Nesto Speaker: Gene Dorgan

Image courtesy of Lesley University

By SNEHA JAISWAL ‘22

Though slightly scattered, Nesto speaker Gene Dorgan’s Wednesday assembly on February 26th provided insight into his creative process and perspective on art. Dorgan, who studied painting at Boston University and liberal arts at the University of Wisconsin Center-Richland, currently teaches several painting and printmaking courses at the College of Art and Design at Lesley University. Dorgan received the Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant in 2000 for painting, and was awarded the Vietnam Arts Medal by the government of Vietnam in 2013. That year, the Vietnam Fine Arts Association exhibited his prints in Hanoi, Vietnam. In her introductory speech, Ms. Adhami also mentioned that Gene Dorgan had taught Mr. Tourney, Milton’s visual arts department chair.

Dorgan started his assembly on Wednesday morning by presenting a stone carved by an archaic human. He asked the audience if the creator was an artist since they stopped to consider the beauty of something. While abrupt, this introduction transitioned in Dorgan’s definition of art. He mentioned that his own art was “not so different from caveman paintings” in this regard, as he believes that not all artwork has some motive or lofty meaning; by creating, artists learn about themselves rather than make an objective observation about the world. He described art as an experience where the creator turns possibilities into a solution while viewers see this solution and consider the possibilities. 

For the second half of his presentation, Dorgan showed the audience several drawings and paintings – his own and others’– and described the significance of each. Despite his unstructured approach, Dorgan’s attention to details gave the audience insight on his experience through art. In particular, he credited Edgar Degas’ Portrait of Giovanna Bellelli for inspiring his charcoal drawings. Dorgan borrows Degas’ soft light and crude lines– comparing his own strokes to the caveman’s– for his portraits, paying special attention to the behavior of shadow on the human face. Dorgan’s fascination with the play of light on a “pad of flesh” stirred laughter in the audience, but Evelyn Cao ‘22 wished more people had noticed “how much skill that takes” or “the gentleness it conveys” to notice these details in an artwork and emulate them. Though his presentation might not have been effective for a general audience, she felt that she could still understand his process. Dorgan combines that inspiration with his own style in portraits like Young Listener, an example of his “Frankensteins.” He prefers to start with a detailed face and then draws the body without a reference. Cao noted that his style of focusing on the face and making up the body showed the face’s importance through a “conservation of detail.” In his other charcoal portraits– many of which are displayed in Nesto– Dorgan also studies how Degas places an eye in the middle of a portrait. This emphasis on the subjects’ faces versus their bodies characterizes both artists’ work. Dorgan offered the audience insight on his own creative process, from shadows to composition, that made his presentation unique.

Throughout the assembly, Dorgan transitioned between several topics; he mentioned his exhibition in Vietnam but only elaborated on how Vietnam Fine Arts Association changed his work’s name from Chinese boy to Vietnamese boy. Similarly, he began a tangent on the detail paid to a hair in a cartoon of Richard Nixon but didn’t fully connect the idea to his presentation. However, its slightly scattered and rambling nature didn’t overshadow his passion or expertise, according to Cao. For members of the audience who learned something new, related to his passion, or felt inspired by his work, Gene Dorgan’s presentation held more depth than its first impression.