" I began to learn about the town's history and the many great painters that had worked there: Hawthorne, Dickinson, Lazell, Hoffman and Motherwell as well as artists today like Mazur and Resika.  I also read authors such as Michael Cunningham and Grace Paley, which linked me to the rich literary history of the town.  The town has been a muse to so many artists and it was slowly beginning to work its magic on me."

This solo exhibition of paintings by Boston artist Michael David represents several series produced over the past two years while in Provincetown, Massachusetts.  In the fall of 2002, he was awarded a sabbatical from his teaching position at the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University.  The one semester residency turned into a second home for David, where he now maintains a studio and generates the majority of his artwork.

These monochromatic paintings eloquently combine a formal interest in composition and geometric abstraction, with a desire to invest his work with elusive qualities of time and mood.  Painted from life, memory and imagination, they emit an emotional immediacy often lost in direct observation.  In taking in the beauty of the town and its surroundings during the off season months, David has created far ranging imagery from views out his 2nd floor window, October, to still life objects framed by windows of an antique shop, China Cabinet.

As in the past, David continues to take inspiration from photography.  He demonstrates that most of the information, and indeed a wealth of the beauty we derive from his paintings relates to his extraordinary understanding of how light falls on objects and moves through space.  In this new body of work, we see more blatant references to photography, especially in 19th century photography, such as paintings physically formatted after stereographs, pinhole photographs and cyanotypes.

Michael David is a Full Professor and Chair of the Fine Arts Department at the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University.  He received his AB from Brandeis University, his MFA from Boston University, and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.  He has been awarded numerous honors including two New England Foundation for the Arts Grants, Massachusetts Artists Foundation Fellowships and, most recently, he was selected as a Recipient for a 2002 Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Grant in Painting.  David's work is included in numerous collections including locally, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Fogg Art Museum, and the Boston Public Library

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