Thanks to the Slocumb Galleries, art enthusiasts were able to see an exhibition of Derek Buckner’s work titled “Paredolia,” as well as hear a lecture.
The Artist’s Statement, simply and tastefully presented below the show’s title and the artist’s name, takes on a more serious tone than the artist portrayed during the lecture. The speech ended on the note of laughter as Buckner showed recent paintings of huge, landscape-like piles of marshmallows.
I’m not sure if the audience was being polite or genuinely found the marshmallows laugh-out-loud-able, though I think it was perhaps a combination of both.
Reese Chamness, a BFA sculpture student, said he found the marshmallow paintings to be “masturbatory” and “didn’t find them funny at all.”
My stance is one of amusement and admiration – painting hundreds of marshmallows is mind-numbingly meticulous – yet at the same time I can sympathize with the point of view that a few students held regarding the paintings.
The paintings in the exhibit itself were from airplane and UFO series, which expressed a sense of the “modern anxiety” and an exploration into “the ideas of safety/danger, fantasy/reality” that Buckner spoke of in his artist statement and during his lecture.
The pastel, dreamlike chalkiness to his color palette emphasized the fantasy and strangeness of the scenes, despite their existence within a modern, almost adult-like objective context. This may result from the obvious focus Buckner directs toward his materials for making the paintings, his subject sources and the process of painting itself.
In the lecture, Buckner mentioned on multiple occasions that he uses almost exclusively gouache and oil paints, edits his own photos on the computer to meet his aesthetic needs and constructs models of his paintings, if necessary.
Rooted in human fears, paranoia and a sense of emptiness, the rawness of these concerns are choreographed into technical refinement during the process of exploration, giving a body of his work the feel of being held at a distance to observe.
This is not necessarily a complaint, only something of note when examining each painting and hearing the artist talk about his work. As people say, “to each his own” and I am far from being the one to say that there are only a few ways to go about making or understanding art. Wyatt Moody, a drawing BFA student, expressed excitement following his critique with Buckner.
Despite the mixed responses of students, professors and other members of the community, it’s always thrilling and professionally useful to have an outsider come in and show us a bit of ourselves as they attempt to share themselves with us.

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