This particular painting took a while from start to completion just because I’ve been so busy playing keyboards in 4 bands, running my creative business doing web development, design, illustration, animation and video production.
Since this is supposed to be inspired by Roger Dean, the man behind almost every YES album cover and gatefold artwork, I just juxtaposed some of my favorite ideas from his artwork, used them as inspiration and composited them together into a new scene.
The final piece is painted in watercolor dyes, acrylics, day glow acrylics with a little pen and ink and prismacolor detailing.
Roger Dean has been such an artistic and creative inspiration to me most of my life. I discovered his artwork in 1989 when I first started getting into YES with the new album at the time Anderson Bruford Wakeman and Howe that had just been released. I loved the cover artwork for the album. It was alien and otherworldly yet full of familiar nature images. I didn’t understand the significance of his influence on my artwork at the time.
One of the coolest things that happened to me regarding Roger Dean was when I was trying find a signed lithograph print that was out of production. It was one from the progeny paintings series entitled “Parrot Island”, which were produced around 2015.
When I first found out about it, I LOVED everything about it. It definitely had that “Avatar” vibe about it, which I love. The colors are so vibrant, the foliage is soft and lush and it is wonderful otherworldly landscape, with the unique “floating islands” theme that he innovated many years ago and instantly makes his artwork identifiable.
But, the conundrum was that you couldn’t get them anywhere and they weren’t for sale. So, I reached out to Amanda Dean, his daughter, who is in charge of his website. I explained what I was trying to find and she said she would ask him personally and then let me know.
Sometime later that week, I received an email from Amanda and she said that Roger had ONE single print left and it was in his office! She said he would sign it for me and all that I had to do was pay for shipping and it would be mailed out to me from the UK. I couldn’t believe it. Such a special gift from a creative inspiration of mine coming directly from HIM.
I can never thank both of them for being such helpful and kind people.
