I received my Masters degree in Art with an emphasis in painting from Illinois State University in 1971, after getting my BS in Education from Illinois State in '67. I spent most of my career as a graphic designer at Illinois State, then at State Farm Insurance Companies, retiring in 2007.
I deal mainly with color: how it is handled on canvas and handled with various brush strokes. In non-objective work, my interest is in how one color relates to another, whether it is color next to color or color over color. I look for what Lou Steinburg, my painting instructor at Illinois State, called "happy accidents", those brush strokes that just seem to happen on the canvas. I have been working on some paintings I call my "Horizon" series, in which I do a lot of color over color and how subtle colors work together. I mix my colors on the palette mainly with brush, not palette knife, because I like what the brush strokes reveal about color on color and I use a lot of color right out of the tube.
My realistic work is somewhat impressionistic. I start by painting outlines in bright colors that contrast with the colors I'll use in the painting and don't worry about whether those lines show through in the finished piece. If there are paint spatters or runs and they work to make the painting more vibrant, I keep them in the painting.
I've shown my latest work at the Sugar Creek Arts Festival in Normal, Illinois. While in graduate school, I won a purchase award for a painting at the Evansville, Indiana, Museum of Art, History and Science. I also had two works in a show at Lakeview Museum of Arts & Sciences in Peoria, Illinois.
Recently, one of my non-objective paintings was chosen to permanently hang in the new City Hall / Multimodal Transportation Center in Normal, Illinois.
All images © Dave Templeton 2014. All Rights Reserved.