A Cognizant Artist
Lukaduke's paintings are an answer for an equation that ceases to exist. The swirling patterns of color and forms merge into a glimpse behind the eye of New England's edgiest landscape painter.
Born and raised in Massachusetts, Luke Fuller better known as Lukaduke, among family and friends, moved up to Portland, ME in order to obtain a BFA in painting from the Maine College of Art in 2001. Here in Maine he has enjoyed a positive and fertile atmosphere in which to create his art. His art has become highly collected among a younger generation who see his art as a bright horizon within a genre of painting that has become bland an highly anticlimactic. Whether through the vast array of vibrant colors or the numerous types of paint, he constructs and abstracts the ideals of what a landscape painting can be. The way Lukaduke applies paint to his surface has a chance like quality behind it that he feels mimics the natural occurrences of our landscape via the natural elements of wind, water and fire. What will strike the viewer instantly upon viewing his work is that he is the element in which all his paintings are structured around. From painting to painting the viewer becomes drawn into positive and negatives spaces. Within these spaces we become intrigued to wander through this visual space that is as much about the relationships between our minds and the world that surrounds us everyday, as it is about this artists pure love for paint.
When asked about his influences Luke will spurt out a never ending list of artists , musicians and free thinkers with the likes of ; Henry David Thoreau, Woody Guthrie, Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton, Winston Rodney, Ghandi…. His feelings are that every moment and every person has an influence on what we are and what we do.
To sum this artist up, when asked "why he paints?" He will counteract it with "why do philosophers, philosophize? why do monks, meditate ?"