Darren Quinn in his home studio surround by his work. Photo by Charles Crehore
In 1983, everything in Darren Quinn’s life was going right. He was a freshman at the University of Utah on a golf scholarship. He had signed up to play in satellite golf tour that he hoped would lead to a sponsorship and a spot on the Professional Golf Association circuit. He was on track to becoming a professional golfer, something he had dreamed about ever since he took up the sport at Coronado High School.
Coming back from a ski vacation in Colorado he was in a horrific car accident that nearly claimed his life, crushing not only his body, but also his dreams. “Everything had changed forever, far beyond my worst and best possible imagination,” he said in an interview posted on his website. He spent two years healing – physically, mentally and spiritually.
Once healed he started thinking about what he was going to do with the rest of his life. An occupational therapist at a rehabilitation center in Pomona, California gave him the answer by crafting a hinged splint for his right hand; the design allowed him to hold objects. A year later, Darren began to paint, first with a Sharpie marker, later with brushes and acrylics.
Like many emerging artists, Quinn sold his first paintings to friends. In the early 1990s he, along with two partners, opened the Avenue Gallery, located on First Street in Coronado. Despite several shows, the gallery closed. “I was a bit naive about the gallery business,” he now says about the venture. Following the gallery’s closure, Quinn moved to Maui, where he lived until 2010.
Now a California resident and accomplished artist, Darren’s art is currently on display at celebrity chef Giada De Laurentiis’s new restaurant, Giada, inside the Cromwell Hotel in Las Vegas. His work is also on display in her Los Angeles-area home and has been featured her show “Giada at Home” on the Food Network.
At right, Quinn in front of one of his paintings at the Cromwell Hotel Restaurant
He met De Laurentiis through her husband, Todd Thompson. He and Quinn were dorm mates at the University of Utah in the 1980s, and have been close friends ever since.
Being featured on a national television show and at a top Las Vegas restaurant has helped draw attention to Quinn’s work, and he has earned a following that has resulted in a number of commissioned pieces.
His success is not only remarkable because of his physical limitations, but also because of his lack of formal training. Though he’d been painting and drawing ever since he was four years old, he never took an art class until college. Until the accident, Quinn was focused golf, not art. Art was something he enjoyed creating, something he appreciated, but not something he ever expected to make a living doing.
Outside of the lone collecte course, Quinn’s only formal training came from Monte Lewis. Lewis was an alumnus of the famed Arts Students League in New York, a Guggenheim Fellow and former director of the Coronado School of Fine Arts. He had retired, but agreed to take Quinn on as a private student.
Once he had learned the fundamentals of art, Quinn unleashed his own talents and creativity. With his limited formal training, Quinn might be considered an “outsider artist,” a concept first articulated by Jean Dubuffet, who coined the term art brut.
He defined it as work by artists who “derive everything from their own depths.” Because these types of artists are generally not networked into the established art centers or scenes, their talents often go unrecognized or are appreciated only posthumously.
Quinn is on a different path. His talent has been recognized by many, and he has been able to earn a living and remain independent selling is work online and from commissions from a growing number of patrons across the country, and for good reason. His use of vivid colors and strong brush storks call to mind the works of Egon Schiele and Wassily Kandinsky, although with a twist of whimsy and a joie de vivre.
Like many artists today, Quinn uses digital technology in his work. It has greatly expanded his repertory, allowing him to create works that would have been physically impossible before. He can now put large images on a canvas, and then go back in adding texture and color, either by hand or with software. “Photoshop allows me to make large prints that I would otherwise be able to do,” he said.
Quinn lives in the high desert with Kai, a black Labrador service dog, though Quinn jokes that she is more of a “self-service dog, than a service dog.” He is surround by desert landscapes and all types of music. “I always listen to music while I paint,” he said. As a young artist, it was mostly David Bowie and The Clash, though now his choice in music has mellowed some.
While his musical tastes have mellowed, his art has not. It remains as bold and audacious as ever. His paintings are free of external influences — no desert landscapes here, just raw, emotion drawn from the depths of his soul.
To learn more about Darren’s work, visit his website.
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Gloria Tierney
Staff Writer
eCoronado.com
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