouldn’t describe his work as “painting.” “It’s not wet, and you didn’t slap it on,” Key says, quoting his coach. He adds that some people describe his work as new media or digital art. He’s careful to clarify; however, that though he creates his work on a computer, his work isn’t produced through programming. He says with emphasis, “My work is very deliberate. I must put line and shape where they go, and I must have them right.”
A self-taught artist, Key believes that his design skills came naturally to him, handed down to him from his father who was a good amateur photographer. Raised in California, Key was sixteen when he headed off to the University of California at Berkeley to study paleontology. He soon switched computing. Though not enrolled in any art classes, Key was intrigued by the art students that passed him in the hallways. “All the artists were running around with portfolios. I wondered, if I were one of them, what would be in mine?” Because he’s an introvert, he was certain he wouldn’t want to specialize in portraits. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” he states. But he knew, even then, that he wanted to be able to work in color, and line and shape.
"My work is very deliberate. I must put line and shape where they go, and I must have them right."
In 1996, interest abruptly crystallized into inspiration when he happened upon the cover of a science fiction novel (by an author he was careful not to identify). “I never had my focus until I saw an illustration on the cover of a bad science fiction novel. I loved how the [illustrator] related line to line and shape to shape.” For Key, this marked a turning point in his career as an artist. "I immediately sat down with my copy of Corel Draw (Version 3) and produced 'Not Without Reason,' so titled because my wife asked, ‘What did you do that for?’" Since then, Key’s produced dozens of eye-catching and thought-provoking images that he sells as commercial illustrations, limited-edition art prints, and in a line of greeting cards.
Key says, "... to me, painting – oops, digital art – is a way of encountering the hopes, fears and motivations that drive me in this life; to stop fooling myself over what I am and want; to learn – most importantly – how I fit in with the rest of the human race." He adds, "One day, I want to create a work that expresses an idea so completely, that it will show we’re all one with an irrevocable tie. Seeing it, the veils will drop away and people will stop pushing others aside, stop pursuing the panoply – the outer forms – of life, and instead focus on what is real.”
"I want to create a work that expresses an idea so completely, that it will show we’re all one with an irrevocable tie."
When asked about his background and where he’s from, John-Dan Key rattles off a string of places without taking a breath. “I’ve lived in California, Chicago, and North Dakota.” He speaks so quickly; the locations blur from three words into one. It takes a bit of nudging, but he gradually provides more detail about his life, opening up about his family’s relocation from their home in California to Republic, Washington in 1993. When asked why he took up residence in a small town in Eastern Washington State, he says he became interested in visiting the area when he was living in California and read about Republic’s public fossil beds at Stonerose Interpretive Center.
He explains, “My wife didn’t want to live in California.” He was leaning towards moving to Mexico, because he wanted his children raised in a community where they’d be exposed to a mix of lifestyles and cultures. His wife wanted to move to Washington State. After a lengthy driving tour across Washington, they decided to make their home in the small town of Republic.
“We drove around and stayed a night at the Prospector Inn. The [carved wooden] signs at the Wild Rose, the Gun Shop, and the Prospector Inn caught our eye.” The next day he and his family drove over Wauconda Pass to Tonasket. “Snow was coming down; it was December.” He shrugged, adding, “Silly us – a road trip to Eastern Washington in December.” He and his family wound up staying at a small inn that advertised non-smoking rooms. “The room smelled like folks had been smoking in it for years, so we checked out.” He smiles. “The combination of non-smoky rooms and attractive signs brought us back to Republic.”
Key tells me that he’s preparing for a showing of his latest series of prints at the Gold Mountains Gallery in Republic, Washington. The show features a series of prints that reflect Key’s life-long interest in entomology. The month-long, one-man show is appropriately titled “Bugs. Celebrating our Lives with Insects.”
He gestures towards several handsomely framed, limited-edition digital prints hung on the gallery walls around him. “I’ve always been attracted to bugs,” he says. “Insects work well with my art. They’re so compact. They have scales on their bodies and the lines fit well with my designs.”
He shows me a sampling of prints from the “Bug” series: a honey bee's flight over flowers, the romantic moonlight dance of fireflies, and the delicate wings of a dragonfly juxtaposed against the backdrop of a city skyline. I’m particularly drawn to a humorous illustration titled, "Endangered." Cleverly employing art techniques that simulate photographic depth of field, Key has tightly focused the viewers’ attention on a small pond skimmer and its miraculous, water-balancing act, while the carp circling ominously below is slightly out of focus. The affect is both entertaining and disquieting.
We're in the midst of examining a print of a bumblebee, when Key swings the conversation onto another subject. He begins discussing syrphids: a small black and yellow fly. “A syrphid is a type of fly,” he explains, “and the majority of them that I know of imitate bees in their coloring and camouflage.” He adds, “It’s kind of funny pretending to be what you’re not just to be safe. It’s like boys rolling cigarettes up in their sleeves to look tough.” I smile as I continue to take notes, recognizing how adroitly he’s paired two concepts, and in the process added meaning to both. I ask Key if he thinks syrphids get their bee striping through Darwinian evolution. Just then, we're interrupted by a customer visiting the gallery. We conclude the interview soon after, without returning to the subject of the syrphid. A week later, Key responds to my question in an e-mail:
"I've been thinking about what you asked about syrphids - do they get that way by darwinism? I have to admit that to me, that's a non question. See, I see the Creator as an artist. Whether he/she/it/they chose to create through Darwinism or that new theory, I think they call it 'punctuated equilibrium' or spontaneous creation, it really doesn't matter to me. To humans, it may be important how long it took to create. To me, the artist, it only matters that I do (some people are impressed that it takes me two weeks to create an image, others, only how beautiful it is!). I find that I rather like the idea that the universe is trillions of years old. Not that it has to be so, as if God is all-thumbs or needs approval of the building inspector before they sheet-rock.
"Have you heard the expression, 'A painting is never finished - it simply stops in interesting places'? And you are familiar with the concept that God is outside of time? Could it not be that creation is continual - that God can 'stop' it in his mind at any time & beauty -- the beauty of that perfect, interesting time?
"Getting back to the syrphid, to me, the yellow & black stripes of a syrphid are not ingenious adaptations, but rather a signpost that the creator has a sense of humor!"
Artists are often measured as much by their ability to see the world from different angles, as they are by their skills at drawing. By either measure, Key's artwork is a success. Through his digital artistry he conveys the richness of his imagination and entertains his viewers with thought-provoking perspectives, humorous ironies, and mysterious visions of the world around us. You may view and purchase his art work at Gold Mountains Gallery in Republic, Washington and online at www.artbyjohndan.com.
Contact Information
John-Dan Key
Gold Mountains Gallery
852 South Clark Avenue #2
Republic, WA 99166
509-775-8010
Kauffman Street Studios
603 Kauffman Street
Republic, WA 99166
Fridays & Saturdays; late Spring through late summer.
Acknowledgements
Ferrycounty.com wishes to thank John-Dan Key for providing us with photos of his digital art. Article by Sarah Lawrence, published on June 12, 2005.
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