About David
Bio
David Shannon grew up in Spokane, WA and graduated from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena with a BFA in illustration in 1983. David began his career working as a free-lance editorial illustrator in New York City. His work has appeared in many publications including Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, and Rolling Stone, as well as on numerous book jackets and theater posters. David has also received international acclaim as the author and/or illustrator of over 40 books for children, including No, David! and A Bad Case of Stripes. For the past several years he’s been concentrating on abstract oil paintings which have been exhibited in a number of group shows including Art in the Time of Corona online at Dab Art and a solo show, Incognition, at the SPARC gallery in South Pasadena. See exhibitions.
Artist Statement – ARCRANIA ABSTRACTS
These pieces combine biological and typographical shapes with elements of painting, drawing, and sculpture in order to elicit a response from the viewer. The shapes themselves reflect the dynamics of nature, thought, conversation, time, and life in general. They churn, roil, fold into each other, collide, merge, split off into dead ends, and encircle. They can appear beautiful, ominous, whimsical, grotesque, absurd, even somewhat obscene.
Surrounding each image is a flat field of color that barely contains the chaos of the painterly, gestural shapes. It accentuates the sculptural aspects of the work and gives them a graphic, iconic feel, as if portrayed on a screen. The viewer is invited to get lost in the various shapes or contemplate them as a whole.
Artist Statement – BLACK STILL LIFES
These pieces began as an exploration of the elements of a painting within a minimalized set of criteria. Figure/ground is reduced to no more than a few common still-life objects, usually black, placed in a simple setting of grays and muted colors. This tends to equalize the focus of the painting across all its elements rather than just the main object(s).
Conceptually, they’re immediately recognizable as traditional still-life paintings, but the introduction of black objects tells the viewer that something is not quite right. The objects themselves are standard and classic subjects - flowers, fruit, bottles, a chair - that tend to symbolize life, culture, perhaps even joy, were they rendered in full color. The blackness allows the objects to suggest something other than a piece of fruit or a bottle. They are densely solid but also an empty void, expressing both permanence and, paradoxically, absence and loss. The simple compositions contain subtle, unexpected incongruities – lines that should meet don’t, forms that usually overlap instead coincide, edges are lost and found, angles aren’t always in perspective. These incongruities create a tension within the painting that reflects the inaccuracy of memory. Surprisingly, the paintings don’t feel as grim as one would think. Beauty still exists in the muted colors, pleasing shapes, variations of surface texture, and even the reflected light that defines the black objects.