PRESS RELEASE
David Aylsworth: Five, Six, Seven, Eight
May 18 – Aug 10, 2013
Holly Johnson Gallery in Dallas is pleased to announce the opening of David Aylsworth: Five, Six, Seven, Eight, a selection of paintings spanning the last four years. This is the artist’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery. A catalogue will accompany the exhibition with an essay by Jonathan A. Molina Garcia. An opening reception will be held Saturday, May 18th, from 6:00 to 8:00 pm. The exhibition continues through Saturday, August 10, 2013.
Pinks, yellows and whites dominate this group of recent oil on canvas paintings, which continue to reference, in both title and optical display, the gaiety of Broadway numbers and choreographed performances between stage actors. Likewise, many show an intense physicality that comes from layering paint in such a way that both hides and reveals. These casual yet deliberate brushstrokes profess a quirkiness of execution typical of the artist’s self-deprecation and lightheartedness.
Aylsworth was born in Tiffin, Ohio in 1966. He received a B.F.A. degree from Kent State University in 1989. From 1989 to 1991 he was a Core Fellow and Resident at the Glassell School of Art, Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas. In 2001, The Galveston Art Center mounted a ten-year survey of his work that traveled to Texas A&M University in Commerce and the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. In 2008 his work was included in a group exhibition, Learning by Doing: 25 Years of the Core Program, at the Museum of Fine Arts, in Houston. His work was also featured in a one-person exhibition, Fugue for Tinhorns Sounds like Frère Jacques, at the Ellen Noël Art Museum in Odessa, Texas in 2008.
David Aylsworth has been a recent recipient of an Artadia Award Houston and an Individual Artist Grant from the Cultural Arts Council of Houston/Harris County in 2005. His work is in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Dallas Museum of Art, The Art Museum of South Texas in Corpus Christi, The Art Museum of South East Texas in Beaumont, and the El Paso Museum of Art. He currently resides in Houston.
In 2012 a 64 page book was published on Aylsworth’s work and featured an essay by Kurt Mueller and an interview between the artist and Toby Kamps, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Menil Collection in Houston. Many other articles have been written about the artist’s work in publications such as; Art Lies, Art in America, House Beautiful, The Dallas Morning News, The Houston Press, and Fort Worth Star-Telegram.