Foreword
As someone who comes from a family that has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for over a century, I have a deep love of the landscape of this region and the timeless beauty that encapsulates the City and its iconic hills. Though Eileen David arrived in San Francisco more recently than my family did, her love of our fair metropolis, with its romantic houses, steep streets, and dramatic vistas is encapsulated in each painting she creates. For this exhibition, David returned to an earlier series – waves and beach scenes from along Land’s End and Ocean Beach – which she had not made for many years. The resulting works, coupled with a selection of her signature “housescapes” convey moments of transcendence, beauty, and visual delight through the rhythms and textures of their painted surfaces. Walking the streets of San Francisco, I cannot find better words to describe what meets my eye.
I want to give my greatest thanks to Eileen David for creating the gorgeous paintings featured in the exhibition and found in the following pages. It has been a great joy to work with her to put this exhibition together. I also want to thank her for agreeing to be interviewed about her paintings for this catalogue. I hope you will find our conversation as revealing and insightful as it was for myself.
Lastly, I would also like to thank the team here at Paul Thiebaud Gallery – Colleen Casey, Matthew Miller, and Gregory Hemming. Mounting exhibitions and publishing catalogues is a team effort, and without their hard work, this publication and exhibit would not have been possible.
Greg Flood, Director December 2024
Artist Interview / Eileen David
Eileen David has made San Francisco the subject of her paintings for over three decades as of this writing. While the city has been her inspiration, in each work David’s primary focus has been on the shapes, forms, colors, and light as she applies each brushstroke. Looking closely at her finished compositions, viewers can easily perceive David’s interest in not only geometric shapes and forms, but also in abstracting the cityscape around her. On the occasion of her newest exhibition, City and Sea, at Paul Thiebaud Gallery, I sat down with Eileen David to find out more about her paintings and inspirations.
You are primarily a painter. Has that always been your vehicle for artistic expression?
When I was growing up, my mom gave me a strong message to follow my dream. She wanted to be a dancer but her parents would never consider it and would not even allow her to mention it. So, when I exhibited a natural ability to draw at a very young age she strongly encouraged that in me. She enrolled me in an oil painting class when I was nine years old and took me to the Art Students League in New York City when I was 15 to take classes there. It always felt like my destiny.
You are originally from New York. What brought you to San Francisco?
I lived in New York until 1973. The late 1960s and early 1970s was an exciting time to be there. My partner then was a locally famous counter culture figure and performance artist. He was also a serious painter. We were immersed in the art scene in NYC, museums, galleries, and lots of painting. Due to his notoriety, we were surrounded by art and music luminaries. I started attending the State University of New York at Purchase. My professors were all exhibiting artists, John Torreano and Nabil Nahas. One of my professors was good friends with Robert Motherwell who came to our small class and talked with us about painting. I was thriving, but my partner was burned out from NYC and wanted to move to Miami. After a year in Miami, I hated it there. It was too hot and there was not much going on there. I wanted to go back to NY. He did not, and asked me to choose someplace else. I chose San Francisco. It was a bit random.
When did you fall in love with San Francisco, and when did you decide it would be the primary subject in your painting?
Adjusting to San Francisco was hard for me. I spent the first five years missing NY. I have been here for 50 years now, so obviously something at some point changed. When I began painting here, I was looking through a lens of NY sensibilities and memory. Thus, my early fascination with steel structures, bridges, industrial and urban forms, and soft light were all informed by my early childhood memories of crossing bridges, coming from and going to Manhattan and Long Island. Recalling the early Hopper paintings I had seen and some of the Ashcan School painters, including John Sloan, they had me seeking out structures reminiscent of NY. I would go out and photograph lower Potrero Hill, with its brick buildings and freeway overpasses, on early weekend mornings when the streets were empty.
Then of course my vision evolved, but I do not think I was painting San Francisco, per se. It was more about the compositional elements created by light and shadow. I think if I was not here, I would be seeking out imagery that aligns with my vision. Hopper spent time in Paris, but his paintings from the time he spent there look like New York. The colors, the light, have a NY sensibility.
I can see how your work was informed by NY painters. Were there any California painters that interested you?
Yes, definitely! Wayne Thiebaud, Richard Diebenkorn, Gordon Cook, Robert Bechtle. I remember seeing the paintings Thiebaud did of Potrero Hill for the first time. I was just completely WOW-ed by his perspective and brushwork. After that, Diebenkorn, and his ability to push imagery and paint almost to the point of pure abstraction, while still being able to describe his forms. Breaking the picture plane into large shapes, while sometimes employing a kind of skewed perspective implies a simplicity while simultaneously, his brushwork and paint application are so complex. This definitely influenced my paintings of houses (housescapes), and feeds my love of geometry and invention.
Water is an important part of your life, since you swim in the bay on a regular basis. Can you share its importance to you?
It seems like I have always lived by the ocean, on both coasts. I spent a lot of growing up in Long Island where my grandparents lived, on my grandfather’s boat or at the beach. I was making paintings of sand dunes on Ocean Beach in the 1990s. Although my paintings were accessible, they had a deeper meaning for me based on childhood memories and allegory.
I recently kind of revisited that in this new body of ocean paintings. These began with hikes I was taking at Land’s End. I was looking to capture the excitement and unbridled power and lack of constraints. I am visually motivated by what is in my immediate environment. When I started swimming in the bay twelve years ago, I naturally started observing swimmers, the water, and their relationship to it. You definitely feel that when you’re swimming in open water; the waters have ways of behaving that have nothing to do with you. This can be both exhilarating and terrifying. That is probably the only time I put people in my paintings. I usually refrain from that because I do not want the painting to become a narrative. I think with the swimmers, it’s just as much about the open water as it is about the figure.
How important is light in your paintings?
Light is just as important, even more so than the subject. I am always looking at the strong compositional elements created by light and shadow. I will make paintings of some of the same streets or vantage points because of the differences of the light and shadows renders each a completely different painting.
I have grown to appreciate the light in San Francisco. It feels more stark and dramatic. I have lately been reinvigorated by the crisp winter light the city gets when painting my housescapes and the interplay of light and shadow on the steep streets.
Your “housescape” paintings have a compressed visual space, lending them to a somewhat abstract feel. Is that feeling intentional on your part?
It is and it is not. If you look at the hillsides here, especially in the neighborhoods where they are blanketed by houses, they really do appear that way. However, that is a jumping off point for me. In those works, I flatten out the picture plane and play with space, color, and make lots more inventions than in my other paintings. Those are fun and exciting to create. When I paint them, I feel a freedom to experiment using nontraditional painting tools – house painting brushes, squeegees, and even credit cards. I cannot think of a better way to spend time.
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Exhibition Checklist
Plate 1: Path to Beach 2024 oil on canvas
44 x 36 inches
Plate 2: Looking West from Land’s End 2024 oil on canvas
36 x 24 inches
Plate 3: At the Shore 2024 oil on canvas
30 x 30 inches
Plate 4: Ocean Beach Dunes 2024 oil on canvas
48 x 60 inches
Plate 5: The Calm Sea 2024 oil on canvas
48 x 36 inches
Plate 6: Looking North to Marin Headlands 2024 oil on panel 12 x 12 inches
Plate 7: Ocean at Land’s End 2024 oil on canvas
48 x 36 inches
Plate 8: Blue Ocean 2024 oil on canvas
40 1/8 x 29 3/4 inches
Plate 9: Land’s End Beach 2024 oil on canvas 18 x 36 inches
Plate 10: Early Morning Dunes 2024 oil on canvas 36 x 44 inches
Plate 11: View of Alcatraz 2024 oil on panel 12 x 12 inches
Plate 12: Patio with Umbrella 2024 oil on panel 12 x 12 inches
Plate 13: Winter Tide Pools 2024 oil on canvas 48 x 29 3/4 inches
Plate 14: Rolling Sea 2024 oil on canvas 18 x 24 inches
Plate 15: Green Hillside 2022 oil on canvas 29 x 48 inches
Plate 16: Gatehouse 2023 oil on canvas 24 x 24 inches
Plate 17: Evening Orange Sky 2024 oil on canvas
36 x 24 inches
Plate 18: Three Tankers 2023 oil on canvas 10 x 20 inches
Plate 19: Morning Shadows / 3rd Street Bridge 2024 oil on canvas
30 x 40 inches
Plate 20: Rip Tide with Orange Sky 2024 oil on canvas 24 x 24 inches
Plate 21: The Alma 2023 oil on canvas 18 x 18 inches
Plate 22: Russian Hill View 2024 oil on canvas, 20 x 16 inches
Plate 23: Hyde Street Pier 2023 oil on canvas 24 x 36 inches
Works not Exhibited
Plate 24: Grey Day at Ocean Beach 2022 oil on canvas 48 x 36 inches
Plate 25: Gas Stop 2023 oil on panel 12 x 12 inches
Plate 26: Kayaks on Beach 2023 oil on canvas 16 x 20 inches
Plate 27: Hill to Bridge 2024 oil on panel 8 x 8 inches
Plate 28: Freeway Exit 2023 oil on canvas 12 x 16 inches
Plate 29: Pink Blossoms, Morning Light 2023 oil on panel 6 x 18 inches
