Dave Martsolf

Dave Martsolf has been drawing and painting for over 40 years, since turning away from studies in architecture at MIT, circa 1967-70, to focus on the Fine Arts. Initially, he was intrigued by surrealism. He earned the Juror’s Prize at the “UNH Revisited” Alumni Show in 1981, and the Sawyer Award for Painting at the 38th Annual New Hampshire Art Association Exhibition at the Currier Gallery of Art in Manchester, NH (1985).

Break - 30 years in corporate America as a quality manager.

In 2017 Martsolf began painting abstracts, which he now calls the Dance series. These dance paintings highlight the energy and artistic honesty contained in original sketch on paper that is then enlarged and copied onto canvas using a computer projector. The projected image is then redrawn lightly with pencil or pen.

During the 2020 pandemic, Martsolf turned again back to the surreal, but this time with a more positive outlook, both in subject matter and in cerebral conception. He also began a series of what he calls “wild abstracts” where the entire canvas is completed in a matter of minutes with acrylics brushed boldly into a field of wet white gesso.