David Kessler’s paintings are exquisitely paradoxical, the flat painted surface being contrasted against the striking illusion of depth and space. Using a perfected technique in the photo-realist tradition developed over the past twenty-five years, he has created a series of spectacular waterscape paintings that incorporate realistic imagery, painted over a surface of abraded and polished aluminum. This combination of hybrid elements forces the viewer to shift their perception to accommodate the incongruity of light being reflected from the metal surface, while at the same time being absorbed by the painted areas. This reinforces the strange visual perplexity of the paintings that are at the same time realistic and holographic. David Kessler was born in Teaneck, New Jersey. He received a BFA degree from Arizona State University in 1972 and his MFA from San Francisco Art Institute in 1975. His paintings have been exhibited internationally since 1977 with shows in Tokyo, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami and New York. Kessler’s paintings are in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Minnesota Museum of Art and the United States Embassy among others. He is also represented in the corporate collections of IBM, Prudential Life Insurance, McDonald’s, AT&T, Clorox and others nationwide. The artist lives and works in Scottsdale, Arizona.