Trent Reynolds
I am an artist living with my family in Los Angeles. I run a small business called Artist Laser out of my Santa Monica studio doing custom fabrication and consulting. Dabbleon is my online self portrait where I share all the things I am working on.
Teaching
I have taught art at Santa Monica College, SMC Emeritus College, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, LACHSA, Milken, Graphaids, my studio, and more. I primarily teach drawing, painting, mixed media, and design fundamentals.
Teaching and learning creativity is a collaborative process and I find great satisfaction working with and learning from students.
Fundamentals of Visual Design
A course about the fundamental building blocks of visual language. I have heard many people say over the years that there are no rules in art. There are only rules if we decide there are and we need them on some level to communicate. This course is my attempt at defining the rules, the elements and principles, we use to communicate with each other and express ourselves.
Recent work
Podcasts
The following two series of paintings I consider milestones in my personal development. They are perhaps more biographical illustration than art, so I include them here on the about page.
The Paintings I Don’t Want To Make
Toward the end of my second year as a grad student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago I hit a low point. I had spent the previous year not happy with anything I had made and not feeling confident I knew what I wanted to do.
I was talking with a friend in my studio one day and I told him my greatest frustration was that I didn’t know what I wanted to paint but I knew exactly what I did not want to paint. Thankfully he was there to suggest the way forward might be to make the paintings I didn’t want to make.
I made a list of all the paintings I didn’t want to make. They were mostly cliché subjects like sunsets and waterfalls. Some of the things on the list were subjects I might enjoy painting but I felt weren’t my stories to tell. Once I had a long list I came up with compositions that combined as many of the things on the list as I felt I could.
When I was done I ended up liking the paintings quite a bit, and the process brought much needed insight that helped me see the way forward.
Time and Family
This series of paintings is from my BFA thesis exhibition. They are a combination of photography and painting using a process I developed with some grant money.
I would apply a photosensitive liquid to a large canvas, let it dry in the darkroom, and then expose the surface using a 35mm negative and enlarger. The enlarger was tipped on its side so I could get the canvas far enough away to make the projection as large as the canvas.
After the surface had been exposed I applied photo development chemicals with sponges to develop the photograph. I then worked into the photograph with encaustic (wax) and paint. This series felt like my first departure from what I was being taught as an art student. I discovered the thrill of finding my own path.