Marc VanDermeer

Born
1953
Nationality
American
Country
United States
City
Greenwich

Marc is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist. The only son of the late painter and sculptor Carol Vandermeir Levy, Marc holds a BFA in film from the Philadelphia College of Art, now known as UArts. 

Marc has been the recipient of numerous awards throughout his forty-year career, including first place in competitions hosted by Brooklyn’s Art Room, the Greenwich Art Society, the Northeast Art Center, and the American Society of Media Photographers, as well as being recognized by Silvermine Arts Center, Art of the Northeast, and Faber Birren Color Annuals. His work has been displayed at over a hundred venues and shows, including LACDA Los Angeles Digital Show, West Hartford Art Leagues Land Sea & Air Show, Loosen Art Rome Photo Show, and this year at Art Basel 2022 

Marc works in both digital and analog formats. His unique photographic work uses collage and surrealism to evoke atmosphere and mood. He is best known for his multidimensional layered collages, which draw inspiration from nature, light, and color. Marc works from his home studio in southern Connecticut.

Artificial Light I, is part of a series titled Artificial Light which explores the relationships between positive and negative space. The image is 16x20 with a white 2-3 inch border, printed on Hahnemuhle exhibition fiber paper.
Occupation
Digital Artist
Interests
art
photoshop
photography
mixed media
collage
Biography

Art has been a part of Marc's DNA since birth. His mother, a New York-based artist, sculptor, and teacher, continually exposed him to the world of galleries and museums, between their home in SoHo and summers spent in Provincetown, MA. He began practicing early, attending high schools specializing in art and summer workshops in Provincetown, and studying art history in Florence, Italy. In 1971 he enrolled at The Philadelphia College of Art, initially as a painter but ultimately graduating with a BFA Film in 1976. He studied under photographer Ray K. Metzker, whose “composites” — large-scale assemblages of printed film strips — have remained a major influence throughout his career.

Upon graduating, Marc worked as a location scout and assistant cameraman on commercials and industrial shorts. He flourished in this field, rising within a few years to become a renowned director's rep and executive producer, representing award-winning photographers, production companies, and feature film directors for TV ad campaigns. In 1986, Marc founded CAM, an international production company specializing in music videos, shorts, and TV commercials. Throughout this professional period painting and photography remained a strong passion for him, and he continued to practice and attend night classes to refine his craft.

In 2001, Marc was diagnosed with stage 3 multiple myeloma. His prognosis was poor. He stepped back from his company and enrolled in an aggressive treatment protocol out of UAMS in Little Rock, AR. While undergoing this intensive treatment, Marc renewed his devotion to his artistic work. He taught himself Photoshop and began taking digital photographs. Between lengthy hospital visits and rounds of chemotherapy he carried a digital camera everywhere he went, capturing a copious amount of landscape and urban images. This daily practice and immersion in digital media has formed the basis for his more recent work. His signature piece from this period, a large multi-layered photo collage titled "Metropolis" (2003), is the best example of Marc’s digital-collage style. The 40" x 72" piece comprises over fifty layers of images merged with hand-painted elements.

In 2003, Marc was invited to his first group show, at the Agora Gallery in Chelsea. He has been included in multiple juried award shows both nationally and internationally, including Silvermine, Art in the Northeast, The Spectrum Show, and the Faber Birren National Color Award Show.

For Marc, art has always been about process and catharsis. He is drawn to the tension between the organic and spontaneous generation of an image, and the meticulous, exploratory practice of augmentation as a form of metamorphosis and rebirth. He appreciates the ubiquity and accessibility of digital media, which he sees as both humbling and as a constant challenge, to tease the meaning out of images, layering them together to create something that wasn’t there before, making them into something more than themselves.

Education
U’Arts
Philadelphia College of Art
Parsons school of Design
Exhibitions
2022
AQUA/22
Miami Art Week & Art Basel
Group
2022
Images
Images Gallery
Solo
2021
ASMP Connecticut 2021 Photo Annual
ASMP annual
Group
2023
Photography Annual
Loft Artist Association Annual Photography Juried Show July 2023
Group
2023
Searchlights M3TAVERSE-3 A/R Crypto Voxels Show March 2023
Crypto Voxels
Group
2023
Summer cv.
CV
Testimonial
Quote
From Art Review
“Marc VanDermeer's images play with codes and
perception. He works within a heavily layered
collage style that combines photography, paint-
ing, and digital work. The images, which may
be layered with all types of media and eventual-
ly scanned and printed, are incredibly visually
rich. "Metropolis" is layered thickly with
images. This collage of industrial material,
structure and letterform creates a superbly plas-
tic space. The great many impressions and
marks are difficult to assimilate at once. In the
process of seeing the work, one must decipher
the parts and the whole - a challenging but
rewarding task. With no boundaries,
VanDermeer's work is open and inclusive. It is
closely aligned with the industrial material and
visual fabric of modern society. His work is a
fragmented sensory experience.
"It evolves
organically with no destination in mind."
VanDermeer expresses. It is this open-ended
process that makes VanDermeer's works a con-
stant surprise and visual puzzle.”
“I was happy to see your new digital piece
Abstraction in C Plus posted recently to the site.
The image has a luminous clarity, and the overlapping of forms suggests the painterly glazing of semi-transparent layers of color. I enjoy the compositional placement of higher chroma hues in the spatial foreground. The stacking suggests optical mixing that results in lower chroma colors in the background. I'm also intrigued by the relationship between geometric and organic shapes, which suggest a similar dissolution of primary forms. The circle with the square, joined by various straight and curvilinear interruptions, provides a vaguely pleasing dissonance. Thank you for including the printed dimensions of the work. It helps to imagine how viewers might experience the piece as a visual object beyond the digital computer screen.
I'm equally attracted to the compositionally energetic Easter Egg. The saturated bits pulsate in active movement within a confined shape, suggesting a charged entity. Your accompanying narrative confirmed this association! But the abstraction also lends it's to other possibilities, imagining organic and inorganic matter serving as conduits. Thank you for sharing these wonderful new works.
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Favorite Quote
"We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing."

George Bernard Shaw