The Painterly Photographs Of Dean West

“To recreate the scene of the girl on the balcony, that was like seven days of driving to find the one space that felt as close to that memory as possible.”Drawing inspiration from a Hockney-esque, hyper-stylised Hollywood aesthetic, West meticulously recreates his photographs from memory, a lengthy process which can take up to a year per image. “To recreate the scene of the girl on the balcony (‘St. Pete Beach, 2016’), that was like seven days of driving to find the one space that felt as close to that memory as possible,” said West in a recent interview.

Presented alongside the ‘Painted Photographs’ (2015-2020) series is another earlier series West worked on in collaboration with renowned LEGO® artist, Nathan Sawaya. Entitled ‘In Pieces’, the project features a series of typical North American ‘picture postcards’, each containing items created from thousands of blocks of LEGO®, glued together in reflection of the pixel assemblages of the digital age.

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2015-2020
Dean West

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IN PIECES (2012-2015)
Dean West & Nathan Sawaya