Home Schooled | David Rathman

"The work in this exhibition was created over the summer of 2020, in Minneapolis and Montana. I’m very pleased to show these new watercolors and drawings at Burnet Fine Art; this will be my first solo exhibition with them.

I worked from my home studio, and in a garage in western Montana. The open garage doors provided fresh breezes and a view of McGregor Peak and the Kootenai National Forest. It was perfect; life changes and new studio environs help create and define new work. Impacted as we all are by the pandemic, in very uncertain times, I stayed close to my family and felt grounded and motivated to create, paint, and draw. It is a time to ascertain priorities and affirm the things that give us joy and motivation. I’m a lucky man; I find that affirmation over and over again in my work.

Town and country, streets and buildings, cars, afternoon light, nocturnes, solitary figures, horizons and landscapes delineate these new paintings and drawings. Being in my home state of Montana for a month was so satisfying and inspiring. I worked with watercolor, also pen and ink with ink washes; which is a return to drawing for me. Using line and the physicality of the nib pens is exciting, it feels like a homecoming of sorts. I did a lot of pen and ink work early in my career and enjoyed the directness, speed and fluidity of the medium. It’s really nice to get back to it, expanding my approaches to picture making." -- David Rathman

About the Artist
David Rathman (b. Choteau, Montana) lives and works in Minneapolis. He is known for his sensitively rendered paintings of motifs from American history and contemporary culture. Rathman’ s work “presents themselves as fractured narratives – a singular, crucial moment of action in an otherwise protracted story that has been gradually unfolding out of view”. (Rochester Art Center).

Notable exhibitions include Porch Gallery, Ojai, CA; Morgan Lehman Gallery, New York, NY; Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando , FL; Weinstein Hammons Gallery, Minneapolis, MN; Rochester Art Center, Rochester, MN; Mark Moore Gallery, Culver City, CA; Larissa Goldston Gallery, New York, NY; Salisbury University Art Gallery, MD; Jerome Zodo Contemporary, Milan, Italy; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN; Whitebox, New York, NY; Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center, Buffalo, NY; to name a few.

Rathman’ s artwork can be found in the following public collections Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY; The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, MN; Plains Art Museum, Fargo, ND; to name a few.
 

David Rathman | Round Here | 2019 | watercolor on paper | 10.75 x 16.5 inches

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