The Painting Galleries of Dave Tinman Edgar

The TreeMachine Series (2006 to present)

The finished paintings are derived from a continuing series of drawings of basic tree line forms and their gestures and repetitive lines.

The forms have developed into objects of my own invention and continue to evolve. The impetus to paint these forms stem from a direct personal experience in the military in which I saw a man fall from the sky to his death.

Hmmwv Landscapes (2004 to present)

Paintings which use images from photographic source material of special operations units undergoing training in the California and Nevada desert. Since 2004, the paintings have undergone a slow change from photo-realism to color abstraction.

The inspiration for the work is twofold: my personal military history, service in an Army Ranger unit in the mid nineteen-eighties, and the current war in Iraq and Afghanistan. I paint these images to humanize aspects of the military and to help with my own walk through the two worlds of being both a veteran and civilian. As a professional soldier, I had the privilege of seeing the wild, "uncivilized" areas of Northern Africa, the Middle East and Central America. The Humvee/Landscape series provides an avenue for me to explore a mystical connection I developed with the earth's natural ecology through my military service.

The Leroux Series (2003-04)

Paintings done from video imagery included in a documentary aobut a small clothing retailer in Seattle, Washington.

A central theme that surfaced in my thinking during this painting series is that of impermanence. Here I am painting these paintings of wool and fine thread cotton, leather belts and racks and racks of suits and pants. The abundance of material is evident. Alas, it is all just more shit that we occupy ourselves with, material items that fill our senses. One day they, and all other “things” we are attached to, will be gone, and, in the same relationship, so will we. They are just simply things but by their nature they decompose, disappear. Maybe that is why the paintings I paint have a background that bleeds through, maybe it is the sound of pigments singing together that I cover up with loud, overbearing landscapes of clothing.

So while one might celebrate the objects that surround them, they truly celebrate their own demise. Nothing is permanent, everything is constantly evolving and the more we hang on to permanence, to the safety of fixed perception, the more drastic and unbearable change is. So maybe these paintings are about letting go. Not only are they just objects that I paint, they are also, only paintings.