Urban Edge

It’s not too late to stop by and enjoy the lovely artwork of David M. Seward in the City Gallery this month. His show is called, “Urban Edge” and it is a bit of a departure from what you may be used to seeing him produce. These works are urban landscapes that have been created with the same pastoral mood we might expect to feel from paintings of a country garden or a pond full of geese surrounded by cattails. Can the gas station where I fill my tank every week be as lovely as a field of flowers? If the right person is holding the brush and expressing the view, it possibly can!

In light of having just celebrated Father’s Day, I think it’s very special to know that David’s love of art is directly connected to his father, Tom Seward, who taught Art at North Central High School for many years. David followed in his father’s footsteps and he now teaches Art at Pike High School. Born in Franklin, Indiana and raised in Indianapolis, David’s appreciation for the beauty of the Indiana landscape is evident in his impressionist oil paintings. I especially love the notion of seeing our everyday surroundings through a different lens. To quote David, the idea is to bring “life, energy and beauty to mundane subjects”. This brings to mind the question of what it is that defines beauty in the first place. In the case of the pieces in this show, beauty is created by the use of light, composition and brush strokes of an artist who clearly cares about the place he is interpreting.