David Piurek will be showing a new series of more than a dozen paintings that are not portraits yet reference the idea of portraiture. They are inspired by portraits on view at the Ringling Museum where Piurek works as a conservation technician as well as paintings he saw on a recent trip to Spain where he visited the Prado. There he became enamored with Goya's "Black Paintings." Piurek new work reflects his intense interest what happens on the surface of the canvas during the process of making a painting.
Piurek grew up in Amsterdam, New York and has been living in Sarasota since 1995, when moved to Florida to attend Ringling College of Art & Design. Early in his career he was more interested in drawing than painting and even now his work has a powerful linear quality to it. It was during a trip to Paris, while in college that Piurek was convinced he had to start painting. While motivated by the "old masters" Piurek takes their ideas to a new level of contemporary sophistication. His previous series about the "Tower of Babel" was inspired by a painting of the same name by Pieter Breughel. Work from that series included collage and passages of silver leaf. The paintings in his exhibition at Greene Contemporary in October 2006 were inspired by the tradition of Dutch Still Life paintings and were inspired by many objects and shells from his own collection.
Everything about Piurek's canvases is hand-made. The impact of the "old masters'" methods on his process is profound. He makes his gesso, mixes his own paint from natural materials and sometimes he gives the paintings a patina of age by burnishing the surface with cotton. The canvas can look distressed or aged when it is less than two months old. Piurek gives great attention to the craft of his work. In this way, he insures that his contributions to the history of art will survive alongside examples of the "masters" he considers his teachers.