I have known the lost souls who haunt this world searching for life in all the wrongs places, I was one of them. So many wondrous people loose their purity to exploitation, and hang a price“ tag on their bodies and souls; these are the subjects who populate my works.
Those who stray into self-destruction seek basic needs: love, acceptance, happiness, and find it in dangerous places, as well as those who have found it in their own souls. I introduce the plasticity of those who allow the world to enslave them, and I show the beauty in those who allow themselves to be set free. I try to use my medium to undermine preconceptions, exposing a society that praises wealth, possessions, and its own predetermined standards of beauty, at any cost.
Patrick Deignan “Star27” grew up in a loving home and began creating at a young age. Fearful of the world around him he strayed into addiction. It was an illusion of great freedom, but proved to be a prison that he was locked in for many years. He spent time in Manhattan, San Francisco, and all points in between. Always looking for the next thrill, he soon lost his health, peace of mind, and spirituality. After losing many opportunities as a result, he set aside his paintbrush thinking he would never create again. Sinking deeper and always having a belief that he would not make it past the age of twenty-seven; he stood at the edge of hopelessness. After coming face to face with death on the night he had decided was his last, yet making it through in spite of his best efforts…he rediscovered his dream. He was able to again find the happiness in his art that was lost many years before he set down the paintbrush.
Today he resides on Florida’s West Coast where he creates art about the darkness he has seen, and the light he has found. Using a medium of oil on canvas, Star27’s work focuses on dolls which represent lost youth and purity, as well as plasticity and the fake, to convey dark subjects that he believes are sometimes glamorized. Star27’s works touch on addiction, violence, mass media, consumerism, and society's mold of who is seen as beautiful.
~Lee Joseph
2009
February 19 to March 21, 2009, Art:Raw Gallery, 305 West Broadway #265, New York, NY 10013
2008
La Luz de Jesus, Cream of the Crop, Summer Annual Group Show, 6 Hand-Picked Artists, Aug. 2008, Los Angeles, CA
Darkest Dreams A Lighted Way, Group Show, July 2008, St. Louis, MO
June 15- 17 2008 exhibition at the annual meeting of the College on Problems of Drug Dependence, San Juan, Pueto Rico.
Undercurrent Arts, In the Lives of Dolls, March 2009, Group Exhibition Featuring: Aliza Augustine, Maria de la Vega, Ursula Sokolowska, and Star27
La Luz de Jesus, Group Show, March 2008, Los Angeles, CA
The Hive Gallery, Group Show, March 2008, Los Angeles, CA
Art Whino Group Show/ Artist Residency, February 22, 2008, 717 N. Saint Asaph St, Alexandria, VA, www.artwhino.com
2007
Star Gazing, Group Show, The Arts Center, St. Petersburg FL