Child's Play: David Deutsch

Los Angeles native David Deutsch has a history in landscape painting, however his recent shift towards more abstracted scenes of driving cars and family houses offers a greater impression of movement, beyond our perceived reality. His painting style has become loose and gestural, offering an energy “like a Dionysian outburst, an orgy of painterly pleasure"[1] that appears to come from an intuitively creative force, rather than a logical, analytical study. The all-over-ness of the canvas, the lack of spatial differentiation, the ambiguity of perspective, and the visibility of the brushstroke result in a chaotic disorder that, surprisingly, feels more like a humorous release than a confused mess. Deutsch’s work elicits the finger painting technique of childhood, as he manages to “expose the unconscious primitive urges lurking deep within.”[2]

In Untitled (2009) the only recognizable object is the car in the bottom register of the painting. Muddled grays and browns, with accents of red, blue, and auburn, create a universal messiness across this painting. Colors smudge together in circular and linear motions, creating a comprehensive sensation of movement. There is, however, no spatial depth, no concept of the surrounding space. Untitled (2008), similarly, refuses any contextualization, as if the housed characters live in a vacuum of sweeping grays, blues, and pinks. The people, abstract nearly beyond the point of recognition, appear exposed, as if Deutsch removed the front-most structure of the house. 

Drama calls upon many of the same stylistic techniques as the aforementioned two paintings yet differs in its application of lighter, more jovial color choice. Off-whites, pastel pinks, and royal blues dominate the stale neutrals as this sedan zooms down an undefined street. With different sized wheels, the car appears suspended above the gray street, past one pedestrian and possibly crashing into another. Houses become abstracted into the background, hardly set back from the mayhem of the anterior street scene. 

David Deutsch, Untitled, 2009

Acrylic on linen

David Deutsch, Untitled, 2008

Oil on linen

David Deutsch, Drama, 2009

Acrylic on linen

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[1] Brooklyn Rail.

[2] LA Times.