About the Artist
Dustin James Rogers is a self-taught artist in Milledgeville, Georgia, where he practices the art of waking the whimsical. For Dustin, waking the whimsy of the everyday means greeting each day with wonder first, trusting that even the smallest material, petal or pigment, leaf or wing, can become a world unto itself.
Through painting, mixed media, cooking, and photography, he finds beauty in overlooked materials and fleeting moments. His practice reminds viewers that wonder can be built by hand, caught in light, served at a table, or awakened in a single image.
Born in Sacramento, CA and raised along the shores of the St. Lawrence River, Dustin learned early to notice how light, water, weather, and time transform surfaces. That early wonder sharpened into a restless, self-taught practice animated by a stubborn imagination of someone who keeps asking how everyday materials can glimmer, gather, bloom, and become beautifully awake.
Dustin’s art invites viewers to come closer, look longer, and feel the everyday begin to shimmer back. In his paintings and mixed-media works, he layers watercolor, acrylic, oil, resin, modeling paste, local clay, wood, mica, and metallic finishes into surfaces that rise, gleam, pool, crackle, and catch the light. His cooking and photography extend the same practice beyond the canvas. A scored loaf, a plated meal, a cardinal in fading light, or a petal at full color becomes another way of inviting ordinary beauty into focus.
His work has been displayed at the John Marlor House and Allied Arts in Milledgeville, Georgia, and also featured as a wine label at Hilton Head’s Island Winery. These projects reflect the reach of his practice and his belief that beauty belongs on walls, tables, bottles, and in the ordinary moments between them.
As an LGBTQ+ artist, Dustin creates from a belief that beauty grows more powerful when it refuses narrow categories. His work makes room for poignance, boldness, shimmer, humor, grit, texture and color without asking them to choose one form.
Dustin currently lives in Milledgeville with his husband, Mike, and their two black cats, Phineas and Luna.
