The characteristic focus of David King’s work involves expressive interpretations of landscapes and objects that he observes while driving. Each year he covers more than twenty thousand miles behind the wheel of his trusty, Dodge Ram on trips to Colorado Springs, Colorado and Santa Fe, New Mexico. These countless hours spent on the road afford King “uninterrupted time to think and reflect,” and opportunities to gear his mind, as ever, toward new directions in which he might steer his art. While some might find such long, car-ridden hours unbearably boring, King depends upon his imagination to bay the tediousness, often occupying himself with in-car activities such as sketching, singing and playing the harmonica and keyboard (he notes: “I don’t have to see the sketchpad, harmonica or keyboard to create art and music—my eyes are on the road.”). He also photographs the changing light outside of his car in relation to the landscapes he drives through, recording its effects on the appearances of cars and trucks surrounding him on the road. All of these observations, he says, are “fodder for [his] art.”
Early in his career, King did not focus on any single aspect of these on-road observations, rather creating his art from many pieces of the things he saw. One day as he was driving on the highway, a large semi truck forced its way in front of him and, all at once, enlightened the faction of his mind that would proceed to develop his most in-depth and exploratory concentration to date—the wildly unique “Truck Series.” A collection of paintings depicting the reflective patterns on the back ends of semi and tanker trucks. King’s “Truck Series” explores the theme of art’s encompassing grasp on the most unlikely of subjects. He attempts to take a common situation most find particularly aggravating and unsightly—en route entrapment behind large, ugly trucks—and capture with his paintings the beauty of the geometric, organic shapes that dance across the back of such trucks, thereby revealing the depth of artistic power: a rare ability to transcend the commonality of life and create the extraordinary from the mundane.
The “Truck Series” has evolved a great deal since its birth in 2006, as King constantly expands and reshapes the scope of his expression. With beginnings in pure abstraction, King initiated the series by creating images that depicted only reflection and light pattern. As the series progressed, he experimented with abstract color schemes, different background subject matter and eventually more realistic representations of the backs of his trucks, incorporating the stickers and advertisements he saw on the trucks’ trailer doors.