EILEEN DAVID

y current work of urban landscape paintings emerge from an ongoing dialogue I have with my everyday environment. As I roam the streets of the city or while driving in my car, I feel as an explorer, searching for those moments when I get a visceral response to what I am looking at. Observations of same scenery repeatedly over time, the play of light in different atmospheric conditions, will eventually render the ordinary, extraordinary.

Having lived in San Francisco most of my adult life, I have had a lot of time to observe and connect with my surroundings in an intimate way. I liken it to any long-term relationship with all of its different faces, many moods and subtle changes over time, such that cannot be achieved by merely visiting once and awhile.

The play of light in its many manifestations, configurations and patterns renders the same scenery new and exciting every time I drive down 280 between my home and studio. My Housescape series, which I haven't come close to exhausting, was borne out of these observations as were many other paintings of vehicles, bridges and structures--forms intrinsic to our lives while at the same time merely elements of the backdrop in our quotidian urban existence.

For the last several years I have been exploring my cityscapes using long, vertical canvases, antithetical to the typical landscape format. This new perspective has allowed me to play with space and the variety of geometric patterns created by the play of light, shadow and rooflines, while at the same time, speaking about hierarchy in the social, economic and cultural strata.

I work in oil. When I am not teaching in the Art Department at Skyline College, I am usually painting in my studio at Hunters Point Shipyard.