A disco ball moon illuminates Red Rocks in purples and oranges. The Gothic Theatre bends and sways dreamily. The Fox becomes a liminal space, bridging reality and hallucination. The Paramount wavers somewhere in between space and time.
André Lippard transforms Denver’s most recognizable landmarks into blurry recollections. His paintings merge cubism and surrealism with a city not meant to be documented, but remembered. His warped depictions of Denver staples are less about architectural accuracy and more about capturing a shared feeling – leaving a concert, late-night adventures, or wandering through the places that live in the city’s collective memory.
Lippard is a full-time oil painter known for his surreal, cubist depictions of Denver’s iconic buildings. Hailing from Lakewood, he gravitated toward Impressionist and Post-Impressionists like Van Gogh, Picasso and Dalí, especially drawn to their use of thick, heavy paint.
Before he began painting a dreamy Denver, Lippard created fictional city scenes. Later, a friend convinced him to apply his style to a real place. One painting of the Bluebird Theater changed the entire direction of his work.
Growing up here and applying that surreal cubist style to somewhere real and known, he said, created something that the surrealists often talked about: a dream, a memory, or some subconscious realm or in between.
“When I paint a building of Denver, it’s more evocative of a memory – an occasion that was experienced when you were maybe inebriated, intoxicated, or it was just a long time ago and your memory is a little fuzzy,” he said.
It’s about finding universal connection through the shared experience of knowing a venue or establishment, he added.
“As opposed to a hardline, photorealistic picture representation of a building, my approach really invokes much more of that type of subconscious experience where you remember a time that was less concrete.”
Cubism might be more than a century old, but Lippard isn’t trying to reinvent it.
“There’s this expectation for artists to break the mold or do something different,” he said. “And while I find myself doing something different, it isn’t necessarily like I’m trying to reinvent the wheel. I’m just letting art flow through me.”
His style isn’t something manufactured. It’s simply how he sees the world.
“I think my style is just who I am,” he said. “It’s not necessarily like I’m trying to accomplish something other than expressing myself as a mirror, as an observer of the world, and this is kind of my filter of how I interpret it.”
Drawn to thick oil paint, he describes his process simply: “layers and layers and layers.”
Oil paint takes forever to dry, he explained. While one piece dries, he works on another.
“An oil painting might take me a grand total of like 40 hours, but it might be over the course of six months to get that all done,” he said.
For his Denver city scenes, Lippard heads to each venue, snapping reference pictures in both daylight and at night. He’ll search the web for different perspectives, studying lighting and various angles. Then the action begins on the canvas.
Despite the long, scattered hours, each piece works to preserve the city’s identity by connecting people over shared places.
Lippard’s upcoming solo show at Next Gallery in November will include 18 paintings, all of which are currently under construction. He estimates he’ll paint five or six dozen places around Denver that feel “recognizable, historic and significant.”
While he describes his Denver city scenes as his bread and butter, his artistic world extends past familiar landmarks. From his notorious Gregorio characters, which he’s been painting since middle school, to his relaxing Tsukimi scenes inspired by Japanese moon-viewing rituals, his work constantly shifts between reality and the imaginative.
As a full-time artist, he credits his success to his commitment and business-oriented mindset.
“I have to be disciplined to sit in the chair, I have to be organized to know where all my art is, and I have to be really wise about the money coming in,” he said.
Being a self-employed artist can be a dangerous combination, he said, but he embraces the challenge.
“I like to live free and I like to live inspired. My studio is in my apartment. I like to have my art around me all the time so that when I’m not working on it, I can look at it and think about it and digest it. And a lot of times that inspires me to work.”
In a constantly changing Denver, Lippard’s work is a reminder that preserving a city is not always about keeping a physical record. Sometimes it’s about remembering what it felt like.
