The Mixing of Movements An Investigation into the Work of David Trowbridge by M. Austin Haight Having grown up and studied in the Midwest, David Trowbridge did not experience Los Angeles, or at least California for that matter, until he enrolled at Fresno State (‘67-’69), and then subsequently moved to Santa Monica after graduation to teach at University of California Santa Barbara in the 1970s. But what about Trowbridge’s background served to be an influence in the formulation of his work? Iowa in my mind brings forth an image of the famed Printmaking and Book Arts program of University of Iowa and of course AmericanGothic,GrantWood’siconic portrait that spawned Regionalism. Trowbridge was certainly no pasticheur of Wood’s pictorialization of a Romantic, if anything, version of Down-Home America just because he hailed from farms of the Midwest and was a member of 4H. Instead of rationalizing on his more distant relations in regard to artistic practice, his background, in terms of the moment Trowbridge entered concerning Los Angeles art, should be further analyzed in order to find a more resounding voice traveling through the product of Trowbridge’s practice. California at the time was in the backwash of the rise of Surfing and Hot Rods in the ‘50s, the Postwar
and still brewing element of the San Franciscan ‘60s and the elemental Palais de Justice Hollywood had imposed on the pop-culture of the area since the advent of Movie Stardom, which en masse can be said to be the all equivocal propagative implications surrounding the precursors to Los Angeles’ current back break with Post-Modernistic Low Brow Folly; that is to say, much can be afforded to take into account the variables that served as the seeds of LA Minimalism vs. NY Minimalism, Light & Space, the fetish for finish, Pattern & Decoration and Hard Edge painting. When discussing an artist of the era one typically sticks to one movement, yet I find that David Trowbridge’s work is able to breach categorical stability. In many ways, a Pluralist definition of David Trowbridge’s work can be discerned, more so contrived, by picking and choosing specific elements from the aforementioned movements within Trowbridge’s formative and emerging years as an artist. Then suddenly, the disgustingly banal analogy of one visiting a salad bar of “Artistic Repartee and Ramifications” in order to build d’une salade de Trowbridge ensues with all the definitive ingredients constructed and compartmentalized.