“I paint personal refuges and interior landscapes – places to visit for solace and sanctuary. Much of my work is intuitive. My paintings are imagined, invented moments that touch upon human’s complicated, perplexing relationship with nature. I try to create an emotional and intellectual connection – however fleeting – between the viewer and the power of landscape, the web of life, [and] the idea of nature itself.
I think about the natural world not as an expendable resource but as a past home, once abandoned and forgotten, now the subject of our longing and our dreams. Increasingly what remains is an idea or memory of nature, rather than nature itself. This has been a central theme of my work for many years.
My blank canvases are approached without a predefined image and the painting is developed in a slow, organic way. Painting in refined layers allows me to discover the narrative and emotional content of each composition over time. Using this method, I try to express why a sunset fills us with wonder, why a certain quality of light can make a busy day suddenly still, and why the momentary sound of a bird call can seem – for that instant – like the most important thing in the world.”
David Kroll studied at The Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, before earning his Bachelor of Art degree from the San Francisco Art Institute, California, and his Master of Fine Art degree at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois. He has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States, including the Seattle Art Museum, Washington, Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, Tennessee; and the Northern Illinois University Art Museum, among others. The subject of several articles and catalogues, his work can be found in several colleges across the country.
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