Meet Dave Vescio | International Award-winning Abstract Photographer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Dave Vescio and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Dave, how does your business help the community?
The thing I love about fine-art photography is that we photographers get to present to the world the unknowns of our planet and of the universe. We get to awaken the world to the true wonders of life, death, decay, rebirth, and the world that exists beyond us all: the spiritual world. We are like modern-day shamans; eagerly ready to explore the unknowns and bring back the gifts (the elixirs) of the expanse universe to our local communities & to the world. To show humans that there is a grand expanse of wonderful experiences beyond our four walls that we constantly force ourselves & confine ourselves to live in (aka our homes, our workstations, and our towns & cities).

So, I’ve discovered that on our planet there is another world, a spiritual world, a world full of constant rebirth that is ready to be discovered, if you’re willing to look for it that is. But you must be willing to explore the yuckiness that surrounds us all and within that disgusted, ugliness is a true strength, a haunted beauty, and the most beautiful colors that you will ever see, if you’re willing to do it with a macro/closeup camera lens that is. Because you got to get extremely close to the death & decay of any found object and you’ll truly see the beauty that exists within it all, which is a spiritual rebirth, a transformation of another worldly being or of the supernatural.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
On my 50th birthday, I picked up a camera to invent a new style of abstract/fine-art photography that deals with that fine line between the life & death of objects, then death & decay, and now, a rebirth (aka spirits or other worldly beings like the supernatural). I specialize in macro/close-up photography of urban decay.

Since 2021, I have won sixteen international awards from the Top 7 photography contests in the world that have an abstract or an Americana category, and I have sold 102 wall art pieces to 65 private art collectors who either live in North America, Europe, Asia, or Australia.

My mission statement with abstract/fine-art photography is to reveal to the world that even in death & decay, there is still beauty, as well as a new source of energy/life that wants to be born into this world, just in another way. We just need to look at it from a different light, a different perspective. Life truly never ends! It just gets reborn into this world again & again as another essence, another beautiful being. Just like how a caterpillar gruesomely transforms into a butterfly!

I also give my limited-edition abstract/fine-art photographs another kind of *rebirth*, by printing them on materials close to what they were originally born on. My macro/close-up photographs of metal decay are printed on archival metal; my macro/close-up photographs of decaying plastic are printed on archival acrylic (which is a plastic); to etc. It is my way of making sure my abstract/fine-art photographs become more life-like than ever before; making them seem like the actual objects that I photographed in the first place.

As for it being easy? Yes and no. I spent most of my adult life studying and being a professional artist of some sort. Since 1997, I have been a professional artist in culinary arts, pastry arts, TV photojournalism, film & TV acting, and now contemporary art. So, yes, it came easy to switch from acting to contemporary art, But, no, because I spent 26 years of my life studying the best of the best in all these different artistic fields and applying everything I have been taught. I have most definitely put in my 10,000+ hours of work, that’s for sure.

As for how I lasted this long and overcame all the challenges along the way. Well, I would boil it down to this and this alone: I LOVE creating art and I LOVE selling art, and I always have. One of my favorite quotes is by Charles Bukowski: “Find what you love and let it kill you.” So, I only do what I love to do, and I ignore the rest.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I’m more into doing outdoor and artistic things, so, I would show them the Hollywood Sign, Griffith Observatory, Hollywood Walk of Fame, TCL Chinese Theatre, Dolby Theatre, The Sunset Strip, Malibu Beach, Santa Monica Pier, Venice Beach, Silicon Beach, Walt Disney Concert Hall, and the major art museums & art galleries such as LACMA, La Brea Tar Pits & Museum, The Broad, MOCA, Jeffrey Deitch, Hauser & Wirth, and The Arts District.

All the above will definitely expand anyone’s heart, mind, and soul!

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I would have to say it’s Paul McCarthy who is one of the most famous contemporary artists in the world. Back in 2016 and 2017, I was very fortunate to perform for him for two years straight as an actor in two of his largest immersive video art projects: “Coach Stage Stage Coach” (CSSC) and “Donald And Daisy Duck Adventures” (DADDA).

Paul totally taught me that cinema art can be so much more than just a two-dimensional movie screen playing a two-to-three hour narrative film. It can be three dimensional and four dimensional as well. It can be multiple screens all around you, and it can include actual paintings, sculptures, fine-art photography, movie sets, and movie props that the audience can literally walk around and see in person while the film is playing all around them on all the different walls within a museum or an art gallery. It’s totally immersive, so, Paul literally “broke down the fourth wall” of cinema for good.

So, after being a professional film & TV actor from 2006 to 2017, I realized that I can be so much more than just an actor for hire. I can help change art into something else as well. So, I retired from acting in 2018, studied contemporary art for two more years, and in 2020, I started to use everything that Paul taught me, and I started to break down the walls of photography by making my artworks feel like a photograph, a painting, and a sculpture all at once. I’m blending all three art mediums into one. So, thank you Paul, thank you for everything you taught me! 🙂

Website: https://www.davevescio.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davevescio

Twitter: https://twitter.com/davevescio

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dave.vescio2

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/DaveVescio

Image Credits
All images were created by me – Dave Vescio