There’s a mismatched quality to David Tankersley and Don Meyers. As artists working in two dimensions, their work couldn’t be more different or more complementary. Their group exhibit, “2 for the Show at ‘KNO,” collects more than 70 examples.
Tankersley came late to drawing and takes an almost journalistic approach. The dark, pointillistically rendered places and faces he depicts feel sturdy and lived in. By contrast, even when they’re inspired by gray days, clouds, and rain, Meyers’ abstract paintings are unfailingly colorful, airy, and suggestive of a larger, more mysterious universe.
David Tankersley
Huey’s
“Don’s photography is so colorful and artfully done, when you look at it initially, you might believe it’s painted,” Tankersley says.
Meyers is a retired creative director whose bio reads like the lost season of Mad Men. He started professional life working at Playboy as a photographer’s assistant and would work alongside Pulitzer-winning cartoonist Jules Feiffer and Missing Piece author/illustrator Shel Silverstein.
“He was always drawing,” Meyers says of Silverstein, who he describes as a mentor. “He’d say, ‘Don’t worry about structure, just draw. Just get back into your childhood where kids don’t worry.””
Like Meyers, Tankersley is an independent filmmaker and a veteran of the publishing and advertising worlds. He describes his art education a little differently though. “I just hung around public restrooms,” Tankersley says.
Meyers describes his half of “2 for the Show” as a garage sale. “My wife said everything must go, so I’m taking my prices way down!”
