Andover Artist - David Sullivan

David Sullivan had a long and varied career as an artist. He studied at both the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles and the Museum School in Boston. He came to Andover in 1969 when he opened a gallery at 91 Main Street with Howard Yezerski.

Early in his career he was influenced by Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth.

He chose egg tempura for his early works and painted portraits, not totally representational, but as he saw them.

Quite a methodical painter, he sometimes drew from slides of photographs projected onto a black box. He then creates a grid to transfer the picture to canvas or paper, sometimes reworking sections of the larger picture with pencil or ink.

By 1995 he had moved from portraits to abstracts, or specific abstracts, as he called them. Forever experimenting, he stacked layers of pencil drawings drawn on translucent paper to create a 3D effect.

In the late 90's he studied Cezanne's works and created paintings designed to emphasize Cezanne's use of line and color. He actually redrew Cezanne's painting with his own interpretation. He donated "After Cezanne: Still Live with Flowered Pitcher", to Memorial Hall Library where it is hung on the stairway to the second floor.

see

• "Rising Young American Artist", Lawrence Eagle Tribune, February 17, 1969, page 6.
• "Painting is an Image of the Painter's Soul," Eagle Tribune, February 24, 1985, page B3.
• "Portrait of Artist Who Does No Portraits", Eagle Tribune, April 2, 1995, page c3.
• "Collaborating with Cezanne", Eagle Tribune, May 14, 1998.
• "Learning from a Master", Eagle Tribune, May 23, 1998, page 19
• Original Art at Memorial Hall Library

--Eleanor 15:54, October 28, 2011 (EDT)

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