Retiring after three decades in a classroom, David currently enjoys his new life with more time to pursue his passion in his home art studio that he has christened Studio Eidolons. His watercolors feature small-town American sights fading from our landscape, but not our memories. In 2015 he discovered a new genre, the Texas Laguna Madre, and spent two weeks living alone on an island there, painting as Artist-in-Residence for Texas A&M University Corpus Christi.
David, a native Missourian, grew up in St. Louis and studied art in rural northeast Missouri while earning his Bachelor’s Degree from Truman State University. Residing in Texas since 1977, he draws his watercolor subjects from a host of “recollections” involving cities, small towns and rural stretches throughout the Midwest and Southwest, particularly old Route 66.
David finds inspiration for his art from the life and works of Andrew Wyeth and Edward Hopper. Having earned his Masters and Ph.D., he seeks ways to blend academic studies with his art creations, and particularly loves the writings of artists Robert Motherwell and Robert Henri, along with literary giants including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Marcel Proust. The poetry of William Carlos Williams, Robert Frost and Walt Whitman also drive his imagination. These artistic and literary geniuses he regards as kindred spirits. They were frequently surprised by the revelatory powers of objects connecting them with primal memories from the past. These objects, viewed on location, as well as in works of art, have a way of “drawing the viewer in.” And we are usually grateful for that primal experience.
Currently, David is working on a series of watercolors and short stories commemorating art in small town U.S.A. His series is titled “Turvey’s Corner 63050”. The fictional town features a zip code placing it between two Missouri towns four miles apart along U.S. Highway 30: High Ridge, 63049, where David grew up and attended elementary and junior high school, and House Springs 63051 where he attended high school and church. Drawing inspiration from American writers that include Garrison Keillor, Sinclair Lewis, Sherwood Anderson, Edgar Lee Masters and William Faulkner along with playwright Thornton Wilder, David has developed a cast of characters and is spinning stories around them and the subjects he is painting for this series.
Copyright © 2020 David Tripp Art - All Rights Reserved.