Through the Eyes of an Expressionist: Southern Culture, Places, and Memories in the Art of David Bates

Dallas-based artist David Bates (b.1952) emerged in the 1980s as a significant painter, creating lush landscapes, portraits and narrative works that earned him national recognition. He received both his Bachelor's and Masters of Fine Arts degrees from Southern Methodist University, and in 1976 was selected to participate in the Whitney Museum of Art's Independent Study Program. Working prolifically for the past thirty years, Bates has created an extensive body of paintings, reliefs and sculpture that reveal his ability to perceive the remarkable within the quotidian and creatively transform everyday themes into extraordinary art. Yet studies of his work have been confined primarily to short essays in seasonal gallery and group exhibition catalogues. This dissertation provides the first in-depth interpretation of Bates's art, exploring the impact of southern culture on his aesthetic, his emotional and psychological connection to places, and the role of memory in his work. It assesses his career, and critical responses to it, up to 2005, providing an overview of cultural development in Texas, and examines the misconceptions and myths surrounding Texas to uncover the state's distinctive, largely forgotten, southern heritage. Specific aspects of southern culture, including oral traditions, blues music, and self-taught art, as this dissertation reveals, have played a prominent role in Bates's aesthetic. His subjects often derive from his deep attachment to the regions of northeast and southeast Texas, southwestern Arkansas, the Gulf Coast, and Walla Walla, Washington where specific scenes, birds, and plant life supply the majority of his subject matter, and reveal his spiritual bond with these environments. As Bates works, memory, both autobiographical and art historical, informs his process. Culled from extensive interviews with Bates, his wife, friends and private collectors, along with texts about the artist, southern culture, and treatises by cultural geographers and memory theorists, this dissertation reveals the reciprocal relationships inherent in Bates's use of oral traditions, blues, self-taught art, place and memory. Ultimately, Bates's desire to create an authentic vision, sought through regional sources and places, has allowed him to convert local implications into universal meaning.