David Faust >>> DETOUR
June 23 - July 29, 2006

Reception: Friday, June 23, 7 - 9:30 pm (Big Red & Shiny > images of opening reception)

Gallery Hours: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 7 - 9:30 pm & Saturday 1 - 5 pm

Download Press Release PDF with color pictures

Boston Globe Review by Cate McQuaid

images of all works in exhibit >> Large pictures and details

New ! MP3 of David's artists talk at the gallery

Green Street is pleased to present the first solo exhibit of paintings by David Faust in Boston. Faust, now based in Brooklyn, is a Mass Art alumnus who lived in Boston for over 15 years. The artist creates large scale oil on canvas paintings that are based on his own color photographs. The engaging subject matter ranges from portraits, to interiors, to evening and night views. The common thread in all the work is a flawless paint handling that uses light to create a specific emotional atmosphere.
David Faust considers painting in much the same way as he does photography: as a print statement. He takes a composition and a quality of light he captured in the camera and paints it larger or “better” to surround the viewer in a way that engages them longer than a photograph of the same image could. The artist uses a collaborative approach that combines amazing brushwork (his day job is as a master decorative painter in New York) and his years as a photographer to balance depth of field with the painterly effects of gradations of color and luminosity. The facility that Faust has with both his camera and his brushes allows him to use the best of both to create a sense of suspended time. David describes this as “making a place for a narrative - not making a narrative painting.” This pushes the focus from being only about the quality of light or the beauty of nature and evokes a more personal feeling of a memory, a specific place or a fleeting event.

David Faust, Heading Back (2004) 38 x 50 inches

oil on canvas

These paintings are not “photorealistic” as much as they are “documentary” in describing a real place. Faust uses photographs more as a factual starting point than the desired end “look”. The surfaces are impeccable and the detail keeps all the tiny clues that feel photographic without the hard edges that try to deny that a brush was used. The realism here is not quoted to point out how good the artist can copy a photograph, but instead to root each scene in a history based on observation. An example of this is a three foot square painting of a blazing bonfire. Faust has been painting from the same photograph of that bonfire for almost 10 years. The funny thing is when you are standing in front of “The Bonfire” (2006) you stare at it with the same hypnotized gaze that you have standing around the actual bonfire.

David Faust, The Bonfire (2006) 36 x 36 inches

oil on canvas

You expect to feel the intense heat on your face and hear the crackling embers. A similar experience happens when you stare at the sky above his twilight horizons. It feels like it glows from within like the night sky. This is because most of the landscapes are from the familiar shoreline Faust looks at from the backyard of his family’s house near Bath, Maine - an area he has painted and photographed hundreds of times since 1998.

David Faust, In The Trees ( 2006) 56 x 84 inches

oil on canvas

These subjects, whether a bonfire or a twilight sky or a sunlit curtain, are visually elusive moments: hard to capture with a camera or in our mind’s eye. They are best experienced in person, in real time. David Faust’s ability to stop time with these works is what is arresting about each of these places –and it is what they share most with really great photographs.

James Hull, Curator