Dale Hueppchen (pronounced Hip'-kin) has been an active picturemaker for most of his life.
Painting almost exclusively in oils, Dale enjoys exploring a wide range of subject matter. Relying on varied image sources - sketches from life, photographs, a well-stocked visual memory, and an active imagination - the artist chooses forms and compositions that resonate in his mind. These nascent images may be first worked up in pencil, or drawn directly onto the painting surface with chalk or paint. Once the essential form is established, color is added in layers, and the feel of the piece may undergo marked and unexpected changes in the days, weeks or months that pass before it is given its final, finishing touch.
Dale's painting has deep and diverse roots. As a photograph in his family album shows - the not-yet-three year old artist curled up on the floor intently working on a drawing - he was absorbed in his art from the beginning. At the age of eight he was given his first art lesson by a family friend, the Michigan artist Gordon Krieghoff. That same year Dale entered two paintings in the Wisconsin State fair, winning both first and second prizes in his age group. Later, at Rice University in Houston, he took courses in painting and drawing, and, after graduation, began a period where he focused exclusively on fine art photography.
During this time, Dale set up a small photography school called Your Mind's Eye in Falls Church, Virginia which he ran from 1975 to 1985. His teaching subsidized a personal exploration of photography's artistic potential, as he created a number of discrete portfolios of work together with a few one-of-a-kind artist books. Work from this period is represented in the collections of such major art museums as the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and Houston's Museum of Fine Arts.
The artist's career as a painter began after he moved to midcoast Maine in 1987. After settling in to his new environment, Dale gradually came to the realization that he needed to get back to his roots - he finally decided that, if he was ever to achieve his lifelong ambition to be a painter, he had to devote his full energies to the task. After trying watercolor, acrylics and oil pastel, Dale finally found his natural medium when he began working with oils.
As he taught himself the intricacies of oil painting, Dale began to develop his own approach to realism, his own style. While this style has undergone its natural evolution over time, the viewer can see a continuity from the early efforts to current work. And, too, there are common threads connecting the earlier photographic work to the painting. For all of the pictures Dale has made are grounded in a personal way of seeing, a unique way of interpreting the visible world.
About his work, the artist says:
"My goal in painting is to distill personal moments of understanding and revelation into tactile shape. The picture surface is, for me, an area of open-ended possibility, each painting a drama whose resolution I cannot fully anticipate.
"My hope is that, with each piece, I can invest the picture with enough of my personal skills of seeing, imagining, and painting to give the viewer a space for thought, for sensual pleasure. To me, the true test of art is just this: the ongoing interaction, through time, of the viewer with the painted surface. Art must be seen, again and again, to live."
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