The Art of David Titterington :: home ::artwork :: resume :: background :: 経歴 :: archive BackgroundI was born and raised in Kansas City. I began to draw at age three, using crayons and markers on my bedroom walls. Furious but intrigued, my parents sent me to private lessons at six and I have studied the visual arts ever since. In high school I started studying the Japanese language and Zen Buddhism, and became interested in hospice, death, and the process of dying. The summer after my senior year I home-stayed in India for three weeks and discovered the writings of Shunryu Suzuki, Ken Wilber, and the Dalai Lama, inspiring me to begin a daily practice of meditation. While studying painting, mysticism, art history, and East Asian Language and Culture at the University of Kansas, I founded a weekly sitting group before returning to India for the Dalai Lama's spring teachings. I also participated in spiritual retreats and workshops in Kansas, including a Buddhist refuge with Khamtrul Rinpoche in 2002. In 2004 I became involved with the Integral Institute, an international interdisciplinary think tank, when one of my paintings was used for the cover of their Integral Ecology and Sustainability seminar brochure. The last four years I have lived and exhibited in Japan, teaching middle school students English and cultural relativism while enjoying some unexpected studio space. I am currently working on a series of small square oil paintings on wood of scenes from around my town and dreams. Textures and atmospheres intrigue me – the way light falls over forms and fills spaces. I am excited by illusionism, symbolism, magic, and paradoxes. I think magic and art have many things in common. With my paintings I am conjuring states and ideas inside others – I hope my art leaves the viewer with more light than before. I feel graced with instruction from many amazing teachers, particularly the late Robert Brawley from the University of Kansas. I feel he has entrusted me with a great realist lineage and the responsibility to hold it by putting myself in a position to teach. It’s my way of honoring him as well as the entire painting tradition. As a realist, it is my job to include as many dimensions of the real, or perspectives of the real, as I can. I have begun to understand that what is "real" depends on the type of consciousness in the individual. Also, there are interior realities, exterior realities, individual realities, and collective realities, and all four of these are valid. The more perspectives I can take, the more informed I can be, the more depth and power my work can hold and deliver to the viewer – and so I love exploring my own limitations, listening to criticism, and developing skill. Moreover, I believe that anything that does not suggest change, infinity, mystery, or consciousness is not completely realistic, since all of those are inherent aspects of any occasion.
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