Grey Bird Drawing

I have all ways been interested in the rich and complex aesthetic that paints our natural world. Within my own practice, I often select subjects for their fastidious natural clothing. Assembling them one scale, feather, or winkle at a time, my intention is to meticulously give these renderings life through a tediously physical process of mark marking. My goal to build a life on the page ultimately becomes only an illusion of life. Each attempt is an illustrated relic of a knowingly doomed endeavor. This line of reasoning informs my decision to use minimal materials and monochromatic pallets within my artworks. This technique instills a distance, which instantly highlights the illusion created by rich detailed renderings. Through this subtle duality I hope to evoke the fleeting nature of a dream, one that exhibits a complex beauty and fading connection. BIO: Dietrich Kleffel was born on the California coast, and was raised in a small beach town in the Monterey bay. He was heavily influenced by the redwood forests of the Santa Cruz mountains and the dramatic cliffs of the northern California coastline. The organic aesthetic of costal tides pools and the rich greenery of the forest fueled his imagination for surreal and detailed worlds. Dietrich’s mother and father, artists themselves, encouraged his young artistic pursuits. Their combined disciplines of writing and visual arts impacted Dietrich’s artistic interest and cemented his practice of writing and illustration. Dietrich attended California College of the Arts in Oakland, CA on a partial scholarship. The rich and complex culture of the many different cities in the San Francisco bay area continued to inform Dietrich’s artistic expression of detailed and surreal realities. He ventured away from his most common materials of pencil and paper to new disciplines such as sculpture, installation and video art. The addition of these new materials remained a corner stone of his practice. After graduating from CCA, Dietrich pursued writing and illustration. Through dedicated study and illustrative efforts, he created several narrative works that exemplified his talent for world building: lavish faux-scientific studies based on imagined animals and histories. This body of work ultimately created the path to his contemporary practices.