"THERE ARE THINGS YOU CAN SEE IN REFLECTION THAT YOU CAN’T SEE FROM DIRECT OBSERVATION."
Dever's travels and career trajectory — which took him from Los Angeles to New York City, where he earned his Master of Arts degree in painting at NYU in 1988, and eventually to Southampton, New York — have been the predominant influence on his visions of nature. His paintings do not simply replicate nature but express his personal experience of it, akin to Jackson Pollock’s approach.
Dever’s studio in Southampton, set in a garden he designed, is reminiscent of Claude Monet’s garden in Giverny, France, which inspired Monet’s late abstract works. Dever’s use of raw linen surfaces and techniques like grattage — in which paint is scraped across canvas to reveal the imprints of the objects placed beneath — and decalcomania — in which paint is pressed from one surface onto another — reflect his absorption of Abstract Expressionist influences, particularly from Milton Resnick and Max Ernst.
The flowers in Dever’s paintings range from exotic subtropicals to local favorites, referencing his memories of Los Angeles and his life on Long Island. His recent artist residencies with the Parrish Art Museum and the Warhol Foundation/Nature Conservancy, which both took place in the Hamptons, have further deepened his connection to the East Coast landscape. The work he produced for the Warhol Foundation residency was painted in a 15-acre preserved oceanfront in Montauk, New York's easternmost tip. The works created for Dever's latest show, To Look at Things in Bloom, were inspired by his Californian orgins and present today's Eastern Long Island.The title takes inspiration from by a line from A. E. Housman, a reminder from Dever that the modernist poets and painters still have much to teach us.
