David Noah Giles

The Artist

Biography

I was born in New York City in 1951. My mother introduced me to impressionist painting and numerous modern art movements when I was still a child. She took me to all the art museums in New York City. When I was 11, at summer camp I painted sets for theater productions. I also visited Dartmouth University to participate in an inter-camp softball tournament; there I wandered into the basement of the University Library where I saw a mural painted by Mexican Painter Jose Clemente Orozco which enthralled me. At Russell Sage Jr. High I took art classes and continued to follow through with my interest in drawing and painting at Forest Hills High School.

In 1969 I entered the BFA program of the State University College at New Paltz, NY. The campus is ninety miles north of NYC in the Hudson River Valley. It was known at that time for its art education program. My most profound influence at the college was a drawing and painting instructor named Alex Minewski. Mr. Minewski had studied with Hans Hoffman in NYC and with Nicolaides, the author of The Natural Way to Draw, in Paris. He imbued me with the determination to develop and trust my own vision of art. In 1973 I was awarded first place in an undergraduate show juried by Alan Frumkin, owner of a well known 57th street art gallery in Manhattan. After leaving New Paltz, I made a pilgrimage by bus to Mexico City and Guadalajara to see Jose Clemente Orozco's murals. The experience at Dartmouth never left me and I was inspired to see his other works in person. He portrayed his humanism and spirituality in a fiery imagery that I found compelling.

In 1974 I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area. There I discovered a city surrounded by the dramatic natural beauty of the Pacific Coast. It possessed the magical atmosphere of the Beat and Hippie movements. The poetry readings and vibrant music scene were invaluable sources of inspiration. The Bay Area afforded rare chance meetings with people I admired such as Robert Rauschenberg and Imogen Cunningham. Mr. Rauschenberg, humble and kind, offered this advice to me, "…just keep painting." I met Ms. Cunningham at an exhibition of hers at the De Young Museum. I was very impressed with her young spirit (she was in her 80's) and aesthetic integrity. I attended figure-drawing classes at the San Francisco Art Institute and continued to paint in my inimitable style of Figurative Expressionism. I worked as an artist's model at City College of SF, Santa Rosa CC and painted houses to support myself. In North Beach cafes I sketched the local characters. In addition I filled my sketchbooks with colorful non-objective drawings where the harbinger of the next phase of my imagery was developing. My abstract style of painting continued to develop into calligraphic, "graffiti-esque" and geometric movements. I built my own lexicon of form and color.