Dave Routan-Painter

Dave Routan "The Picture Show, presenting Nebraska artists in the permanent collection of the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, Lincoln, Nebraska."

[Dave Routan] "I like the idea in the portrait of making more than one view of a person. Thinking that perhaps in some sense that's a more complete portrait. So I've done a number where I've had two or three views of the same person on the same page. This is an example of a three view..."
[NARRATOR] "For Dave Routan the human head is the most interesting of subjects. Although he works occasionally from life models many times his inspiration comes from images of other artists. Painter Gilbert Stewart and his portraits of Washington. Film directors like Fritz Lange with his movie, Ministry of Fear."
[Dave Routan] "I'm a film buff. Once even thought I'd like to make films and so I've always taken an interest in them and I like... that film was made about 1940... 1939 or 40 and it has a visual style that I like very much. It's what people nowadays call film noir more or less. It was a spy thriller from a novel by Graham Green, and directed by Fritz Lange who's a great German film director. I do a lot of drawings from old photographs. I like old photographs because there's a certain kind of stern formality about them. And also I think one gets a sense of the passage of time with the old pictures. I'm just kind of fascinated by them. Now one of the reasons that they're stern and formal looking is because they had to sit for a long time to get a long enough exposure because the old film emulsions, you know, they'd take six to ten minutes I suppose and people would... and that gives a lot of rigidity to them. But that has an emotional quality too, I think."
[NARRATOR] "For some people Routen's work appears unfinished. Some figures lack detail. And the gridwork is often revealed."
[Dave Routen] "There isn't any way that you can tell anybody that you can know a painting is done. That's one of the things you always have to decide over and over again throughout a... your career. A painting is done, or a drawing is done, if you get a certain sense of completeness from what you have there. I've worked off and on for years on some paintings. I'll think maybe I've finished a painting a couple of times and then decide afterall it wasn't any good. Then I went back and unfinished it once again and then finished it, and then been satisfied. But that's always an ongoing thing."