Dave Rogers, Neighbor

Dave Rogers is a 14 year veteran of the army who served in The Gulf War, Bosnia, as a First Responder at the World Trade Center on 9-11 and Homeland Security missions for NY State. Rogers, a New York based Neo-POP and Neo Surrealist painter, installation and sculpture artist and independent curator, who has shown his work nationally and internationally.

His Neo-Surrealism paintings and sculptures are a series done to reflect his time in Iraq, Bosnia, and as a First Responder at the World Trade Center. Like most of my art, my paintings are influenced from my time in the army and my travels around the world. They are a reflection of the void inside of us, that empty feeling we have at the end of the day, that some how we are not yet complete or done. A combination of impressionism and surrealism they are strongly inspired by the great master artists I have studied and come to admire for their expressions of the world around us, and their exploration of even the most common of things in life. It is for this reason that I have come to believe that “Even ordinary life can be immortalized in art” and have explored these relationships between the known and unknown aspects of life.

His Neo-POP works are a statement on the influence of POP culture on the world, using icons and images from eastern traditional cultures and combining them with western POP logos and icons that have become common symbols throughout these cultures, in many cases causing them to lose a sense of their own cultures and beliefs. Rogers work is reflective of the downfall of the art world today, consumed by mass production and controlled by an over exaggerated art market. “We are so focused on having what everyone else has, being driven by the market, that we tend to ignore the wonders of the world around us.”

Rogers belongs to The Guild of American paper cutters, the Chinese Art and Oil Painting Associations, The Huntington and Patchogue Arts Councils, and Studio Montclair. His work has been featured in Long Island, Chinese, Korean and Japanese newspapers and magazines as well as on Fios1 Long Island and Guangdong Television in China. Rogers spent seven years as a professor of art and visiting lecturer in art and design through China before returning to New York. He is currently an instructor at 2 different art organizations, an art advisor and lecturer for emerging artists. Rogers has won awards for his work with the Disabled Peoples Union of China, and the Art Association of Jiangmen, China and the Chinese Government, and from several art organizations on Long Island. He is also the winner of the O’Malley Grant in Fine Art from Long Island University. He received his BA in Visual Arts with Honors from SUNY Old Westbury, and an MFA in Sculpture from Long Island University.