Artist's Statement
Personal vision, where form and depiction happen to be incidental to the embrace of place is at the core of this work. Painting becomes an elucidation of experiences with places I have come to know and value. Perceptual practice with the inestimable beauty to be found in nature inspires devotion, in which the making of things becomes inevitable. A timelessness pervades, and the essence of integrity and tenacity---of paying attention---brings value to expression that is persuasive and felt.
About David Coughtry:
Considering life along coastal towns and cities bordering the Atlantic and Pacific, I settle with the idea that here in Elsah there are two coasts . . . an east and west coast, defined by a great river. As muddy as the shorelines sometimes may be, the compliment of the Missouri plains with the Mississippi bluffs at river's bend, from Grafton to Alton, represent a unique sense of place, often presenting a consummate splendor. Abiding along this stretch of river as a practicing painter or educator feels significant.
It was along this setting where I received initial exposure and training as an artisan at Principia College in Elsah. After graduating I was eager to begin an art practice, launching into something I thought might be romantic vs. the humbler reality of starting in a home-town area that I was substantially too familiar with . . . yet the fortuitous discovery of the then dilapidated Pastures was made---the city’s old South End in Albany.NY. Two years encompassed a body of drawings and paintings that would ultimately establish further insight for next steps. Architectural aspects of the Pastures work eventually carried over into occassional commissioned architectural renderings, including visualizations for restoration of NY State Capitol chambers, theater rejuvenation, corporate campus design, city halls, etc
Taking leave of absence from visual art while house-building, I returned to painting a few years later with some artistic changes in mind. I began study with renowned painters Mark Greenwold and Richard Callner, and Art Historian Roberta Bernstein at The New York State University at Albany. Relinquishing urban settings, content gravitated toward previous personal exposures and connections with wilder environmental settings--to be realized mainly through large scale landscapes on canvas. M.A. and M.F.A. degrees were in hand by 1985.
Finishing graduate work I was appointed Assistant Professor of Art at Principia College. Four wonderful years later I felt led to practice what I loved teaching, leaving academic life to become a painter. Precincts of Schoharie County and the Adirondack Mountains became meaningful haunts for work. With an art career becoming more established (via frequent solo shows and inclusion in major traveling exhibitions throughout North America,) the notion to consider new territory prompted a move to Mt. Dora, Florida. In 1999 I was awarded a Florida Individual Fellowship Grant for painting.
Currently the Elsah bluffs and life along their flanks remain obvious themes for imagination--the first exhibition of river paintings in response to the area I entitled River Arc, presented in 2010. Opportunities as a Principia faculty member have also included design and leadership of field-trips through the western United States and art abroad expeditions through Turkey and Greece. I have found a sense of home in all of these places---while living on a bluff in the Midwest, and maintaining studios riverside at Alton.
It was along this setting where I received initial exposure and training as an artisan at Principia College in Elsah. After graduating I was eager to begin an art practice, launching into something I thought might be romantic vs. the humbler reality of starting in a home-town area that I was substantially too familiar with . . . yet the fortuitous discovery of the then dilapidated Pastures was made---the city’s old South End in Albany.NY. Two years encompassed a body of drawings and paintings that would ultimately establish further insight for next steps. Architectural aspects of the Pastures work eventually carried over into occassional commissioned architectural renderings, including visualizations for restoration of NY State Capitol chambers, theater rejuvenation, corporate campus design, city halls, etc
Taking leave of absence from visual art while house-building, I returned to painting a few years later with some artistic changes in mind. I began study with renowned painters Mark Greenwold and Richard Callner, and Art Historian Roberta Bernstein at The New York State University at Albany. Relinquishing urban settings, content gravitated toward previous personal exposures and connections with wilder environmental settings--to be realized mainly through large scale landscapes on canvas. M.A. and M.F.A. degrees were in hand by 1985.
Finishing graduate work I was appointed Assistant Professor of Art at Principia College. Four wonderful years later I felt led to practice what I loved teaching, leaving academic life to become a painter. Precincts of Schoharie County and the Adirondack Mountains became meaningful haunts for work. With an art career becoming more established (via frequent solo shows and inclusion in major traveling exhibitions throughout North America,) the notion to consider new territory prompted a move to Mt. Dora, Florida. In 1999 I was awarded a Florida Individual Fellowship Grant for painting.
Currently the Elsah bluffs and life along their flanks remain obvious themes for imagination--the first exhibition of river paintings in response to the area I entitled River Arc, presented in 2010. Opportunities as a Principia faculty member have also included design and leadership of field-trips through the western United States and art abroad expeditions through Turkey and Greece. I have found a sense of home in all of these places---while living on a bluff in the Midwest, and maintaining studios riverside at Alton.
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