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Dennis Kleidon was born in Chicago, Illinois, to a family that sailed the Chicago River and Lake Michigan. Trained as a classical pianist, artist and architect, he became a professor of art at the University of Illinois, then spent many years at the University of Akron in Ohio.
The Artist as Sailor. Years of racing around the marks and around the islands in Lake Erie in PHRF and one-design boats have given Kleidon a special appreciation for the intricacies of hull design, sail trim and rigging. He now sails a Catalina on Lake Erie, the most fearsome of the notoriously squally Great Lakes. From the shores of Lake Erie to coastlines in the U.S., Canada and Britain, Kleidon has captured brilliant images of seashores, of harbors and especially, of boats and their sails.
The Artist's Eye. To his love of the sea, artist Dennis Kleidon brings an impeccable sense of composition and a highly developed instinct for color. Because his background in three-dimensional art, he infuses the flat image with a heightened degree of dimensionality and spatial control.
He comments: "As a sailor, I have an immense appreciation for boats, harbors and coastlines. As an artist, I enjoy capturing spontaneous compositions, when proportion, color, geometry and perspective coalesce for an instant to create a visual image of movement and grace."
Kleidon has selected this portfolio of images from those he has shot over three decades. While he has photographed in many locations, New England - especially Maine - has often inspired his imagination. He usually works with a 35 mm Nikon and a variety of lenses and filters.
Seeing Anew. In his photography, Dennis Kleidon seizes upon the world of the sailor in new ways, sometimes startling, sometimes soothing, always intriguing. He asks you to focus on line, shape and color while cropping out the extraneous. In this way, he allows you to perceive the world with new eyes.