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David Newman
My diverse and prolific career extends over six decades, and has produced works ranging in size from miniature to monumental, and in media from bronze and marble to oil paints, watercolors, ink, pencil and pastels.
The path I have taken started with representational works in sculpture and painting. Extensive studies in anatomy led to a vast production of figurative work. I have spent over 20 years in extremely abstract creations with often-large canvasses which have their roots in my passionate respect for the composition I studied while in France and Italy. It is this natural evolutive process of analytic study and synthetic reconstruction that has led me to these all-encompassing joyful and whimsical abstract statements. From a hothouse conceptual bank of watercolors and ink, where the bottle sprawls bold scrolls reminiscent of life’s basic components, I refine the random edges of the ink rivers, taking chaos and breathing order and rhythm into it. Sometimes, I add shiny satin ribbons to the dry ink with visions of abstract pools and clouds, thighs and wings, petals, leaves and seeds of masterly blended dazzling colors.
With consummate assurance I have approached the idea of contrasting spaces, which I think of as my “negative space”. Reluctant to feel locked into a painting without escape from the pervasion of color, I pierce perspectives that allow the onlooker his own exploratory space. My longtime familiarity with sculpture brings solidity, structure and weight to the playfulness of my design. I am in constant scrutiny of life forms – many of my works emerge from sessions with models, while others are strongly dependent on the inner images conjured up by waves, rocks, jagged cliffs and ebbing seas – as awareness of other modes of existence. All this contributes to a pulsing feeling of primeval life.
Over the last decade, I have been painting abstractions of the landscape inspired by refractions and reflections of light and hue. Saturated colors and boldly expressionistic brushstrokes create at times sparingly minimalist and at times dynamically complex, interpretations of both organic and architectural forms that are continually shifting in the landscape, without containment or definitive foundation. Richly textured and with an impulsive sense of energy, I am boldly portraying American landscapes and landmarks, both natural and man-made.
These elements integrate into an undeniable coherence, inviting you to a unique world that spells essential creation without the obvious alphabet dancing on it. The immediacy of the my vision rests upon the strength of the never-retouched line, which states its bold message in one swooping stroke over the virgin canvas. Sometimes the white canvas is the line itself left as a pristine vine separating the areas of color.
Motives are embroidered with thick outpourings from the tube etching relief, and singing the joy of matter. The surface is often a stormy sea, reminding us that out of the sea came the infinite variations of life. Nature is here pursued into its intangible interplay of light, dark, sun, shade, mists, and the rusty ochre of a newly furrowed field.
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