Eileen David: The City That's Art
Eileen David centers her vibrant painting practice on San Francisco, the city she loves and has been enthusiastically exploring in diverse ways for 35 years through her dynamic oil and panel paintings of its colorful residential neighborhoods, street scenes, figures swimming in the Bay, and even the complex geometries of its bridges. Her masterful orchestration of light, shadow, shapes, and especially the colors she finds in the landscape, combine to validate Pulitzer Prize author and playwright William Soroyan’s famous claim that “San Francisco itself is art.”
David’s paintings are an expression of organic grace and geometric elegance. Through her use of light, shadow, and color, she simultaneously flattens space while expanding the visual environment. Her take on the built urban landscape moves between extracted geometry of hillside homes, to dynamic light and shadow patterns of industrial structures, to mindful observations of bay swimmers. Her paintings feel like soft moments, surprising the observer with kaleidoscopic beauty. Her color palettes, along with her brush work, express a sense of grounded joy. Space is delineated but with a movement that neither confines nor constricts the viewer.
The colors in her paintings, particularly those of the residential hillsides, create vibrant notions of abstract patterns. These rich saturated tones give movement and volume to the alluded depth of space. They illuminate visual relationships that one may normally pass over. The vibrancy of her colors determine the importance of each formal relationship rather than the viewer’s conceptual labeling. Manmade structures are presented with the same importance and visual value as the natural landscape. The roof of a house turns into a geometric slide, guiding the viewer to the extreme linear edge of a power line that quickly leads the eye
to the fluid complexity of a tree. Somehow one is both looking at the space and completely immersed at the same time.
The interplay of light and shadow as seen in the urban bridges, sea ports, and ocean side sunset views, offer a rhythm that is felt without overpowering the greater expression of space. The eye is drawn in, drawn through, and allowed to rest. Her paintings of bay swimmers offer the same interplay of color and form but through a more simplified lens. The bouncing light, seen skimming across the uniquely green and turquoise water, offers waves of stillness within the movement of depth. The human form acts as both catalyst and compliment to the elegance of the ocean. And the vibrancy of her secondary colors, like those seen on the bathing suits of each swimmer, are an additional light source on the contemplative components of those very moments.
In all of David’s paintings, there is an artistic awareness that provides the viewer with a moment to pause. What could often be seen as loud and aggressive within a city environment, is counteracted by the ambience of her compositions and the chosen forms within. Urban structures are formally crafted but movement within each painting is calmed by the softness of these shapes. By minimizing certain details, there is even more purpose in all that she presents.
Born in New York City, Eileen David studied at SUNY in New York City, the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, and earned her Bachelor of Arts degree at San Francisco State University and a Master of Fine Arts at San Jose State University. Over her career, David has been awarded with various honors including a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant and a Catherine Urban Scholarship.
- David Grey
Rolling Sea, 2024, oil on canvas, 18" x 24"
3rd Street Bridge - Center Divide, 2025, oil on canvas, 36" x 36"
3rd Street Bridge - Morning Light, 2024, oil on canvas, 30" x 40"
Long Swim, 2025, oil on canvas, 8" x 24"
Winter Tide Pools, 2024, oil on canvas, 48" x 30"
Ocean at Lands End, 2024, oil on canvas, 48" x 36"
Red House, 2025, oil on panel, 16" x 20"
Houses Near Ocean, 2025, oil on canvas, 18" x 24"
Castro Houses Late Afternoon, 2025, oil on canvas, 40" x 8"
Castro Houses on Hillside, 2025, oil on canvas, 40" x 8"
