Local doctor embraces artistic impulses

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/10/2021 (1695 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

After working as a medical professional for more than 40 years, Dr. Diarmuid (Derry) Decter is looking to branch out with a new art exhibit that aims to showcase his talent as a painter.

Starting on Thursday, a curated selection of Decter’s works will be on full display at the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba under the title “Lost and Otherwise Found.”

Talking to the Sun on Tuesday, the physician-turned-painter said the exhibit will mark his largest artistic showcase to date, with 58 portraits being set up inside AGSM’s Community Gallery.

“It’s one of the first big shows that I’ve had,” he said over the phone. “I’ve done two or three smaller ones, but I’m trying to move out into the art world. So yeah, it’s a big deal.”

During this conversion, Decter described how he has been interested in painting and drawing for decades now, but didn’t start taking it seriously until roughly five years ago.

After developing an interest in art restoration, Decter eventually came into contact with local painter Jan Brancewicz, who eventually encouraged the doctor to start creating works of his own.

“We started doing [projects] together and at a certain point we ran out of pictures to restore, so he said ‘well, I better teach you how to draw,’” Decter recalls with a laugh.

Over the next couple years, Decter worked directly under Brancewicz to develop his own signature technique and style, eventually acquiring a taste for creating oil paintings on paper.

In retrospect, Decter admits this style wasn’t the easiest place to start, even though he did draw inspiration from famous artists like John Constable, Joan Miró and Egon Schiele.

“Oil paintings … when you’re painting them, you pretty much have an endless ability to revise it. If you don’t like a part, you can go back and change it,” he said. “With oil on paper, you don’t really have that flexibility. There’s only a few revisions and then after that the matrix starts breaking down.”

Despite this high level of difficulty, Decter said he never ran short on inspiration.

In fact, all the disorder and isolation brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic actually led to the creation of a lot of the paintings that will be on display in “Lost and Otherwise Found.”

“I think the pandemic informs a lot of the pictures in the sense that we live in very strange and difficult times, and a lot of the portraits are strange and difficult,” he said.

According to a Monday news release from the AGSM, the works selected for this new showcase explore themes like displacement, relations and belonging, with an approach that is equally informed by chaos as it is scholarship.

Curator Lucie Lederhendler praises Decter for managing to cultivate a body of work that is “accidental or playful” while also being “deeply grounded in academic, art historical knowledge and technique.”

“Each piece has its very own personality, but when you see them all together, this enormous number of paintings starts to tell a bigger story,” Lederhendler said in Monday’s news release.

Decter’s “Lost and Otherwise Found” collection is scheduled to be on display at AGSM throughout October, November and most of December, with a public reception scheduled to take place on Dec. 2.

Even after the exhibit closes down on Dec. 25, Decter told the Sun he doesn’t have any intention of halting his creative output, since he has already created hundreds of other paintings throughout the years that he thinks are also worthy of public consumption.

“So I’m hoping that this is the beginning, a stepping stone to exhibiting in bigger venues,” he said. “The art world is a difficult world to move forward in, but we’ll see.”

Decter currently operates out of the Rosser Medical Clinic in downtown Brandon, located only a short walking distance away from the AGSM.

» kdarbyson@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @KyleDarbyson