Fidencio Durán: Painting the Known World
This fall, Fidencio Durán's 20 years of painting have earned him a midcareer retrospective at Mexic-Arte Museum
By Patti Hadad, Fri., Oct. 21, 2005
The dream of being a full-time artist was always important to Fidencio Durán. When the 44-year-old Austin artist was still a student in the art department at UT-Austin, it's what led him to study with Peter Saul. "I purposely sought him out because I heard he lived as an artist," says Durán.
After graduating from UT in 1984, Durán made good on his dream. He has spotted the map with his murals and made a name for himself as a visiting artist in Texas schools as part of the Texas Commission on the Arts' Arts and Education Program. In fact, TCA Executive Director Ric Hernández at one time called Durán the most sought-after artist in Texas. This fall, his efforts have earned him a midcareer retrospective at Mexic-Arte Museum. "Painted Memory" consists of 30 prismatic paintings spanning more than two decades in the artist's life.
The Runners, which depicts a couple running against an orange sky, the woman's body thinly veiled and arched forward, is an early effort, reflecting the advice of painting professor Saul to focus on one subject. He settled on the world he knew. "My focus has always been on having original works, having a consistent body of work that's autobiographical with images of people and personal events that I felt were important," he says.
You can see it in The Proposal, where women wear vintage floral dresses and have round faces with touches of Mestizo, expressive as though captured in midsentence. And it's certainly evident in his best-known work, The Visit, the nine-panel mural at Austin-Bergstrom Airport, with its images of a family divertiéndose de la vida that have greeted thousands of enthusiasts and travelers.
With the TCA, Durán is able to work in the same program that gave him his start in high school (with Hernández as the visiting artist who encouraged him) and encourage another generation of students to discover his dream of making art.
"I like to give them the opportunity to explore materials and present the art of painting as an endeavor that can be a lot of fun with discipline and focus. The program establishes a connection between artist and audience. That way everybody values art. Artists will be able to keep doing it. It's the ideal, really."
"Fidencio Durán: Painted Memory" is on display through Nov. 6 at Mexic-Arte Museum, 419 Congress. For more information, call 480-9373 or visit www.mexic-artemuseum.org.
