Artist statement:
"Songwriter E. 'Yip' Harburg once said that 'Words make you think a thought, music makes you feel a feeling, but a song makes you feel a thought.'
Painting is a personal activity that involves responding both to my own previous actions on a canvas as well as the physical qualities of paint. It is almost exclusively non-verbal, drawing on images that surround me and inhabit my mental and physical space. The forms I am drawn to paint usually involve a cluster of “characters” that interact with each other in a specific, but not easily identifiable manner in a theatrical setting that is equally specific, but not easily identifiable.
To bring the non-verbal interaction to an audience, I quote others’ words when I give the painting a title—most often referencing lyrics from musical theater, the music that I particularly am attracted to. Taken from their intended context, they are meant to reference the music and plot of their source and, for those who recognizes the reference, plant a song in the viewer’s head while they look at the painting.
A finished painting is an expression of a felt thought."
David Aylsworth (born 1966, Tiffin, OH) lives and works in Houston. He earned a B.F.A. from Kent State University, Ohio, in 1989 and was an artist resident at the Core Program, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, from 1989-1991. Aylsworth's paintings are included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Dallas Museum of Art; the El Paso Museum of Art; and the Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi. His recent solo exhibitions include The Thing That Makes Vines Prefer To Cling, Holly Johnson Gallery, Dallas (2010); Marie Antoinette with or Without Napoleon, Inman Gallery (2009); and Fugue for Tinhorns Sound Like Frère Jacques, Ellen Noel Art Museum of the Permian Basin, Odessa (2008). In 2011 his paintings were included in the group exhibitions Soft Math, Bryan Miller Gallery, Houston, and Working in the Abstract: Rethinking the Literal, Glassell School of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
In collaboration with Inman Gallery, Houston, TX