“I love collaborating with other artisans on murals...it's kind of like being in a jazz band...we'll have a maquette to go by and that’s sort of the composition or the score, and we'll reference it but we each kind of go off and do our own thing, and then we all try to tie it all together in the end.” —SuperStrata artisan David Faust
In our latest conversation, David delves further into his creative process and reveals another side of his decorative painting style when it comes to his inspiring hand-painted murals and intricately stenciled walls.
You are quite experienced when it comes to decorative finishes, and we are curious to know how your journey with decorative painting began. What inspired you to learn techniques such as faux finishes, painted floors, hand-painted stenciled walls, and murals?
[Laughs] It's very unromantic the way it started. Basically, it was Boston in the late 80s when I got out of art school and I didn't have a job right away. Then, I began working for a full service painting company that did renovation work, strié, and decorative painting, and from there I sort of fell into it and started learning decorative techniques that way.
Since then, I've worked with a lot of different people and it’s mostly been a combination of what I've learned along the way, and developing my craft at the same time I was trying to work on my art.
1. Panoramic wall mural for Ceara Donnelley Ltd. Co. hand-painted in the dining room by David Faust with SuperStrata. Photo by Laura Wheatley.
2. Geometric hand-painted floor stencil design by David Faust.
What led you to study art in the first place?
I've always wanted to be an artist, since I was a kid. It started because I was obsessed with movies, you know, ones like—it's not even funny —Jaws, Star Wars, Godzilla, King Kong… the usual stuff.
So, the inspiration for what I would draw was always from movies, and I think if I grew up as a kid now, it might've been different because we have access to it so easily. But back then it was a way of stimulating my imagination—I would see something or I'd read something and I'd want to draw it. It was sort of a launching point.
Being based in New England, you have such gorgeous scenery to draw inspiration from when it comes to your murals and fine art paintings. Are there any particular serene locations, or times of day that you seek to paint the most?
Yes. My mother lives in Phippsburg, Maine, which is surrounded by water on three sides. I'm up there a lot and my favorite times of day are when it’s twilight—either really early in the morning or after the sun sets because the landscape forms become very simplified. There are big shapes and patterns, and the light playing with those elements creates forms that become almost abstract.
There's a real dynamic between the positive and negative spaces, and these silhouettes and cloud forms create beautiful patterns that happen as the tide is changing and the rocks are being exposed. As far as landscapes go, that would be what inspires me with my murals and fine art paintings.
1.Twilight on the Water in Maine. Oil paint on canvas by David Faust.
2. Nocturne Maine Landscape. Oil paint on canvas by David Faust.
When it comes to creating a custom stencil that you then use to paint on surfaces by hand, how do you take the designer's input and the homeowners' preferences and then draw from your own knowledge and skill to create something truly unique for them?
It's always a collaboration for me. I love working with other people, and it's really nice to get somebody else's input—it always ends up becoming a kind of conversation. You know, “Why don't we do this? Why don't we do that?” I'm looking at these sorts of things as inspiration. They'll tell me what they're looking for and then I’ll bring something that I like into it and we’ll go from there. It develops as a dialogue—a sort of back and forth of ideas.
So, in this collaborative process it’s as though the design is being put through a few different filters besides your own before ultimately becoming what you end up painting in a room?
As a decorative painter I have a craft and a skill set, and I'm using that skill set to help visualize what the client wants and what the designer wants. I'll have a little bit of myself in there, but I'm basically trying to express what they're trying to communicate.
Right, then you also have to consider the furnishings in the room, the upholstery color, and any art that is visible when thinking about the final artisan finish and making sure that there’s a balance with everything.
They all have to work together. They all have to talk to each other—meaning, I think what really works well as a room is one where all the elements talk to each other to express a whole—it's like a visual dialogue and a spatial dialogue.
1. Cape Cod American Aesthetic Movement inspired hand-painted stenciled bathroom wall by David Faust.
2. Freeform quilt design inspired hand-painted living room mural by David Faust.
Similarly, there is a lot that you must be able to navigate when painting a custom mural in a space. What differences are there in the creative process for painting a mural versus a stenciled surface?
I would say that with a stenciled surface it's a repeating pattern so it's almost like you're looking at an overall texture. When you’re painting a mural, you're working with a space, but you're also working within the space of the mural. It’s more dynamic horizontally and vertically, and there is the element of time as you're looking through it—you sort of move through the space and it changes as you move through the space, too.
There are a lot of things that are important when it comes to murals, like gesture and perspective, but with a stencil, it's a pattern and it's repeating. It’s a constant all the way around, so I kind of look at a stencil as being more of a wall finish.
Do you also enjoy collaborating with other artisans when it comes to painting murals?
I love collaborating on murals—if I'm working with two or three other people, it's fun because we each kind of play a part and it's almost improvisational. For example, one person starts out painting the foreground, and someone else works on the background. Then, the next day we'll switch and I'll go and paint on the area that they were working before and vice versa, and so nobody owns any one part of it.
So, it's kind of like being in a jazz band, you know, and you're all kind of playing off of each other. Sometimes there are as many as five of us working on a mural together and we'll just jump all over the place. We'll have a maquette to go by and that’s sort of the composition or the score, and we'll reference it but we each kind of go off and do our own thing, and then we all try to tie it all together in the end. So yeah, it's a fun process.
Lastly, how has your painting transformed over the years, and what subjects do you find yourself seeking out now?
Right now what I’m seeking out is more in flux, but I'll tell you what's come over the years. I started out doing figurative work before I was painting landscapes—both plein air and studio landscapes. I’ve been a photographer as well, so I was painting from my photographs and using them as inspiration images, and then I shifted to painting more from my personal photographs after that.
The paintings were very simplified from the photograph, so I wasn't trying to do photorealistic work, but more translating it into another medium and sort of expressing what it was about the image that drew me in. In that process, technically I was eliminating brush strokes, but since I've been doing mural work for almost ten years now and the murals that I've done are very textural, I'm actually really okay with the brush mark now. To me, the depth of tone and expression you can get is so much more.
So, I sort of started to let go of that control and have it be more about process, which is what I'm trying to do with my new work. Now, I’m creating drawings that are sort of abstract, but they're also very atmospheric so they allude to landscapes. I'm in the middle of the process and I'm trying to trust that, so we'll see where that goes.
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