Derek Buckner

Derek Buckner is a Brooklyn-based artist who draws his inspiration from the beauty within the seemingly banal settings of suburban houses and intersecting freeways. These scenes are not meant to depict particular areas of the United States but archetypal representations of American suburban sprawl. It is not only the artist’s expressive, elemental brushwork that depicts vital images of the contemporary American landscape, but also his choice of subjects, which emphasize the disquiet of suburban life. Buckner states, “.... I am attracted to American productivity-- its fecundity and its excess in the twenty-first century. It is also by seeing beyond our preconceived notions of place that I find splendor—whether it be tract housing glowing in the evening sun or the intertwining of concrete freeways in the heat of the day.”

Buckner uses video imagery--taken from airplanes and moving cars-- as source material for his paintings. After repeated viewing of these videos, the images begin to detach from any specific time or place, and Buckner works from selected looped segments, endeavoring to capture a particularly modern anxiety.

It is the paintings’ vibrant palate and luminosity that give Buckner’s subject matter a reverential weight. Buildings and garages appear not only as elements of the suburban environment but also as blocks of color and light. The artist states, “There is a natural abstraction that occurs in our immediate surroundings. In my work I hope to exemplify the delicate balance between the real and the abstract and to expose not only the terrifying and heroic nature of our suburban sprawl, but also its often haunting and surprisingly quiet beauty.

When depicting our country aesthetically, there often seems to be a sentimental impulse to edit the highways and the suburbs and to seek out either a more nostalgic and pastoral vision of America or a purely urban one. By doing this we not only deny our increasingly transitional reality, but we deny an opportunity to find its beauty. It is by focusing on the freeway systems and their outlying planned communities that I continue to search for an authentic American landscape and to investigate this sprawl that defines and redefines our lives.

Derek Buckner grew up in Brooklyn, New York. He went on to study at Vassar College and received his B.F.A. from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has exhibited in New York, Chicago, Italy, Mexico, East Hampton, and Santa Fe. His work is in numerous private and corporate collections in this country and abroad. His most recent show at the George Billis Gallery in New York was reviewed favorably in the New Yorker, The New York Sun as well as other publications. He has also received reviews in the New York Times and the LA Times and was recently selected by Charlotta Kotik of the Brooklyn Museum for a juried exhibition of young painters.

2006
George Billis Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

2005
George Billis Gallery, New York, NY
George Billis Gallery, Group Show, Los Angeles, CA
Pamela Williams Gallery, Amagansett, NY
Carol Craven Gallery, Martha's Vineyard, MA

2004
Viridian Gallery, Brooklyn Museum Curator Charlotta Kotik, Juried show, NY
Carol Craven Gallery, Martha's Vineyard MA
Lizan Tops Gallery, East Hampton, NY

2003
Gallery Henoch, New York, NY
Lizan Tops Gallery, East Hampton, NY
Laurel Tracey Gallery, Red Bank, NJ
Carol Craven Gallery, Martha's Vineyard, MA
McGrath Galleries, New York, NY

2002
Lizan Tops Gallery, East Hampton, NY
Madelyn Jordan Fine Art, Scarsdale, NY
Carol Craven Gallery, Martha's Vineyard, MA
Laurel Tracey Gallery, Red Bank, NJ

2001
Lizan Tops Gallery, East Hampton, NY,
Carol Craven Gallery, Martha's Vineyard MA

2000
Lizan Tops Gallery, East Hampton, NY
Carol Craven Gallery, Martha's Vineyard MA, Group Show
Lizan Tops Gallery, East Hampton, NY

1999
The Munson Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
Catherine Dail Fine Art, New York

1998
Catherine Dail Fine Art, New York
Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, Massachusetts
Galleria de Todos Santos, Todos Santos, Mexico

1997
Catherine Dail Fine Art, New York
Jack Meier Gallery, Houston, Texas, Group Show
Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, Massachusetts

1996
Lyons Weir Gallery, Chicago, Illinois