Meet Marc Vandermeer

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Marc Vandermeer. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Marc below.

Hi Marc, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?

My Mother was a second-generation immigrant whose parents arrived in this country penniless. I was raised by a single mother who worked as an off-Broadway actress. This generation grew up in America during the Great Depression and the World War. We were poor but proud. My Mother refused to take a handout from the government and instead worked several jobs to get by. We lived on the Lower East Side of New York City.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I started making art as a teenager, growing up in Greenwich Village with my mother, who was an artist herself. She was always experimenting—at one point, she was creating these large plastic light sculptures using an industrial vacuuform machine that my stepfather helped build. Being surrounded by that kind of creative energy had a huge impact on me. Early on, I was drawn to abstract expressionists like Rauschenberg, Motherwell, and Johns, and I discovered painting in a little studio on Perry Street.

In my twenties, I shifted toward technology-based mediums—video, photography—because they were immediate and accessible. I loved the way they could capture the fleeting and the raw. I ended up studying film at the Philadelphia College of Art, now UARTS, and graduated in 1975. At the time, the commercial world was evolving into an artistic space, with directors like Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry pushing boundaries. But as life moved forward, art took a backseat. I focused on building a career, raising a family.

Then everything changed in 2001. I was 48, my second child was just 18 months old, and I was diagnosed with stage-three blood cancer. The prognosis was grim—five months to five years. I had no choice but to close my business and step away from the career I’d built over two decades. My focus became survival.

I ended up in Little Rock, Arkansas, undergoing an aggressive dual stem cell transplant, an experimental protocol that wasn’t widely accepted at the time. I spent months in isolation, living off canned food, while my wife split her time between caring for our children and being with me. Looking back, I think my early exposure to avant-garde ideas made me more open to unconventional treatments. My mother had always chased the cutting edge in art and technology, and maybe that mindset helped me embrace a radical medical approach that ultimately saved my life.

During recovery, I found my way back to art. Armed with a digital camera and a laptop, I started photographing liminal spaces—train yards, graffiti-covered industrial lots—places that felt as transient as my own existence. I created layered collages, blending geometric abstract forms with organic, painted elements. The cells in my compositions multiplied uncontrollably, mirroring the very disease I was fighting. One series documented my shadow throughout Little Rock, digitally transforming it into surreal portraits of isolation.

At the time, digital art was still emerging as a serious medium. In 2002, I was part of Pixel Perfect, one of the first digital art exhibitions in Chelsea. That show wasn’t just a milestone for digital art—it was a milestone for me. It marked my creative rebirth.

Since then, my work has been driven by experimentation. I still use photography as a foundation, layering and manipulating images with digital and painted elements. Technology has always been central to my process, and I continue to evolve with it.

Now, I find myself both fascinated and cautious about AI’s role in art. I see the potential, but I also have a healthy skepticism—maybe a bit of a Luddite’s wariness. I don’t want technology to dilute the artist’s voice. But that tension, between curiosity and caution, is exactly where my work thrives. It’s the same balance I had to find during cancer treatment—embracing hope while facing the unknown.

I’ve now been in remission for twenty-three years, and I can’t help but think that my childhood, steeped in curiosity and experimentation, played a role in that. My art, like my life, has always been about finding meaning in uncertainty—transforming fear into creation, survival into expression.

If you’d like to learn more about my work, you can visit my website or email me at [email protected].

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

“To Thy Own Self Be True.” Never lose sight of your dreams and goals. Be patient. Look forward; life is long and like a river. Don’t be afraid to take a chance with your career. Life is about making mistakes and learning from them.

Before we go, maybe you can tell us a bit about your parents and what you feel was the most impactful thing they did for you?

My mother introduced me to Art; she taught me how to see the light and beauty in the world. She taught me about faith, faith in a higher power, and faith in myself. I am often challenged, questioning my artistic abilities. It’s not about being the best or having financial success; it’s about how you feel when you do something that makes you happy, which art does for me.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Last two images in the set of eight were generative art, done in collaboration with artificial inteligence

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