Dave Rogells’ body occupies a well-defined physical space. His mind, however, is all over the place. A wandering mind such as Dave’s is inevitably in conflict with society. Especially when it’s accompanied by a snide mouth. As a result, Rogells has been marginalized. In his 55 years, he’s held down many a job. But his days of gainful employment are over. “The reason I’m not working anymore is that the economy isn’t working,” he says facetiously. 

Currently Dave is without a livelihood or a proper home. “I’ve been run off from so many establishments. I’m a crab now, living in a crabby little hole.” He describes his dwelling as an “Alabama cheaphouse” with concrete slabs, beams, corrugated trailer roofing and, surprisingly, running water. He says he’s surrounded by humus and detritus. And ants, too. “When night falls, you realize you’re at the mercy of the elements.”

Rogells’ suave appearance belies his rough lifestyle. He cuts quite a figure in his buttoned-down sleeveless shirt. Even oversized sunglasses can’t hide his aloof eyebrow and there’s a fragrant air of mystery, even luxury, about him. With his windswept hair and suntan he could easily be mistaken for a yachtsman. As a matter fact, Dave has done quite a bit of cruising. Norfolk, Delray Beach and Newport Beach were among his ports of call before he disembarked in Sarasota and took up art. It may be an unpaid profession, but it’s the only one that will accept him for all his foibles. And as it happens, he’s exceptionally good at it. 

Dave has always painted, though not necessarily as a fine artist. Growing up, he whitewashed the walls of the “family compound” as well his realtor father’s properties. In the service, he painted pea green bulkheads and battleship gray hulls. Later, as a civilian, he moved on to haze gray and black, which he applied to gas stations, lavatories and factory machinery. While each job saw the introduction of a new color, one was duller than the other. For a bright guy like Dave, it was terribly unfulfilling to use only one dreary color at a time, without any chance to mix or match. Fortunately he got a hold of acrylic paints and could finally express the pent-up intensity within. 

In his recent debut as an artist, Dave proved to be a natural. Astonishingly, he revealed a distinct, fully developed expressionistic style, which he must have honed in his mind long before his brush ever touched the canvas. Rogells’ art is a veritable outburst of color and his joy in the using the most glaring palette possible is acutely evident. “The richness of my color comes from the Vanderbilts and Vandenbergs,” says Dave. “Rich colors are better than poor, right?” Not only are his hues loud, he combines them with a ruthless dissonance. Brilliant yellows and golds are set against deep greens and blues. The tension thus created is never resolved for the viewer, even though Dave may have experienced multiple moments of release during the painting act.

For Rogells, painting is a liberating, psychophysical process, and an emptying of sorts. “The thinking that you can piss out a product that didn’t exist before, through the synthesis of your body parts, I call that alchemy.” And Dave is indeed an alchemist. He takes his basest compulsions and converts them, and himself, into something precious. Dave wants to be valued. ”I want the viewer to say of me, ‘He’s worth his water.’” This pronouncement, Dave admits, is also an allusion to his zodiac sign, Aquarius. 

Much of what Rogells says, carries a double, and even a triple meaning. His wit is quick and sharp and he is highly articulate, almost poetic. Dave talks incessantly and uninhibitedly. He makes the wildest, most preposterous associations and delivers a constant discharge of innuendo and abusive humor. What’s funniest is, he gets away with it. People think of him as a mad genius, both blessed and cursed. He has obviously been granted a fool’s license and he makes full use of it. If ever someone enjoyed absolute freedom of thought and speech, it is Dave. And it shows in his art.

Rogells’ brushwork is as busy as his mind. “My ideas are going to be extinguished unless I manifest them,” he says. By necessity, he must paint at the speed of his intellect. His graphic, linear marks are a visual transcription of his errant thought pathways. Whether they twist, curl or zigzag, they are always unpredictable, and uncensored. When a painting of his nears completion, Dave literally needs to stop himself. Otherwise he might go on forever. So steady is his stream of consciousness.

Rogells is not too particular about his subject matter. He’s as comfortable with geometric abstractions as with figures, whether human or animal. Dave’s most touching portraits are of alligators, flamingos and panthers and his dearest subject is Bucky the dog. “Bucky swallowed a bone and got a double hernia when it turned in his stomach,” Dave laments. “He had to be euthanized.” Dave is not quite as compassionate when he depicts people. “I paint womanizers. They will burn in hell and I want to immortalize them before their bodies are indistinguishable.” Ablaze in hot pinks and oranges, Dave’s men are hideously dysmorphic, screaming and writhing in a pandemonium of torture. Dave’s women, though equally distorted, are meant to be seductive. But perhaps excessively so. They’re painted in scorching, luminescent hues that instantly overstimulate the nervous system. Dave thinks of his brush as a “lightsaber”, emitting a concentrated beam of energy. “I’m a frustrated light artist,” he declares.

The figures Dave paints are merely pretexts. His real subject is his own psyche. Given its sheer depth, it poses a serious danger. But Dave has adopted an effective protective measure: detachment. Ironically, Dave’s hyperemotional paintings are created with the cold, dispassionate resolve of a doctor. “I have feelings that cannot be targeted because they have a trigger point,” explains Dave. He depicts, and thus exorcises, his maniacal tendencies without having to subject himself to them. Rogells’ art is self-therapeutical. He works through his impulses and instincts, “mediating the slave object,” as he describes it. It is an art that is on the verge of trauma. 

Now and then Rogells signs his canvases as “John Franklin.” He says he grew up with a painting bearing that name. “Plus,” he adds, “I’m still trying to find out who I am.” An alternative explanation could be that Dave is taking his detachment one step further: he is becoming someone else. If taken to the extreme, he might achieve total disembodiment. Dave does not mind being invisible, as long as his art is not. So far, he claims, it has failed to be seen. In actual fact, his large-scale work has been exhibited extensively along the Gulf Coast and it continues to attract attention.

When a wisecracker like Dave talks about his life, it’s necessary to disentangle fact from outrageous fiction. “I was conceived in Cape May, came down the Chesapeake Bay Tunnel and ended up in Manatee County, Florida, on the potato side of a dish of Salisbury steak.” Dave says he was raised in the wild. As a teenager, so his story goes, his doppelganger abandoned him and he was left in a quandary what to do. “I was a dipbrain that had no motivation to do anything so I resigned myself to doing nothing.”

In 1972 Dave had a brush with the law. He was arrested for smoking dope and “organized date rape.” Supposedly he also grew marijuana behind the police department in Delray Beach. “The charges were dropped because I was running for political office,” claims Dave. “I told them I put my hat in for Governor.” Dave did in fact receive probation. In lieu of jail time, he was placed in a government-subsidized employment and training program known as CETA. While there, he apparently sat in big bean chairs and blew bubbles. But Dave was not entirely unproductive. He studied metallurgy and welding and also took college courses in philosophy and natural science. One could say he acquired a well-rounded education. 

Subsequently Dave worked on engineering projects as a “junior woodchuck” and was employed by two aerospace companies in Southern California as a parts inspector. When the Vietnam War ended, Dave joined the Navy. He signed up for six years and reenlisted for two more. During that time he worked in various hospitals, helping people with disabilities. His duties entailed taking rectal temperatures and he describes his position as an “assistant proctologist.” “It’s a specialization that says you’re an A-hole but we’ll pay you anyway if you put a thermometer up someone’s anus and keep your mouth shut.”

In the early 1980s the charges against Dave were refiled. He was “extradited” from California back to Florida where he finally stood trial for possession of drugs and purportedly for being a “pacifist Communist.” Dave then pursued a “hardship disability” but is unforthcoming on the exact nature of his disability. Dave fell under the influence of the Bethel Ministry, a sort of halfway house which urged him, unsuccessfully, to abstain from alcohol and sex and submit to the “Kingdom of God.” In 1993 he landed a job at the Manasota Processing and Distribution Center as a postal clerk. Thereafter he “quit all functions of coordination and construction and went into the service sector as a head busboy.” Dave states his current job status as “unemployed by the Venice Yacht Club.”

Rogells may have burned his future as a home-dweller, as he puts it, but there’s a fairly decent future ahead of him as an artist. And he knows he will live on in his work. Dave’s paintings are his descendants, his legacy. “I want the best for my paintings. I want them to stand with the uprightness they were given by me. I want to be their lord, but I want them to serve someone else.”

– Daniel Petrov, 6/1/10