David Humphrey: Gravity's Deposit

"Attached to my invitation to do the Freund Visiting Artist Lecture at Washington University in St. Louis was another invitation to make monoprints with Island Press, which is nested within that school. My plan was to compress the process into one day in which I would paint onto plates to be printed onto digital images I sent in advance. The images were snapshots of streets in my industrial neighborhood that I could augment, vandalize and project into with the improvisatory mark-making that monoprinting is so good at capturing." 

--David Humphrey, 2020

Humphrey’s paintings, sculptures and drawings have been known for their "surreal sexiness, postmodern snap, and painterly discrimination". Figuration and landscape are combined with abstract forms, and diverse painting practices co-exist to hatch implied but ultimately incomprehensible narratives. "There’s piquant visual humor in all of Humphrey’s paintings, but it serves as a sociological or psychological (and frequently sexually- or racially-tinged) hook rather than a smarmy snare-drum punch line, to jump-start deeper inquiry. With clear intent and laserlike focus, Humphrey does precisely what a painter ought to do: he makes you look hard and keeps you thinking even harder.” Jonathan Stevenson, Two Coats of Paint.