Dave Urena
Photo Painitings
Artist Statement
“I’ve always been in love with the camera. I admire the way it captures what it sees in an instant — and in such detail. And it calls to me.
Throughout my childhood fantasies of making pictures with a Kodak Instamatic® camera and a desire to document my travels, I have searched for a camera that shows me what I see, what I sense.
But a camera can only show you what it sees.
When I discovered that my eyes are not cameras and they don’t see as a camera does, I started experimenting with taking pictures in my quest to find a way to show the world as I see it. These photopaintings are the result of experiments as I dance with my camera to record the world and my place in it.
Sometimes I lead; sometimes I follow. These images show the shapes of those dances.”
Artist Bio
Dave Urena was born in Bristol, Virginia, and grew up with his parents and three brothers as they moved around the United States and to Portugal, the Philippines, and Brazil in the 1960s and ’70s. Dave returned to the United States to begin his life in North Carolina at UNC–CH where he earned his BA in Education and spent a year teaching in Havelock, NC. He then completed his MA in Visual Design at the School of Design at NCSU in Raleigh, and enjoyed a successful career in graphic design and teaching while expanding his interests in education, languages, and photography. While teaching English privately and in the community college system, he completed his MEd (TESOL) at UNCG. Dave currently lives in Winston-Salem where he continues as a photographer, designer, and language enthusiast.
