David Stewart Klein’s work has been the need to express something strong, volatile, fragile, and fleeting. To him that can be the intimacy and vulnerability of a portrait, an argument from a couple, the silence between figures, the strength of an individual standing or the fluidity in motion.
Statement
One thing that has always tied David Stewart Klein’s work together has been the need to express something strong, volatile, fragile, fleeting. To him that can be the intimacy and vulnerability of a portrait, an argument of a couple, the silence between figures, the strength of a individual standing or fluidly in motion. Klein takes his subjects and amplifies the compositional space with what is being represented, a fragment of his mind and the people that inhabit the world around him. Whether it is in oil, or acrylic paint, sculpture, or drawings done in charcoal, ink or pencil, his works read as intense, thought provoking and beautiful. Klein will use the color pallets necessary to show the mood he seeks to convey, whether in varying vivid colors or in a more limited dynamic range. He aims to capture the essence of his subjects and intends to show his audience his belief that no matter their background, the one thing present in us all is our souls. We all have something to say underneath our silence.
About
David Stewart Klein was born and raised in Queens, New York to two musicians by profession and is a 4th generation visual artist on his mothers side.Klein spent most of his childhood and teenage years teaching himself the styles he loved and expressing himself through drawing. His first education was at age 8 at the Roslyn School of Fine Art in New York where he developed his interests and skills in painting, charcoal, and pastel. During this time he was influenced by Norman Rockwell and close friend, Ronald Workman, a New York based artist. Prior to his next educational experience, He became enamored by certain comic book artists such as Todd McFarlane, Greg Capullo, Michael Turner, cartoonist Jim Davis and caricaturist Al Hirschfeld, and he soon began to create his own comics and characters. Not long after this he found his first mentor, comic book artist Christian Torres who inspired him to go forward with his dreams for several years. During high school, Klein and his family left New York and moved permanently to Los Angeles, CA. During his 3rd year in high school, Klein was selected to attend a course at the Young Artist Studio at Otis College of Art and Design, taught by influential Franklyn Liegel. After high school, Klein attended Santa Monica College and found his love of Fine Art and eventually decided to go to Otis to finish his BFA Degree. During this time he fell in love with the works of Van Gogh, Salvador Dali, Zdzislaw Beksiński, Gustave Dore, comic book artists Möebius and Frank Miller, and developed a love for Japanese ink drawing. Before beginning undergrad studies at Otis, Klein became adamant about starting his exhibiting career and decided to venture into the Los Angeles scene without any contacts at all. From meeting people at openings he began to plant seeds and stir up noise about his unseen talent and was soon offered a spot in a largely attended show in Downtown Los Angeles by a group called DADA. This immediately caught the attention of several art curators and gallery owners and in the following months accumulated exhibitions in areas all over Los Angeles and the neighboring Orange County. By the end of the year, 2012, Klein had participated in nearly 40 group exhibitions, and by the time he earned his BFA from Otis, he had done over 50 exhbitions. In the year 2018, Klein held his first solo exhibition in Santa Monica, California at the Blue 7 Gallery featuring 60 pieces of art, mostly paintings.
