Today we’d like to introduce you to David Strain.
Hi David, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I’ve always had a talent for drawing, but when high school was over and it was time to go to college, I felt the pressure to do what everyone else was doing. I couldn’t visualize what my heart was telling me to do, so I chose a business major, then later changed to dentistry. I was dabbling. I was doubting the path I was on and my surroundings just didn’t feel right. After a few semesters of figuring myself out, I cut out the nonsense in my mind and went for the Fine Arts degree that I had wanted all along. Everything felt right. I found my calling, I found my people. The energy of creativity and production that buzzed throughout the classrooms and art shows at that time fed my soul and passion. Yet, after graduation (from University of Texas in San Antonio) I found myself again floating and drifting. Not being able to grasp onto the belief that I truly could have a career as an Artist, as a painter. I worked lots of different jobs before a friend helped me settle into a position on an offshore drilling rig in the oil and gas industry. A huge segue from my original passions and intentions! But this career worked for me for a long time. Five years to be exact.
During that period of time I met my wife and we traveled extensively. Both avid outdoors enthusiasts, we utilized the three weeks on, three weeks off schedule to our advantage and camper-vanned all over this country… and a couple of others too. All the while, the free schedule gave me the time to continue drawing and experimenting with different mediums. As time crept by, I took a position in the corporate office with the same oil and gas company and that is when everything shifted. I’m not a behind the desk kind of guy. I am proud of my work ethic and it carries me nicely through everything that I pursue in my life, but this just felt like I was draining my valuable resources. It wasn’t the right fit for me and it quickly wore me down and it showed. My wife, having been a hairstylist for over 20 years, kept encouraging me to quit the oil and gas industry and join her behind the chair in the hair salon. A husband and wife creative team, if you will. It definitely took a lot of convincing, but I finally saw her vision and knew that a creative field would suit me much better than a corporate career.
I quit, and I’ve never looked back. I love being my own boss, besides my wife, building something that is ours…but more than anything, this new career has given me the gift of time again. Time to pursue my real passion as an artist. There’s no more confusion. The time is now. I can feel it and I’m out here to get it. In the past two years, I have hand built and painted over 15 original pieces that I will be showcasing in my first solo art exhibit titled, Kaleidoscope on October 1 in our personal salon space. For one night only, we will be transforming our salon into an art gallery and I’m hoping to give the attendees an immersive experience into my personal world of colors, shapes, and topographies.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Of course, I could look back and say that the transitions I have gone through have been bumpy, but in reality that is not how I see it. I am simply on my own personal life journey. Everything I have experienced has been part of my personal process to get to where I am now. I wouldn’t change it. Had I not worked offshore, I would not have had the time to travel and see the wilderness, which has been a huge inspiration for me in my artwork. The imagery from my travels is etched in my subconscious and I know it appears when I open up creatively. Had I not joined my wife in the beauty industry, I could still be stuck behind a desk, working long hours, giving away my weekends, and commuting an hour to and from work 5 days a week. Together, my wife and I made the decision to purchase our own personal salon space and truly play out the rest of our lives by our own rules. Now I have a home in which to showcase and display my art. I also understand the process of buying a business space should I choose to pursue my own personal gallery in the future. It’s all been part of the beautiful process.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I’ve been creating art with focus since the day I enrolled in the School of Fine Arts at the University of Texas in San Antonio. After graduation, I began to draw on paper exclusively. Drawing allowed me to be as precise and calculated as I wanted to be. There is a permanency and finality to drawing in ink that encouraged me to build a steady hand and fierce concentration. In those years, I created three main series of drawings titled: The Building Up Series, Fractured, and De-construction. These segued into large wooden sculptural pieces and acrylic paintings. The Building Up Series was my first collection of black and white drawings on paper that explored straight edge line work and show extremely dense futuristic cityscapes that are visually claustrophobic and perhaps represent an overpopulated environment.
The later drawings in the series become abstracted and show a chaotic breakdown of the controlled cityscapes. Forms appear to release, move, and break away from their environments and eventually begin to resemble futuristic landscapes that display a connection between recognizable natural forms and technological machine-like forms. My work then transitions to incorporate color and organic shapes that circumnavigates the composition to create visual balance. These current abstractions have been characterized and described as landscapes and cityscapes with approaching recognizable forms. These paintings are treated with the same care and precision on both the fronts and the backs. The backs are hand-painted with a title and signature that visually communicates each work. English language titles are also given to help distinguish each piece from the next and to help establish a deeper relationship and connection with the viewer. Each new piece takes upwards of 100 hours and I am extremely proud of the finished products.
We’re always looking for the lessons that can be learned in any situation, including tragic ones like the Covid-19 crisis. Are there any lessons you’ve learned that you can share?
My family and I have been so fortunate to have not been negatively affected by Covid, but I learned a lot from the collective experience we all went through as people. Again, I think the theme of my personal narrative is Time. The Covid crisis forced my wife and I to stay home. We work for ourselves. If we don’t go in, we don’t make money. Instead of panicking, we counted our blessings, hunkered down, and learned as much as we could to help enriched our knowledge in our industry and give ourselves the personal reset that we had been needing but not addressing. All the while, I was of course in my home studio, plugging away hours on my artwork. Like many others, we were blessed and majorly surprised with a Covid quarantine pregnancy! The birth of my daughter has changed me as a person and perhaps shown me more than ever that now is the time to live my life for me, for us. It’s our vision, our dream, our reality. I want to show my daughter that she can pursue whatever her heart desires. You just have to have a good plan of action, work ethic, and belief in yourself.
Contact Info:
- Website: StudioStrain.com
- Instagram: @davidjamesstrain
Image Credits
Chelsea Cortez (took image of David standing in front of his paintings). David James Strain took all other images of artwork
