One of the most interesting aspects of David Bruner’s work actually comes from a story passed down through artistic lineage. David is friends with Bob Peterson, who once worked as an assistant to Robert Rauschenberg and Cy Twombly, two giants of postwar art. Bob shared a story that Rauschenberg once intentionally erased a Willem de Kooning drawing. Not corrected it. Not painted over it casually. Erased it, deliberately, as an artistic act in itself. That story stayed with David. When he returned seriously to his studio practice, he kept thinking about that erasure—not as destruction, but as transformation. He began incorporating erasure into his own process. But in David’s work, the erased image isn’t gone. It lingers. It becomes a presence beneath the surface. He often describes it as a kind of “ghost of Christmas past.” The past remains embedded in the surface, faint but alive, while a new drawing or composition is superimposed over it. The result is a layered conversation between what was and what is becoming. The earlier image gives depth; the newer marks suggest possibility. It’s not about eliminating history -- it’s about allowing history to remain visible while the future unfolds on top of it, giving it great possibilities.