Wooded Glen #5 Painting

Artist Bio Donald W. VanAuken Originally from Michigan, Donald W. VanAuken’s most current work deals with location and one’s place within an environment. Having recently purchased a 1915 farmhouse; the artist and his wife have begun to explore this concept of “location” and it’s relationship to how and what one creates. Artifacts from the past such as, found photographs and previous owners random junk, as well as encounters with native wildlife have spun off into a narrative of this environment. Animals and relics of the past are often used as an allegorical means to describe situations, quandaries and everyday experiences that can describe a place. As an art educator VanAuken has served in secondary education, Museum interpretation, as a professor of art and new media and as a Teaching Associate with the School of Art at Ohio University where he received his M.F.A. in Painting, in 2007. He is currently the newest faculty member of the Visual Arts Department at Olivet College beginning in the fall of 2015.