Nick Depeder Studio

    Nicholas DePeder's studio space is set up as a "working studio". His artwork is inspired by the abstract thoughts that dreams are made of. In his paintings, he is trying to capture & describe visually that place between the conscious mind & dream world, (or more precisely, where memories exist)...he explains that " in the process I would like to understand how to capture this experience we all know to exist yet can not accurately describe... I want to present an image - or provide what I call Answers to Questions not yet thought of - that reveal fragments of a story, which in turn may trigger a memory from the viewer, and ultimately allow multiple realities to exist via one painting (or in this case, "window" to different moments in time)."
     His journey is about the struggle to understand the unknown. One of his ongoing Dream Series themes is: Unrelated Realities. This series is a combination of figurative works rendered somewhat realistically yet out of their environment and interlaced with simple, flat contour line drawings which represent the freedom of thoughts/ memories and how they can without explanation or understanding "pop" into your head or float across your mind at any given time. One of his goals in this series he says is to not only gain a better understanding of this phenomenon thru his visual interpretations but to ultimately gain a better understanding of himself."
      In his figurative paintings, there are several recurring images, all of which reinforce his works in his dream series. At first glance we notice a figure sitting with a cup of coffee isolated from any recognizable surrounding save for a window and a partial checker board tiled floor. Just as dreams are open for interpretation, so are the works of Nicholas DePeder. The cups, windows and clouds are metaphors for the inner workings of the mind, in that a cup, or "vessel" can collect or contain knowledge/ past experiences. Windows can be "looked at or thru as a means of introspection" and suffice to say, echo the figure's pensive appearance. In a sense, a painting is a "window" to the artist's thoughts at that particular moment in time. The clouds, in some are rendered realistic while in others they resonate the familiar "thought balloons" we have all seen in comics.