Darren Engleman

Find out more about me, my process and my vision at

“Why do I paint?”
“Why am I compelled to do this work?”
“What am I wanting to say in these paintings?”
"What questions need to be asked?"
As a self-taught artist, these questions are constant companions in my creative process.
My work explores the creative tension in representional paintings of familiar subjects, such as flowers or animals, that evolve into textural, geometric and symbol rich abstractions. This is what feeds my creative hunger and brings me back to my easel day after day. The poet Mary Oliver describes better than I can the compelling idea that draws me into each painting: “and how could anyone believe that anything in this world is only what it appears to be".
Several characteristics that emerge regularly in my paintings point to my important questions and values.
●Layering translucent and semi-opaque acrylic weaves a geometric mosaic of rippling concentric circles, constellations of square windows that partially reveal past layers, abundant repetitive patterns and a web of intersecting lines visually sewing together the composition. This all suggests the vast, incomprehensible set of connections behind everything we experience, as John Muir said, ...

I am a self taught artist. My personal art education began as a child, when I would sneak into my mother's closet to look through her collection of paintings, sketches and incomplete works. She had been a prolific painter prior to the arrival of my brother and myself, and did not paint again until many years later. Her conflicted desire to resume painting was influential in my interest in creating art and in my eventual suppressing of that desire for years. I had a voracious appetite for drawing and illustration, which evolved into an interest in architecture and a brief flirtation with watercolors before I abruptly abandoned my creative pursuits to attend an evangelical Christian college, Oral Roberts University, where I received a degree in Accounting with a minor in Theology in 1990. Several years later, after working in accounting and then retail management and interior design,I began painting and drawing again. Some artists who have particularly influenced and inspired the development of my artistic style have included Georgia O'Keeffe, Chuck Close, Ed Mell, Maynard Dixon, Marsden Hartley, Charles Demuth and countless others.

2011 Palm Springs Art and Wine Festival. Group exhibition in Palm Springs CA
2011 Featured in the publication: "100 Artists of the Male Figure: A Contemporary Anthology of Painting, Drawing and Sculpture".
2007 Solo exhibition ARUP gallery, Salt Lake City, UT