A B O U T
The early days
PAINTSMITHink™ -- created to promote and publish the works of Darrel Robert Spenst -- is about embellishment. Embellishment most specifically in decorative painting, art, and literature.
Decorative painting has been a mainstay of PAINTSMITHink for over 25 years, anchoring the boat of this man's imagination in the harbor of material reality. Many a surface in home and business alike have been beautified by his hand in a wide array of color, texture and design, whether it be wood graining, marbleizing, plastering, colorwashing or glazing.
Fine art has been a logical step in the use of materials (raw pigments, marble dust, glazes and so on) and surfaces (canvas, panel). But that alone is not enough to produce a valued cultural artifact. There must be a theory, a story, a strategy, an exploration, a connection to the ongoing stream of history. In this case, it is played at -- in the highest sense -- by "producing" the art work of a fictional character, Atom Johnson, and the world of his imagination as it applies to our earth. These works are “scapes” of a kind - essences of things unseen -- ATOMscapes™. And these in turn are woven back into the text of his fictional world.
Literature then is the medium which stitches this all together. It is a visual medium. Words are made by spelling, and spelling is magic. Books are narrative strategies -- spells! -- by which we begin to comprehend the mystery of our world (or at least savor it further). Darrel Robert Spenst uses words as he does pigments, washing and layering them over the blank page to discover, in fact, what they -- and he -- may be about.
Decorative painting has been a mainstay of PAINTSMITHink for over 25 years, anchoring the boat of this man's imagination in the harbor of material reality. Many a surface in home and business alike have been beautified by his hand in a wide array of color, texture and design, whether it be wood graining, marbleizing, plastering, colorwashing or glazing.
Fine art has been a logical step in the use of materials (raw pigments, marble dust, glazes and so on) and surfaces (canvas, panel). But that alone is not enough to produce a valued cultural artifact. There must be a theory, a story, a strategy, an exploration, a connection to the ongoing stream of history. In this case, it is played at -- in the highest sense -- by "producing" the art work of a fictional character, Atom Johnson, and the world of his imagination as it applies to our earth. These works are “scapes” of a kind - essences of things unseen -- ATOMscapes™. And these in turn are woven back into the text of his fictional world.
Literature then is the medium which stitches this all together. It is a visual medium. Words are made by spelling, and spelling is magic. Books are narrative strategies -- spells! -- by which we begin to comprehend the mystery of our world (or at least savor it further). Darrel Robert Spenst uses words as he does pigments, washing and layering them over the blank page to discover, in fact, what they -- and he -- may be about.