To my art loving friends:

Dave's "The Last Supper" is featured this week (with other artist's works) on the Home Page of Fine Art America's web site.

Buy prints at: [link] or also at:
[link] and [link]


I will post some images here at DA, but I find DA's set-up instructions for authorizing and selling prints to be extremely obscure and not at all user friendly. If I ever have time to figure DA's system out, maybe I will change this instruction. But, for now that's the way it is. The sands of time and my short life-line stream by me like a torrent.

I use a photorealistic collage style for some of my major surreal work. I also have a hand-drawing personal style that I love, and you will find some of that intermixed with the photo collages. On top of that I continue to enjoy explorations in many other directions, including computer graphics, pen and ink work, and watercolor. What you see here is the best of the end results.

The gestalt behind all of the work is an inquisitveness into the emotional and physical properties of as much of the universe as I can comprehend, moderated by personal choice regarding which of the infinite avenues I want to explore. As a result you won't find Hannibal Lector here, nor Joe Suicide. Those and others are certainly valid paths. I simply do not choose to take my life there.

My surreal visionary style is conceived in the bowels of endless empty space. Worlds come out of nowhere to define and fill empty space with form and reflected light. In these paintings I use photographs to develop a hallucinogenic, some say gut-wrenching realistic space where mind-bending visions rule.

Then there is my personal drawing style. In its simplest essence it is the line; the drawn line and what it represented as the delineation of a form, a space, almost the way a topographical line feels out the form of a hill, or the way a blind man feels out the tender forms of his or her lover.

That line is also the signature of the vibration of life and life's emotions, twisted by the influence of others, fighting for a day in the sun, learning the way of calm, the mastery of the surf of life and the swell of love and anger. Brownian motion, cosmic ray decay, elemental particles, the paths of chaos, entropy, and rejuvenation, it has all come down to the line.

Somewhere the two basic styles of real-world conceptual surrealism and personal drawing style meet. That meeting has generated a third style that look surrealistic, but is based on sketched forms rather than photos. I hope you find some enjoyment as you roam through my work. Thanks for stopping by.

Dave Martsolf

I was born in 1949 in Manhattan, Kansas, lived my early life in western Pennsylvania, and moved to New Hampshire at age 12 where I have resided ever since.

e-mail: davidmartsolf@comcast.net

Education

Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1967 - 1970 Architecture

University of New Hampshire 1970 - 1973 Fine Arts, Art History

University of New Hampshire 1983 - 1985 Bachelor of Arts in the Arts

I have been out of the art scene for a while, but here is what I managed to accomplish my first time around.


National Juried Shows

Ellsworth Gallery, Simsbury, CT, 1977

Ellsworth Gallery, Simsbury, CT, 1978

Greater Fall River Art Association, Fall River, MA, 1978

Washington & Jefferson College, Washington, PA, 1978

North Platte Valley Artist's Guild, Scottsbluff, NE, 1979

Washington & Jefferson College, Washington, PA, 1980

Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH, 1982

Springfield Art League, Springfield, MA, 1983

Springfield Art League, Springfield, MA, 1984


Solo Shows

Gallery 33, Concord, NH, 1977

First and Second Unitarian Universalist Church, Boston, MA, 1979

Ainsworth Gallery, Boston, MA, 1979

New Hampshire College, Manchester, NH, 1981

New Hampshire College, Manchester, NH, 1984


Awards

Honorable Mention, Washington & Jefferson College, Washington, PA, 1978

Juror's Prize, "UNH Revisited" Alumni Show, Durham, NH, 1981

Best of Show, New Hampshire Arthritis Foundation Annual Art Exhibit, Concord, NH, 1981

Best of Show, New Hampshire Arthritis Foundation Annual Art Exhibit, Concord, NH, 1982

Sawyer Memorial Award for Painting, 38th Annual New Hampshire Art Association Exhibition, Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, NH, 1985