Video by Patty Stocker
WestfordCAT’s Patty Stocker continues her special series that focuses on regional artists that are scheduled to display their work at the Parish Center for the Arts’ Artist of the Month virtual exhibitions. Stocker spoke recently with Dan Rocha, a seasoned and talented mixed media artist who has exhibited extensively throughout New England, in New York, even as far as Australia and the Netherlands. Rocha’s exhibition features two genres of art works, aerial geological framed work and his 3D sculptures. Although they are quite different visually, Rocha explains how the technique in which they are created is quite similar. And all of his work focuses on his love of color.
“It’s a very similar technique in both cases”, Rocha explains. “I begin with wood…I texture the surface of the wood. I prime it. I size it and then I silver leaf the entire surface. Then when I tint the resin, I tint it with color; with acrylic paint, but very lightly. What happens is the light passes through the resin, it hits the original surface of the silver leaf, and it reflects back.”
Rocha studied painting and sculpture at Mass College of Art & Design where he received the BERGER award for painting upon graduation and went on to get his master’s degree from Cambridge College where he did his thesis on the Human Response to Color.
Anyone interested in learning more about Dan Rocha and his art can visit the Parish Center for the Arts website at westfordma.gov/pca or can email him directly at drdr537@gmail.com.
