PaintingsDIRECT.com

PaintingsDIRECT.com: Your landscapes are welcoming in their familiarity, in their depictions of country houses to local diners, and everything in between. Are the locations real places that you are familiar with?
David Arsenault: Many of my paintings are of actual places that I encounter in upstate New York. Often they’re places I just happen across, by accident. Things I see that "hit me" in a profound way I translate through my feelings; at times (especially when I was new to painting) I portray them very much as they appear, although I will use artistic license to remove, add, and move things to better serve my sense of mood and design. More and more, though, I'm taking things I see (like the telephone booth in Operators Are Standing By and the barber shop in Closed on Sunday) and giving them a new context-a new place to “live” or different lighting. Sometimes I can better connect with how I feel about these structures by putting them in places other than their "real" setting.

Operators Are Standing By
(1997)

Living Large
(1997)

PD: So would you consider these paintings autobiographical?
DA: I don't think of them as being autobiographical per se. They mostly do not represent places and objects that have been (or are) significant in my life. Still, I choose my painting motifs based on my feelings about the experiences and not because I want to recreate their exact appearance. In that sense, they are very much about me, because they reflect who I am and what I feel at the time I paint them. And, I recognize that car rides during childhood played an important role in how I see the world-and so affects the choices I make. If I’m not excited about or moved by something I see, I won’t paint it.

PD: Your compositions are very cinematic in their points of perspective, such as the partly-hidden house behind the shadowy hills in Living Large, or the lit interior in Lighthouse. Do you ever use film as a reference or source of inspiration?
DA: I don't see a lot of films now, although I have in the past. I do look at a lot of photography. Since I started painting I have often looked to the oils of Edward Hopper, who was influenced by stage and film, including "film noir" which was popular in his lifetime. His work, largely because of the dramatic light contrasts, object placement, angles, and ability to "freeze" a moment in time, has helped me to communicate in a similar visual language. I love drama in a painting!

Lighthouse
(1996)

Interview continued...
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