David Landis
Artist Email: landissculpt@mindspring.com
Artist Statement
The past series of public and private work integrates my interests in the depiction of human nature through the use of the figure, and memory images involving animals. In my public installations I strive to keep the work conceptually accessible and interesting to both the art educated and the everyday visitor. The common thread between my abstract work and my representational work is that both involve the pushing of the materials used. The pushed curved motions of the abstract pieces reflect the quick pushed movements of the clay in the representational work. Textural rhythms and the implications of time are created by the repeated elements, while the quick modeling techniques capture the pieces in a state of formation, enhancing the vague qualities of memory. The work allows the poetry of dreams to blend with the realities of being.
My recent body of work captures my subjects in moments of loss of control…falling, tumbling, tripping, colliding, etc. And it is within these moments I find great beauty and a connection to our vitality as well as our frailties. I have chosen animals for subjects because of the strong compositional value that exists with their extra appendages (tails, ears, horns, etc.), and for the playful quality that people attribute to them. This playful quality provides a necessary counterbalance to the serious nature of loss of control.