Artist’s statement

Born in 1956 in Auburn, Indiana, I have spent the past 30 years living in Wisconsin near the shores of Lake Michigan with my wife, Lisa. We've been married for 42 years and have two wonderful, grown children.

For more than four decades, I was a journalist — a storyteller. I came to painting later in life, drawn to it not for the sake of telling a story, but for something deeper: the raw, unspoken, and usually anonymous, connection between artist and observer.

From a young age, I was fascinated by those who worked with their hands—the Amish carpenter shaping oak, maple, and walnut boards into something enduring, both my grandfathers, one a farmer, the other a mason, my own father as he grew his lush and expansive garden, the potter in Brown County, Indiana, whose jugs and vases carried both beauty and utility.

I admired the honesty in their craft, the way their work spoke without words.

That same spirit guides me as I paint. We live in a time when words fail. Perhaps art does not. Art is an offering, after all. Once a piece is made, it no longer belongs to the artist — it belongs to anyone willing to engage with it, to see and feel something beyond the surface. If a work of art moves you, even in the smallest way, then it has served its purpose.

—David D. Haynes