About Duke Windsor

Discovery

Duke Windsor was born in 1960 and hails from Texarkana, Texas. After high school, Windsor served in the U.S. Marine Corps as a combat illustrator, photographer, radio operator, and drill instructor. Upon leaving the service Windsor pursued work as a freelance illustrator. Because of his love of music Windsor eventually auditioned and enrolled at San Diego State University and for a time studied classical voice, later performing professionally with the San Diego Opera Chorus. Windsor also holds the rank of 4th Dan Black Belt in Kempo Karate.

Windsor opened his first art studio in San Diego’s Historic Gaslamp Quarter in 1994. Since then he has developed his art throughout a wide range of subjects. He has produced a variety of portrait commissions and military historical pieces in various media including pastels, oils, acrylic, watercolors and lino-cut block prints.

Windsor’s popular Urban-scapes "Alleys of North Park Series" started in 1999 has been exhibited and has received numerous awards from juried exhibitions. They have been included in many group shows and corporate venues in Southern California. His works are held in many private collections throughout the U.S. and Europe. Windsor has been developing his art even further through experimenting with new, groundbreaking non-representational works and methods. Adding to his continued growth, Windsor is still embarking on new works and entering new territories with experimentation in printmaking, sculpture and works on paper.

Today Windsor’s art studio is located in the community of Mt Helix. Windsor is currently seeking new commissions, exhibitions, and seeks gallery representation.

RADIANCE

GOLD is the color of extravagance, wealth, riches, and excess, and shares several of the same attributes of the color yellow. The color gold is a warm color that can be either bright and cheerful or somber and traditional. Its cousins, the color yellow and the color brown, are also associated with illumination, love, compassion, courage, passion, magic, and wisdom. In Art, the Golden Mean or Golden Ratio is the theory that all of the natural world has a perfect symmetry by divine design.

Gold is attributed to the spiritual reverence held of ancient gods in worship. The Golden Rule in the Old Testament refers to the high standard of treating everyone equally. Gold is a symbol of divinity and is mentioned throughout the Bible. Pagan idols were often made from gold, and the Ark of the Covenant was overlaid with gold. The gift of gold to the Christ child was symbolic of his divinity – God in the flesh.

Many art masters have influenced me. In 1999, I began working for the San Diego Museum of Art as a gallery preparator. While there, I was exposed to original works by Goya, Rembrandt, Eastman Johnson, Eisenstadt, Moran, Monet, and De Kooning, and I had the opportunity to experience the drawings and sculptures of Degas.

My paintings express the wonder and power of light, and I’ve always been drawn to the golden sunlight of Southern California. This professional artistic journey began in 1994. As I cut through alleys on my way to martial arts practice, I noticed how the sunset glowed through the buildings. The golden shafts of light in contrast to the vibrant blues of the shadows greatly influenced my work. I found new inspiration from the radiance of the sun.

The Golden Skies series came about after several years of experimenting with ways to express this light in my urban/rural cityscapes in a fresh and meaningful way. This experimentation came to fruition when I was inspired to utilize gold leaf after viewing the works of Gustav Klimt. Later, while visiting the Timken Museum in Balboa Park, I viewed the collection of Russian Icons on wood panels. The reverence and visceral experience I felt from the luminance of these traditional Icon works further inspired me. In the art world, gold leaf techniques are often considered as merely decorative art. My goal is to advance gold leaf as a contemporary medium.

On view in this exhibit are many contemporary cityscapes as well as still life. The illumination in these works, seen from various angles, will give the viewer a unique and new perspective on the piece. The shift in light will also change the dynamics of the works, depending on the ambient light source and the angle in which the artwork is viewed. When applying gold leaf, I found that the medium added a spiritual quality to the work, as well as a radiance, which I hope the viewer will also experience.

Duke Windsor

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