Derek Schultz // California Coast Visual Artist & Musician
Rooted on the Central Coast of California and influenced by a life exploring up and down the Pacific Coast, Derek Schultz is a visual artist and musician whose work contemplates the beauty and complexity of the intertwined relationships of the natural world through symbolism, color, light, and sound.
Painting
Derek's visual art focuses on the nuanced splendor of native California animals and plants, embedded in colors and textures representative of the unique landscapes west of the Sierra Nevada. His use of symbolism and unique sense of style is an ongoing dialogue between ancient art practices from across the globe, modernist design, and scientific illustration.
Photography
Derek's photography explores the thematic beauty of chiaroscuro: the mutually-creative nexus of darkness and light that is fundamental to the material conditions of our universe.
Music
Arising from the West Coast underground metal and punk scene, Derek's music engages with ambient and experimental traditions ranging across drone, kosmische synth, dub techno, textural noise, field recording, industrial, stoner rock, doom, and black metal. Melding these sounds into a unique style of ambient music, his work is cinematic and narrative on the time scale and pace of nature, invoking the contemplative melancholy of impermanence.