Destin LaGrone is a self taught artist born and raised in Dallas, Texas. Since 2011 she has been creating works mostly in oil paint and ink, but also works with acrylic, watercolor, prisma color, digital, face paint and photography. She believes there are many different ‘colors of the self’ that can be expressed through experimenting with styles and mediums. Her artistic practice is the ongoing observation of ‘the self’ and the exploration of what it means to exist. Art and life cannot be separated. Some of her main inspirations are contrasting concepts, natural patterns, philosophical insight, and anthropology. Destin has participated in the Cottonwood Arts Festival, Cedars Open Studios, and a handful of other group shows in previous years. She has however maintained a mostly private studio life for the past couple of years, and only recently has she felt more called to share herself with the public. Currently, Destin is seeking representation, with a catalog of mostly unseen work. She has multiple painting and drawing collections, as well as a creative writing book in the works.
Artist Statement
A celebration of life, with a dark under tone.
I believe that each medium, each style, brings about a different color of ‘the self’ thus illustrating a different internal landscape. This artistic practice is the ongoing observation of ‘the self’ and exploration of what it means to exist. Art and life cannot be separated. It is intertwined into the processing of emoting our human experience. Exploration of the internal (mind, body & soul) and the external (organic & material world) provide the greatest inspiration.
Our origins and what makes us human are the grandest celebration and the deepest sorrow.
Across cultures, here is where we find connection.
The first civilizations lived along rivers. Those primal beginnings root us to what it means to be alive as a human being. I celebrate and acknowledge this aliveness in my oil paintings. Characterized by bright colors, expressive characters, and impressionist style markings, the paintings float somewhere in the contemporary realm.
My high contrast ink works display the static, vulnerable, chaotic, intimate, tangled lines and warped shapes channeled from patterns seen in time observing nature.
Absorbed in the minds eye they are stored, scattered, reconstructed through formed associations, and then purged, in a way which channels directly from the subconscious.
The work is human-nature interaction in itself. It is nature discovering herself.
I am interested in the interplay of extremes like chaos and harmony, exaltedness and desolation, duality and wholeness. I work in a polyphonic manner, jumping from piece to piece, separate entities growing as parallels. I create as sporadically as I flow through life, there is no consistency. Yet in that, the work retains a certain authenticity.
Seeking to create work that reeks a unique rawness.
To display the divinity in the chaos.