DIVINE NEUROSIS
Artist, filmmaker and production designer Dan Ouellette contributed a thoughtful and in-depth interview with Chris Cunningham to Filmmaker‘s current issue (sorry, it’s only in the print magazine), and today he’s just launched his new website, Neurotica Divine, which has to be one of the best personal artist sites I’ve seen.
At the beginning of his film career Ouellette was known for his production design of Hal Hartley’s early work. More recentlly Ouellette production designed Alice Wu’s Saving Face. But Ouellette has always been a vivid visual artist whose work combines science-fiction and horror imagery with dashes of surrealism and dark sexuality. His website explains it all, from his visual art portfolios to his more recent work in film. Music videos and other footage featuring musicians like Android Lust and The Birthday Massacre are streamed on the site along with synopses and comments on “in development” feature scripts like Ritual and Significant Others.
But what makes the site so good is Ouellette’s interconnected and self-aware approach. The stylishly designed site is a true “portrait of the artist,” featuring honest statements of artistic intent, “studio cams” showing the work being created, and a great “outside world” section in which Ouellette writes thoughtfully on influences ranging from Brian Eno to Gilles Berquet to Carl Theodor Dryer.
