yellow line drawing

About


Studio Documents

Résumé, Reviews, Interviews, & Observations from the Studio


Bailin Studio Logo image

Feedback is always welcome

David Bailin

Bailin Studio CV

Emma Bailin, David Bailin Brain • 2017 • MRI images
David Bailin is an artist working primarily in drawing.
He earned his MA from Hunter College in New York and his BFA at the University of Colorado, Boulder and received fellowship awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the NEA / Mid-American Arts Alliance as well as the Arkansas Art Council. The Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts Foundation Collection in Little Rock and the National Jewish Museum in Washington D.C. are among the number of private and public institutions that have acquired is work. Bailin received critical reviews in ARTnews, Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, the Oxford American Magazine, Art Ltd and other periodicals, and was the subject of a 2008 documentary entitled Charcoal Lines. Bailin’s work is profiled in the fourth edition of Drawing Essentials by Deborah Rockman, published in 2020 by the Oxford University Press, and Creative Practices for Visual Artists by Kenneth Steinbach, published in 2018 by Focal Press.

In the Press

Reviews, Criticism & Spotlights 2010-2022

Click on links to see individual reviews

The written material presented on this site is the intellectual property of the respective authors/publications

In Publications


Bailin Studio Logo image

2008 – 2018

21st Century Abstraction

From Roots to Celebration of the New

Essay by Peter Frank

For more information about the artists, please visit 21st Century Abstraction. This brochure can be requested by contacting the studio.

View essay

DRAWING ESSENTIALS:

A Complete Guide to Drawing

Deborah Rockman

With expository text accompanying five full color reproductions, the series ERASING is highlighted in the fourth edition of Deborah Rockman’s Drawing Essentials appendix. Drawing Essentials includes more than one hundred illustrations from twenty-two contemporary artists.

View book on external site

Drawing Essentials App-64
Drawing Essentials App-65

INTERNATIONAL DRAWING ANNUAL

Exhibition-in-Print

11h Annual, 2020

Manifest received 1187 submissions from 354 artists from all across the U.S. and the world. The publication will include 110 works by 66 artists.

TRICYCLE • 2018 • Charcoal, Colored-Pencil, Pastel and Coffee on Paper • 78 x 83 inches was selected for publication.

View book

Creative Practices for Visual Artists

Time, Space, Process

Kenneth Steinbach

Artist and educator Kenneth Steinbach addresses key issues such as: the role of embodied research and non-objective experimentation; reframing one's approach to studio time; forms of productive conflict; the positive role of anxiety; and the importance of failure for the artist. The book will be useful to students and emerging artists, the instructors that teach them, and established artists looking to develop stronger studio habits.
Focal Press • 2018

Read the selection

Inside The Studios Of Six Arkansas Artists

True To Form

Johnny C. Sain

Arkansas Life • May 2017

the Arkansas Life Article

AETN Loupe

with David Bailin

Hop Litzwire

Filmed, edited and produced by Hop Litzwire
© 2013 AETN

The 22 Magazine Interview

David Bailin

Cat Gilbert

The 22 Magazine Vol 2/II Sign & Symbol
January 2012

the 22Mag Interview

Charcoal Lines

Interview with David Bailin

Cindy Momchilov, interviewer

Edited and produced by Doubletroublets Productions
© 2008 DoubleTroublets Productions

Writings on Robert Ashley

1983, 1985

David Bailin

Back in 1984 I completed my master's thesis Robert Ashley's Atalanta (Acts of God): The Architecture of Perception. I spent many hours interviewing Robert Ashley and was saddened by his death on March 3, 2014. I decided to post several articles I wrote on his opera for television as a memorial to his work and his music.

the writings on R Ashley

Observation


Bailin Studio Logo image

Epiphany from the studio

On my drawing process

Observation from the studio

Bailin drawing
In the studio
I don't finish drawings, I exhaust the possibilities in each rendering. I revise and rework and more than likely destroy drawings. The last couple of years, only three drawings survived.

House, destroyed
House [underdrawing], n/d

I draw until the figure and the environment have weight—plasticity and narrative. I draw until I find a hook that sustains my viewing for more than a couple of days. If that hook doesn't last, then I go back to revising. Whatever began the drawing- the studies, the images from my boxes - is started again when I pick up my piece of charcoal. Because the mark is not the idea. I have to battle what making that mark means. Does it define the outside or the inside of the object? Is it defining a texture, a contour, or a tone?

Since all of us have mark making down, we think it's automatic. At its fundamental level, a drawing is a progressively complex listing of strokes. Nothing more. To assume that you can express anything before controlling and manipulating the material is ridiculous.



Lake, destroyed
Lake [underdrawing], n/d

That's not to say that you don't have a start. I have plenty of starts, plenty of ideas, but once you are on the paper it's a whole different game.


Graduation underdrawing
Graduation [underdrawing], n/d