project spotlight on:

Artist/educator, David Hornung.

Intro from David Hornung: Paintings 2023-2024

"Because when I’m falling, I’m doing all right; when I’m slipping, I say, hey, this is interesting! It’s when I’m standing upright that bothers me: I’m not doing so good; I’m stiff. As a matter of fact, I’m really slipping, most of the time, into that glimpse. I’m like a slipping glimpser."  -  Willem DeKooning

"The most difficult part of improvisational painting for me is learning to embrace the discomfort of feeling lost. 

 My paintings are never based on a preparatory sketch or plan. I usually begin with quickly painted shapes, lines, or a configuration. It’s a casual, energetic start: a proposition to contend with. I seldom find much to commit to in the early stages, but once I’m locked in, I try to sharpen my focus without snuffing out the life of the original image.

If I suspend judgement and maintain an open, playful attitude, unexpected pathways emerge, and I can find my way forward. When I too quickly feel a sense of control, I get suspicious. I’m trading on what I already know; not discovering. When this happens, I need to kill the lovely thing so the unexpected thing can come into view. It takes a surprising number of adjustments in color and design along with layering, blotting, scraping, and sanding to arrive at a resolution. This is how I make the painting real."  -  david hornung

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David Hornung has had numerous solo exhibitions of his work, most recently in 2024 at J.J. Murphy Gallery, NYC;  at Elena Zang Gallery in Woodstock, NY, as well as group exhibitions at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Jeffrey Leder Gallery, and Flowers Gallery, NYC. He’s written art criticism for ARTnews as well as a classic textbook on color, Color: A Workshop for Artists and Designers, now in its third edition and translated into French, Spanish, Polish, Korean, Chinese and Japanese.

See more artist and exhibit catalog designs here.