The Art of David Rohrer: A Sense of Place

by Charles McGuigan 02.2024

With brush and oils, David Rohrer captures place in an extraordinary way. It is in the slant of light, the play of colors, and the characters, which are houses or other structures—and occasionally human forms, that he is able, with his brushstrokes, to make you feel as if you are there. And these are often places we in Richmond have all seen a hundred times over and they are captured in our memory and sparked back into reality when we see one depicted on canvas. A familiar intersection, a certain house, an urban corridor lined with shops, a street that dead ends at another street.

Through March, David’s most recent work, a group of paintings called “Vanishing Point,” is on display at Eric Schindler Gallery. 

David tells me that in his undergraduate years in painting and printmaking at VCU, his work centered on human figures. “And the figure always becomes the most important thing in the picture by nature,” he says. 

But David decided to move in a different direction. “I kind of wanted to push the figure out,” he says. “So there will still be figures in my paintings, but they’re usually small.” 

What becomes the focus then are the inanimate. “I let the buildings be the people and tell the story and have the personality,” David tells me. 

Many of the paintings in this recent collection are of familiar street scenes and urban landscapes on Southside in Woodland Heights and the Reedy Creek area. There’s one that features his home, another his business—WPA Bakery on Semmes Avenue. 

“That one’s called ‘Sunrise at the Bakery,’” says David Rohrer. “That’s right in front of my bakery, and that’s what I see every morning.”

Eric Schindler Gallery

2305 East Broad Street

Richmond, VA 23223

(804) 644-5005

ericschindlergallery@gmail.com