“Avoiding complicated processes and techniques gets me right to why I paint: it’s an opportunity to capture a strong emotional response to something I’ve experienced.”

David Arsenault is a fine artist who has lived most of his life in upstate New York. He remembers first being inspired by art when, in a grade school library book, he came across a reproduction of Edward Hopper’s painting Gas. Little did he know that a seed had been sown which would sprout many years later.

David studied painting at the University at Albany. Since 1993 when he first began painting, David has been in dozens of local, regional and national exhibitions, including several in New York City. David’s work has won numerous awards in juried shows, including 2nd prize in July 2001’s 12th Annual National Juried Exhibition (2000) entries at Viridian Artists in New York City, and has been reproduced in various publications, including The Encyclopedia of Living Artists, The Artist’s Magazine, New Art International and Manhattan Arts International. His large oil paintings and prints can be found in corporate and private collections across the United States, as well as in the permanent collection of the Schenectady (NY) Museum. David has also served as a juror and conducted painting demonstrations, and is co-director of the Oakroom Artists, a juried artist organization.

David uses large shapes, dramatic lighting, and strong contrast to create a palpable sense of mood; people are seldom in the scene, yet are in the seen – represented by the objects and places that appear in his renderings. Light and its effect on objects at various times of the day or night is always the secondary subject. He uses a basic palette of only six colors and white, which Arsenault claims allows him to focus less on the technical and more on conveying feeling and a sense of time and place in his paintings.