|
David Thelen is a recently-added painter to our stable of mid- and late-career artists. His inaugural exhibit at our Upstairs Galleries - "Liminal Explorations: Painting the World Between the Shadows" - opened March 27, 2021 and ran through June, 2021. He is one of three in "Trio", which closed December 31, 2023. His paintings are on permanent view and sale in our holdings gallery.
Thelen hails from Livonia, NY, near the Rochester area. He, also, spends time in the Finger Lakes - both areas that speak to his sense of place and in which much of his painted subjects come from. A lifelong artist, he has studied and worked in many different art forms - wood, ceramics, sculpture, stained glass and painting. He finds sharing his love of art a vital part of his artistic life.
His approach to painting incorporates a type of reversal similar to a watercolorist's process (what Thelen calls "negative painting"). Thus, his moody paintings use the dark gesso background on the canvas as the coloring for what appears black (and similar dark forms or spaces) in his subjects, while the remaining portions of the images are painted around the dark forms to create the details that an observer recognizes as "real". His subjects explore times of transition during the day - early mornings, dusk, the melancholy movements of weather and the sentinal quiet of ageing "man-mades" left to their slow ruin.
David studied at Rochester Institute of Technology (Diploma of Fine Arts), the Rochester Memorial Art Gallery, and continues his education at the Woodstock School of Art. Prices for his work currently available at the gallery range from $350 for small unframed works on canvas to $3,000 for the largest of the oils. Most of his paintings come unframed but are ready to hang as is. The gallery is happy to arrange formal framing for clients wishing to do so.
|
