David Collis
ARIZONA BIENNIAL 2023
First organized in 1948, the Arizona Biennial at the Tucson Museum of Art is a juried exhibition that showcases some of the most innovative and diverse new works being created in the state. I’m honored to have my painting “Communion” included in the 2023 exhibition. April 1, 2023–October 1, 2023.
Artist's Statement
Exploration plays an important role in my creative process. I infuse my paintings with color theory, color tonality, art history and geometry. They are digitally inspired, extensively investigated and hand crafted. Each composition is painstakingly edited, expanded and arranged until I discover an order that is curious, beautiful and dynamic, while maintaining lightheartedness. I fill the surface with repetitious hard edge shapes, controlled brushstrokes and a network of subtle shifting colors.
I do not offer a message; rather I project fictional spaces with uncomplicated imagery onto the two dimensional canvas plane using a variety of tools and techniques. Discovering a painting’s spatial and internal individuality becomes my quest. I believe the combined influences that merge and drift at varying depths reveal a buried reality within the work. Each painting offers to soothe and each invites a quiet contemplation of their colorful and vibrant surface.